Star LA chef Nancy Silverton brings proven hits like this chicken alla diavola to Osteria Mozza in Georgetown. Turn the page for our review. Photograph by Birch Thomas. Osteria Mozza location_on 3276 M St., NW language Website Osteria Mozza’s vast menu includes cheeses from a “mozzarella bar,” plus plenty of pasta and wine. Photograph by Birch Thomas. Open Monday through Friday for lunch and dinner, Saturday and Sunday for brunch and dinner. Neighborhood: Georgetown. Dress: Casual, but the crowd is spiffy, whether Georgetown dowagers or Gen-Z influencers. Best dishes: Burricotta with artichokes; focaccia di recco; Caesar salad; raviolo; chicken alla diavola; hanger steak with balsamic and arugula salad. Price range: Starters $8 to $42, pastas and entrées $16 to $175. Bottom line: DC’s hottest table can live up to the hype, if you order right.   Remember back in 2017 when people would line up for a table at Bad Saint or Little Serow or Rose’s Luxury? If such a queue seems like a pre-pandemic relic, well, you haven’t shown up at Osteria Mozza at 4:45 pm on a Tuesday, as I recently did, hoping for a couple of bar seats. On that night, the line stretched down M Street, and when the place opened at 5, my friend and I got the last two spots at a communal table by the entrance. We sat on our coats. A coproduction of hyper-prolific Stephen Starr (Le Diplomate, El Presidente, Pastis, and more) and Los Angeles chef Nancy Silverton, Osteria Mozza is in the former Dean & DeLuca space in Georgetown. It’s huge—20,000 square feet, with a $16 million revamp—and while it does take reservations, they are, for now, impossible to get. Also, the place is legit packed, not fake packed like some newcomers that offer only a slim number of reservations so they seem like the hot ticket, at least in Resyland. In a nod to the 159-year-old space’s gourmet-shop past, there’s a small market up front, where the host will direct you to prim rows of $2 apples and sweet potatoes “hand-selected by chef Silverton.” More of a draw: the array of Italian imports, which include wines, pastas, mostardas, oils, salts, and little jars of artichokes and olives. There’s another Osteria Mozza in LA, and the offerings are quite similar—and vast. Here, the kitchen’s execution of the menu is erratic. Starr cites Silverton’s focaccia di recco—thin sheets of dough filled with stretchy stracchino cheese—as one of the best things he’s eaten, ever. The pizza-­size round is, in fact, very dreamy and an excellent bar snack. Strange, then, that the next dish—a $42 trio of burrata, with each bulb draped in anchovies, dried tomatoes, or cruschi peppers—featured cheese that was sour, sourer, and sourest. Much better: a subsequent visit’s creamy burricotta (a burrata-and-ricotta hybrid), beautifully dressed with artichokes, currants, and mint pesto. If you’re like me and you get annoyed at the sight of a deconstructed Caesar (so much work!), order it anyway. This version is assertive and wonderful—especially if you pile it atop anchovy crostini. Meanwhile, its menu neighbor, an endive-­and-fennel salad, is a total bore. As for the rest of the menu? The pastas are okay. The best of them is another Silverton signature: a single square raviolo filled with ricotta and a runny egg in a pool of brown butter. (Quiet luxury it is not.) It’s the meatier plates—a gorgeous roast chicken on toast, a balsamic-­drizzled hanger steak—that are actually worth standing in line for.   A.Kitchen+Bar location_on 1010 New Hampshire Ave., NW language Website Chickpea panisse is a signature dish at A.Kitchen+Bar, which opened in a West End hotel. Photograph courtesy of High Street Hospitality Group. Open Tuesday through Friday for breakfast, lunch, and dinner; Saturday for brunch and dinner; Sunday for brunch. Neighborhood: West End. Dress: Most people are in nice jeans. Best dishes: Gougères; bluefin tuna with olives; chickpea panisse; lamb ribs. Price range: Share plates $12 to $80. Bottom line: The grazing-friendly menu and creative cocktails make this a great low-key date spot.   Philadelphia restaurateur Ellen Yin, who won the 2023 James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurateur, had a quieter debut when she opened a DC spinoff of her Rittenhouse Square restaurant, A.Kitchen+Bar, in September. For one, she didn’t pick a white-hot dining neighborhood like Union Market. Instead, her restaurant is inside the nondescript AKA Hotel in the West End. But what it lacks in curb appeal it makes up for in energy and charm. It’s a jewel box of a space, with warm staffers and an intimate, low-lit dining room that hums with conversation. The menu is overseen by Eli Collins, who’s also executive chef at the Philly location. It embraces a global pantry—sorghum here, salsa verde there—and is built for grazing and sharing. Slices of raw bluefin tuna get a nice zap from rose harissa and fruity Taggiasca olives; puffs of Comté gougères arrive with a whiff of black pepper; and baton-like chickpea fritters are a soft contrast to grilled carrots and pickled peppers. But delicata squash—so sweet it’s hard to mess up—didn’t fare as well, with a mess of sprouted-grain falafel and garlicky yogurt that sounded better than it tasted. A bavette steak wasn’t improved with a peanutty take on romesco sauce. Instead, get the lamb ribs, sticky with vadouvan barbecue sauce. The drinks are a reason to come, too. There’s a wine list that leans organic and French, and cocktails have a cheffy sensibility. There’s a vibrant mix of smoky Scotch, dry Madeira wine, curry, ginger, and lime. Sound like too much? Go for the Easy A, a vodka-and-passionfruit delight. If you show up for the “golden hour,” 4 to 5 pm Tuesday through Saturday, you’ll find cocktail-and-snack pairings for $18 each. This article appears in the January 2025 issue of Washingtonian.The post Is DC’s Splashy New Osteria Mozza Worth the Wait? first appeared on Washingtonian.