Casual Italian Restaurant in D.C., Recommendations Please!
 

Yikes, how did this happen? We are leaving in four days for D.C. Please recommend a trattoria, ideally a nice family place with good food, good house wine and a relaxed atmosphere. Heaven!

Thanks,
Linda

Where in DC will u be staying?

Otello, in the Dupont Circle area. A nice, casual, reasonably priced neighborhood restaurant. About a block from the metro station.

http://www.otellodc.com/

Hi, sorriso, you might want to consider Sorriso:

http://www.sorrisoristorante.net/home.htm

It can get a bit loud when its busy, but I've certainly enjoyed the food, wine, and atmosphere.

Enjoy!

We're staying at Donovan House on 14th Street NW (Thomas Circle).

Thank you for the recommendations!

I agree with Otello in Dupont Circle. Also in Dupont Circle Pizza Paradiso is great for pizza and sandwichs. U can hop on the Metro and take the Red line to Cleveland Park for Dino's - this is where Sorriso's is also. Good food and great wine selection at Dinos. Pasta Mia in Adams Morgan is another good choice...it can get really crowded. I havent been there in years, but always a good family place is Luigi's on 19th St. You can check out the Washingtonian magazine for there selections.
http://tinyurl.com/3kcg4h
Have fun!

AV Ristorante Italiano

AV Ristorante closed last year.

Coppi's near 14th and U St. is another idea (and maybe Al Crostino, but to be honest I've never tried it myself).

I would also recommend Pizzeria Paradiso (though when they get crowded the service can be a little rushed) or Luigi's.

Another option is Giovanni's Trattu, which is hidden away on a side street (Jefferson Pl.) off 19th St. just south of Dupont Circle. It's old-school - it's in a basement and the decor could use an update - but it's casual and the food is very good. The pasta is mostly homemade and great.

I like Anna Maria's near Dupont Circle (just a block or two north on the right side of Connecticut).

Pizza Paradiso has good pizza, but I wouldn't call it a nice famiy place nor relaxed. It's very crowded, noisy, and full of the 20-30 something urban crowd. It's well-known and does have good pizza, so can be hard to get into. It only seats 35 and there are people waiting in lines out the door for a long time, sometimes. They don't really serve much there, other than pizza and pannini, and side salads. So it isn't like a regular Italian restaurant, it really is a pizzeria.

This also points out there is a dearth of neighborhood Italian places in DC. DC has never had a "Little Italy" or even a core of white ethnics that usually nurture these kinds of places.

We could name 30 casual Thai places and Ethiopian places, and even 10 great casual Salvadoran places, but Italian is tough in DC.

MikeT is quite right. DC is much more different than most American cities north of the Potomac in that ethnic neighborhoods were few. Many of DC's whites were southern(ie. Roy Clark, Jimmy Dean). A few were Irish (ie. Pat Buchanan, Maureen Dowd).

My son graduated from the University of Richmond last May and has been working in DC (living in Arlington) since then. He was given the initial assignment of finding an Italian restaurant and told me essentially what MikeT pointed out. I thought I'd turn to Fodorites for help and of course you came up with some great choices.

We live in the boonies in Maine. Visiting any big city is great--we'll try out some of the other places, broaden our horizons a bit, but we've just got to have Italian!

If your son's in Arlington, you should try Il Raddichio which is between Rosslyn and Courthouse in Arlington. It's exactly what you are looking for.

Another vote for Dino's ....

http://www.dino-dc.com/

In quick follow-up, we tried without success to eat at: Sorriso, Otello, Coppi's and a couple others but ran into problems of trying at lunch and they were closed or strange hours with the holiday weekend. A lot of places were closed which was very frustrating.

We did have pizza at 2 Amys, I am forever spoiled.

We left DC to head to Williamsburg for a few nights and then back to Arlington for one night. On that night we wanted to eat within easy walking distance of the Hyatt Crystal City and ended up on South 23rd Street at Top Thai Restaurant. We had a delicious, satisfying meal at quite a reasonable price.

Finally, the following day at lunch we decided to get our Italian meal. We had noticed that there were four or five choices in that small stretch of 23rd street and ended up at Cafe Italia. I cannot recommend this restaurant. We're not foodies but we do know tasty; this wasn't.

Sorry you weren't able to make it to Sorriso. We had dinner there last week on our first night. Couldn't be more conveniently located as it is literally right at the top of the steps when you come out of Cleveland Park metro station.

They have beef carpaccio which I crave, so that sealed the deal for me. I had that as an app and a cheese cannelloni dish for my main. My son was jonesing for spaghetti and meatballs, but that wasn't on the menu. Not to worry, server offered to ask the kitchen if it could be prepared for him. Bingo! He loved it. Fabulous bread, nice wines by the glass if you are alone as I was and can't order a bottle, and the desserts at surrounding tables looked great - we were much too full to have one. Liked the atmosphere, wonderful waitstaff, and the weather was nice that night so some were dining al fresco. Would gladly return.

Crepes: I envy you! The night we went to 2 Amys we walked down a street (literally down), enjoying the beautiful homes and their gardens to the Cleveland Park metro, stopped at Cold Stone Creamery for an ice cream and headed for the metro. There was Sorriso and it was closed. The menu looked wonderful.

sorriso, thanks for the follow-up report. Things like that do happen when traveling so you just need to make the best of it, as you and your family managed to do. Keep these places in mind for your next visit.

sorriso - I'd love to hear how you liked Williamsburg.

My apologies Birdie, I hadn't been back to the site until today as I'm going to search and post. Sometimes I just can't cruise here and the Europe board without getting crazy plans in mind!

Anyhow, if you're referring to Colonial Williamsburg I liked it much better than I had anticipated. Unfortunately we planned our day poorly, got there later in the morning and didn't get to experience all there was before they closed up at 5:00. I grew up in Massachusetts, had been to Sturbridge Village a fair amount of times and was expecting something like that. I was surprised to find that the area is just inserted into Williamsburg with connecting streets (accessible only in the evening) for motor traffic. We arrived from the welcome center just as one of the brief (free) orientation walking tours began and decided to participate. I'd suggest doing that.

We chose Williamsburg as a base for a few nights because of the opportunity to hit so many historical areas. We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express; clean, new, breakfast included. Lots and lots of lodging choices so the prices were competitive.

If I'm remembering correctly we did Colonial Williamsburg on day one.

Day two I wanted to see a plantation and we headed toward Shirley Plantation. On the way back we sidetracked over the bridge to Petersburg and drove the battlefield, had a late lunch on a gorgeous day, sitting outside at Andrade International Restaurant (on the recommendation of our Fodor's Guide!)(I also highly recommend). At that point the other plantations were closed so we just pulled in and looked. At Westover we checked out the grounds but I felt weird walking around their house and the horse flies were awful!

Check-out day we headed toward Jamestown and went to the actual site, not the recreation. We love archeology; there was active digging and a volunteer who provided information and answered all our questions. After that we headed toward Yorktown and drove half of that battlefield. We were quite pressed for time as we needed to get our rental car back.

I had been hoping to get a little beach time in during our stay but we were too busy!

Oh, and on our way to Williamsburg, we stopped in Fredericksburg, toured both George Washington's mother's and sister's homes and ate at Sammy T's (we opted for the smoke free annex which was a mistake, I think I could have suffered the smoky atmosphere for the ambiance; the annex is dull and dirty; the food was FABULOUS!).

Nothing had been preplanned, very unusual for me (hence the original post about restaurants) and this part of the trip worked out very well.

Let me know if there's anything more specific I can tell you.