What's the food culture in Washington DC?

DC's food identity starts on U Street NW, where the country's largest Ethiopian diaspora community turned a 6-block stretch into the densest Ethiopian dining corridor in North America. Dukem on U Street serves injera with a sour tang that clings to your fingers, torn and wrapped around doro wat simmered for hours in berbere pepper and clarified butter. Chercher in Shaw does a kitfo, hand-minced raw beef seasoned with mitmita and warm niter kibbeh, that might be the best version on the continent. The other native food is the half-smoke, a coarser, spicier cousin of the hot dog, griddled and split at Ben's Chili Bowl at 1213 U Street NW since 1958. You eat it at the counter with chili, mustard, and raw onion. That char-edge snap when you bite through the casing separates a Ben's half-smoke from any regular sausage.

The Mall is a food desert for anyone who cares about eating well. Restaurants near the Smithsonian museums tend to charge $18-22 for a mediocre sandwich. Walk 15 minutes north to Shaw or east to Capitol Hill and prices drop while quality rises. On 14th Street NW between P and T Streets, roughly 30 restaurants fill 8 blocks. Le Diplomate at 1601 14th Street NW draws weekend brunch lines by 9:30am for its steak frites at $34. Nearby, Compass Rose serves khachapuri, the Georgian cheese bread, for $16. Navy Yard has grown since Nationals Park opened there in 2008. The Wharf, a development on the Southwest waterfront that opened in 2017, currently has about 20 restaurants and fish counters where you can eat grilled oysters for $18 a half-dozen at the water's edge.

Eastern Market on Capitol Hill has operated continuously since 1873, the city's oldest public market still in use. The South Hall vendors open Tuesday through Sunday at 7am, and the smell of roasting sausage hits you before you reach the entrance on 7th Street SE. On weekends, an outdoor market fills the adjacent block with stalls selling pupusas, tamales, and crepes for $5-10. Union Market at 1309 5th Street NE reopened in 2012 as a food hall with about 40 vendors. The smoked-brisket sandwiches at Bidwell run $15, and the line at Takorean for Korean-Mexican tacos tends to build by noon on Saturdays. Mind you, Union Market runs commercial, not scrappy. Expect $12-16 per item.

Chesapeake Bay blue crab is the regional obsession from May through late October. You order crabs by the dozen, steamed with Old Bay seasoning, dumped on brown paper, and crack them with a mallet and a small knife. The hot shell burns your fingertips for the first 2 or 3 until you learn to pace yourself. A dozen large crabs at a DC-area crab house currently runs $55-80 depending on size and week. The Maine Avenue Fish Market on the Southwest waterfront, reportedly operating since 1805, sells steamed crabs by weight. For crab cakes, The Salt Line in Navy Yard does a lump-meat version with minimal filler for $19. To be fair, Maryland purists will tell you the best crabs are 45 minutes east on Route 50 at Cantler's in Annapolis. They might be right.

Mumbo sauce is DC's own condiment, a sweet and tangy red sauce that falls somewhere between ketchup and sweet-and-sour. Nobody outside the District seems to know it exists. Chinese-American carryouts across Southeast and Northeast DC pour it over fried chicken wings and fries. H Street NE has the densest cluster of carryouts. Wings with mumbo sauce run $6-8 per order. The sauce has been a neighborhood staple since at least the 1960s. Capital City Co. makes a bottled version sold at area grocery stores for about $5.