The Riggsby, chef Michael Schlow’s cult-favorite American restaurant that enjoyed a popular pre-pandemic run in Dupont before it closed in 2019, resurfaced this week in the same Northwest neighborhood. Now tucked inside the 335-room Royal Sonesta Hotel (2121 P Street NW), regulars can expect about 60 percent of the same menu they grew to love, now a 10-minute walk away from its original home
“I wanted to bring [Dupont] the retro, quiet glam of a supper club-meets-continental cuisine of my childhood,” he tells Eater. Opening mains include rigatoni alla vodka, escargot-studded gnocchi, steak au poivre, mussels, and much more. The hit bar snacks are back, and he’s excited for the new low-brow-high-brow hash brown squares topped with caviar.
“Comfort
food in chef vernacular was a dirty term 20 years ago. Now you see three-Michelin-starred NYC restaurants doing fried chicken. Inventiveness and personal touches excite diners and staff again,” he says.
Swedish meatballs pay homage to his early memories of cocktail parties thrown by his parents. “I remember my mom making a million hors d’oeuvres — stuffed mushrooms, clam dip, sweet-and-sour meatballs,” he says.
For the latter, he tones down the spice and nutmeg (which can be “too aggressive”) in lieu of black truffle and mushroom sauce, served with a side of frilly toothpicks like his mom used to do.
He “ups the ante” on the burger by grinding the meat daily (brisket, chuck, short rib). The bar-only burger is an off-menu order, he says, slathered in a glorious horseradish-black pepper sauce.
Other menu makeovers include the schnitzel à la Holstein (fried egg, anchovies, and capers), which had been “one of the ugliest dishes out there,” he laughs. For the polished new presentation, he makes an emulsion of capers, basil, and parsley and turns it into a puree that’s dotted atop the schnitzel to spread out the saltiness.
In the dining room, wedge salads are prepared tableside by design. “I’m a sucker for a wedge — it’s not a complicated dish but often is,” he says, noting all ingredients can get icy by the time diners spear the fork. A rolling cart equipped with a copper pot of Leidy’s warm bacon helps solve that problem. For dessert, a banana foster sundae comes topped with house-made vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, and almond biscotti crumble.
Regulars will also find the restaurant’s look familiar (local firm EditLab designed the original Riggsby back in 2014, and did the same this go-around, too). The stylish transformation is utterly unrecognizable from its former life as the stark Italian restaurant Urbana in the then-Kimpton hotel.
At Riggsby 2.0, geometric-shaped openings offer a glimpse inside the lengthy restaurant and plush parlor from the lobby. The keyhole-shaped entryway became “an iconic thing for us — it was about transporting you to another place – going down the rabbit hole,” says Schlow.
Art Deco glass sconces, velvet crimson drapes, back-lit martini glasses lined up behind the marbled bar, and midcentury artwork in gilded frames contribute to the bygone look.
Supper clubs are super hot these days, and he theorizes that the idea of nostalgia was a desirable one after the pandemic ended. “Everyone wants experience and to be pampered, with an icy cold martini, vesper by a bartender,” he says.
There’s room for 12 at the bar, 30 in the parlor, 80 in the dining room, and 32 in the private dining room.
The middle area where the pizza oven used is now a multifunctional bar, stocked with juices and pastries in the morning, a lunchtime buffet, and at night, it doubles as a second bar where shaken cocktails create energy in the middle of the room.
The private dining room will also host ticketed dinners with surprise menus in the fall that revive dishes from Nama Ko and Alta Strada, two D.C. restaurants he closed in recent years (the Fairfax, Virginia Alta Strada remains open, as do others in his Boston hometown).
His Dupont homecoming marks a reunion with D.C. chefs Scott Drewno and Danny Lee, who have ChiKo on the same strip and were his “welcome wagon” when he opened his first D.C. restaurant, Tico, in 2014.
Schlow originally planned to put Riggsby 2.0 in Bethesda, Maryland. “COVID changed every plan for everybody,” he says, but choosing to put the Riggsby back in Dupont felt right.
The central location’s accessibility to the West End is also a perk, he says, and he frequently strolls over to Rasika for a cocktail after work.
He sums up the Riggsby reboot in a few words or less: “Casual without being stuffy, snazzy without being fancy – a kind of place where you can take grandparents or cool friends visiting from LA or NY,” he says.
Riggsby’s dinner debuted on Wednesday, June 4, and breakfast started today, Thursday, June 5, with lunch coming soon.
