Each year, the Eater Awards spotlight excellence in the restaurant industry in cities from coast-to-coast. D.C.’s 2025 Eater Awards honor the latest openings, culinary talent, designs, and nightlife vibes making the biggest waves across the local dining scene. Despite ongoing stressors, f rom budget-conscious consumers to tariffs, restaurants continue to prove their resilience in the face of a shaky economy and tenuous political environment. Choosing the winners is never an easy task, and there were a number of worthy candidates in 2025. This year’s picks include a hip underground drinking den in Dupont; a promising neighborhood bar in the Union Market district; a rising local chef in NoMa; a daring seafood spot at the Wharf; and a nationally acclaimed tribute to unique Indian street foods on H Street. Without further adieu, these are D.C.’s 2025 Eater Awards. Tapori: Best New Restaurant 600 H Street NE, Suite E, Washington, D.C. Tapori is a crossroads for stellar street foods from Nepal and across India. Diners share imaginative interpretations of dishes from coastal Kerala, the rugged Himalayas, buzzing Mumbai, and beyond. Chef Suresh Sundas and beverage director Dante Datta, who met while working at Rasika, swirl it all together into a funky, dinner-party-like atmosphere that they first began developing at Daru just down H Street. Tapori pushes the pair’s extroverted brand of hospitality even further. Steamed momos come loaded with wagyu beef, sitting in a pool of chicken broth, and topped with freeze-dried black Parmesan and dots of cilantro oil to cut the richness. The kitchen preps podi masala dosas, properly sour from overnight fermentation, using a massive dosa grinder brought in from India; to get their flavor (and the rest of the menu) right, Sundas and Datta teamed up with Nepali chef Baburam Sharma, who cooked dosas for 15 years in Tamil Nadu. The food is complemented by a striking design incorporating large wooden fish pendant sculptures and prismatic tiles. Order a cocktail — like a martini engineered with achaar brine — and settle in at the communal table, which brings folks together in a city that has never felt more divided. — Tierney Plumb, editor, Eater Northeast Bar Betsie: Best New Bar 1328 4th Street NE, Washington, D.C. This glitzy Union Market bar from the team behind Jane Jane might come off as dramatic and upscale, with its dark-red lighting, huge neon curtain detail, and endless mirrored walls, but if you look at the smaller details, like how the bar itself could be from a Midwest diner or the San Juan-style miniature houses from co-owner JP Sabatier’s grandmother lining the walls, there is a welcoming coziness here that was missing in Union Market before Bar Betsie opened in March. Masterfully straddling the line between a fancy cocktail bar and neighborhood dive, you can camp out in a comfy dark booth and snack on Buffalo chicken dip, grape jelly and barbecue-flavored lil smokies, and queso dip with soft pretzels, while still sipping on an exceptional drink. Signatures include a prickly pear mezcal cocktail that packs some heat or Singani balanced with tamarind and grapefruit, but even Betsie’s versions of classic cocktails are repeat orders, like the Margaritini, which features both mezcal and pickle brine and a Gold Rush topped off with whipped honey. Betsie’s team has even found a workaround for that long, annoying wait time between complicated drinks at busy cocktail bars, with simple shooters and mini pours of beer and wine. — Emily Venezky, editorial associate Anthony Jones of Marcus DC: Rising Chef 222 M Street NE, Washington, D.C. Celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson describes his newest D.C. outpost as “the first restaurant that we are doing on our terms,” which is why he immediately reached out to longtime collaborator chef Anthony Jones as he was building out the team for Marcus DC’s opening in June. Jones worked with Samuelsson at Miami’s Red Rooster Overtown back in 2020, but the Calvert County, Maryland native made a lasting impression as a young chef who was incredibly dedicated to his craft. Jones most recently led the kitchen at Penn Quarter’s Dirty Habit, where he artfully integrated West African ingredients into modern Western dishes in his last seasonal menu. At Marcus, the executive chef is playing with flavors that made Samuelsson famous, like the blue cornbread with berbere honey, but he’s also riffing on mid-Atlantic classics he grew up with, such as the rave-worthy crab rice with decadent uni bearnaise sauce, named after memories of picking up a bushel from Mel’s crab truck, and a whole-roasted chicken slathered in mambo sauce. His attention to detail shines in seasonal pasta dishes, like smoked clam cacio e pepe and rich Parmesan gnocchi with spiced mushroom broth, plus sides that are impossible to skip, such as thinly sliced, crispy sweet potatoes seasoned with berbere and served with creme fraiche and trout roe. Only in his early 30s, Jones is quietly making a name for himself, building out thoughtful menus at huge hotel restaurants that have something for everyone, but never skimp on unique ingredients and distinctive flavors. — EV Fish Shop: Design of the Year 610 Water Street SW, Washington, D.C. At Fish Shop — perhaps the Wharf’s most ambitious dining endeavor to date — the design is just as important as the food. And it’s no surprise as to why, considering the promising seafood showpiece comes courtesy of a high-powered gallery and hospitality group out of London. Born in Ballater, Scotland, in 2023, Artfarm’s critically acclaimed Fish Shop made a splashy stateside debut this spring with a next-level nautical aesthetic evident upon entry. Diners are greeted with a shoal of floating fish made of woven branches and a dramatic plaid tartan stretching up the ceiling. Sustainability is a big focus throughout, between a shellacked bartop made of shattered wine bottles, dining room table tops composed of recycled plastic, and washed-up beach wood-turned-stoic statues wrapped in fishing nets. A vintage porthole peeks into a prep station where chefs cure, dry, and age whole fish coming in from the Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in North America. Spike Meatyard, who runs Double ‘T’ Oyster Ranch on Southern Maryland’s Herring Creek, provides buttery bivalves to Fish Shop. He is also a designer by trade and assembled much of the look. A shell-framed private dining area dubbed the Boat Room appropriately oversees real ones bobbing outside. — TP Press Club​: Best Night Out 1506 19th Street NW, Washington, D.C. With a curated list of drinks and music to match, the year-old Press Club Cocktail Bar is a win for Dupont Circle. The hip subterranean lounge comes from popular party-starting partners Will Patton and Devin Kennedy, who both have extensive experience in the D.C. and New York bar scenes, respectively. A vast vinyl library stocked on sleek wooden shelves brings the beats, all set to themed menus that pay tribute to everything from iconic Brit-pop group Oasis to the Great Gatsby playing at nearby National Theatre. Like two sides of an album, the drinks bring together two complementary menus. “Play List” is a four-flight tasting menu, presented tableside and paired with Japanese-leaning bar bites like tempura and refreshing cucumber salad. The rectangular-shaped bar’s small footprint means plenty of time for conversation and questions between bartenders and guests, which includes lots of industry friends, dates, and spirits connoisseurs on any given night. An ongoing cognac flight, “Top 40” cocktail classics list, and “Devil in a New Dress” riff on a Manhattan do the trick; $12 prices on Saturdays and Sundays are a welcome weekend perk. — TP ...read more read less