Washington has a genuinely good food scene, with particular strength in Ethiopian cuisine — the neighbourhood of Adams Morgan and Columbia Heights around 18th Street NW has more Ethiopian restaurants per block than almost anywhere outside Addis Ababa. Ben's Chili Bowl (1213 U Street NW) is a DC institution since 1958, famous for its half-smokes (a DC-specific sausage) and chili. The U Street corridor around it has become one of the city's best restaurant strips.
For a proper dinner, the Penn Quarter neighbourhood (around 7th Street NW) concentrates some of the city's more ambitious restaurants. José Andrés's Minibar (855 E Street NW) is the most technically adventurous — expensive and hard to book, but worth the effort. The Southwest Waterfront's The Wharf development has a cluster of seafood restaurants with Potomac views. Eastern Market on Capitol Hill is excellent on weekend mornings for breakfast from the food vendors.
Georgetown has a concentration of casual restaurants, particularly along M Street and in the side streets off Wisconsin Avenue. The city's Ethiopian restaurants cluster on 9th Street NW (the original "Little Ethiopia") and on 18th Street NW in Adams Morgan — try Etete or Dukem for honest, inexpensive injera-and-stew meals.