Restaurants
47/60 pts
The Dabney
On-line review · 47/60 pts
A hearth that still means it
Mid-Atlantic cooking in a room that treats smoke as an ingredient, not a brand.
The Dabney · Washington, D.C.
MINUTECRITIC · May 16, 2026
The Dabney has been praised so often that walking in feels like arriving at a thesis. Then the hearth does the actual work. Jeremiah Langhorne's kitchen still cooks as if the Mid-Atlantic has a cuisine, which it does: smoke, vinegar, the vegetable that grew here.
Service is calm in a city that performs calm. Plates are not trying to go viral. That is increasingly a luxury. If you get in, do not spend the meal photographing the fire. Eat.
Book the hearth room. Order the vegetable that looks boring. It will not be.
More from Restaurants
Restaurants
36/60 pts
The opening-Sunday sports bar
Restaurants/Sep 13, 2026
A sports bar on opening Sunday is a theater with worse sightlines
TVs in every direction, a menu that exists to justify the screens, and a room that scores the slate instead of a plate.
Restaurants
37/60 pts
Late-August patio dining
Restaurants/Aug 30, 2026
The last patio that still feels like a plan
A table outside is a reservation and a weather bet. This is the last week the bet is still the point.
Restaurants
22/60 pts
Chili's, at an airport
Restaurants/Aug 16, 2026
The layover meal
I ate a burger under fluorescent light and it was exactly what it was. I am not mad.