Washington, D.C., may project a formal image, but its restaurants can be every bit as strange as the destinations among New York’s most endearingly weird restaurants. The District offers secret doors, indoor miniature golf and a restaurant that changes its entire appearance with the seasons.
Here are five of the weirdest places to eat in Washington.
Chicken + Whiskey on 14th Street
At first glance, Chicken + Whiskey is a casual counter serving Peruvian rotisserie chicken, arepas and South American-inspired side dishes.
Then customers open what looks like the restaurant’s walk-in freezer door.
Behind it is a hidden whiskey bar with a completely different atmosphere. The back room has its own cocktails, music, late-night hours and enormous collection of whiskey.
The strange division allows customers to eat a quick chicken dinner in a bright counter-service restaurant before apparently walking into the freezer and disappearing into a crowded bar.
Swingers Crazy Golf in Dupont Circle
Swingers combines a restaurant, cocktail bar, carnival and elaborate miniature-golf course in one enormous space.
Customers can eat pizza, tacos and other street food between rounds on its nine-hole courses. The obstacles include moving parts and an enormous clock tower, while additional carnival games add to the organized chaos.
The venue is modeled after a British seaside amusement park, but its bars and food stalls are aimed primarily at adults. Guests do not have to play golf to eat there, although watching customers celebrate or despair over miniature windmills is part of the entertainment.
Allegory inside the Eaton DC
Finding Allegory requires walking into the Eaton hotel’s library and locating an unmarked door.
The hidden bar’s most striking feature is an enormous mural inspired by “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” A closer examination reveals another story: The artwork retells Alice through the experiences of Ruby Bridges, who desegregated a New Orleans elementary school as a child in 1960.
That unusual combination extends to Allegory’s elaborate cocktails and accompanying food menu. The result is part speakeasy, part art installation and part history lesson hidden behind a library.
Urban Roast in Penn Quarter and at The Wharf
Urban Roast refuses to decorate with restraint.
The family-owned restaurant rebuilds its appearance around holidays and seasons. Previous transformations have filled rooms with thousands of lights, artificial cherry blossoms, pumpkins, candy canes, roses, enormous ornaments and trees.
During the holidays, separate areas can resemble a snowy forest and a pink Candyland display. Other seasons bring equally elaborate floral takeovers.
The menus change with the décor, featuring themed cocktails alongside Mediterranean-influenced dishes, brunch plates and desserts. It is a restaurant where customers may spend more time photographing the ceiling than reading the menu.
Immigrant Food at multiple D.C. locations
Immigrant Food builds individual bowls by combining flavors associated with different immigrant communities.
One dish might bring together Indian, Ethiopian and Vietnamese influences, while another blends ingredients inspired by Latin America, the Caribbean or the Middle East. The restaurant calls the concept “gastroadvocacy.”
Its locations also connect diners with immigrant-service organizations, volunteer opportunities and educational information. That makes the business part restaurant and part civic-engagement project.
The combinations sound as if someone spun a globe several times before designing lunch, but that unpredictability is the entire point.
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