True to its name, Maison Bar à Vins in Adams Morgan feels as if you’re walking into a dinner party at somebody’s home. The Parisian-inspired wine bar’s worn herringbone floors, candle-lit fireplaces, and comforting late-night menu create a sense of belonging that has made it an instant classic for residents and industry folk since it opened in September.
Now, the neo-bistro is up for the 2026 James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant — one of the nation's most coveted culinary awards. If Maison Bar à Vins wins, it will be the second time a D.C. restaurant has ever won that category and the first since 2008, solidifying D.C.’s place at the forefront of the national culinary scene. Mita, plant-based Latin American restaurant in Shaw, was nominated last year but lost out to Bûcheron in Minneapolis.
Other D.C. James Beard nominees this year include Susan Bae of Moon Rabbit for Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker, Suresh Sundas of Tapori for Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic, and Brent Kroll of Maxwell Park for Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service.
Nominations are decided first through an open call for recommendations then judged by a James Beard committee made up of industry professionals, food writers, and culinary experts. The winners will be announced at a ceremony in Chicago on June 15.
Matt Conroy, Maison’s chef, is no stranger to awards. One of his other establishments, Pascual on Capitol Hill, was just featured on the North America’s 50 Best Restaurants list. But he doesn’t seek them out either.
“We didn’t open the restaurant to win awards. I don't like to think that way,” said Conroy. “We just come in, we're gonna cook good food and open good bottles of wine.”
Bar area at Maison Bar à Vins. (Photo by Deb Lindsey)
Welcome To the Dinner Party
Conroy calls Maison “an Adams Morgan bar for grown-ups.”
“Many people started their early 20s in Adams Morgan and have grown up a little bit,” he said, sipping a protein shake at Maison’s bar. “This is a little bit more of their space now.”
Conroy and co-owner Omar Popal started working on Maison Bar à Vins more than two years before it opened. But it was not their first D.C. hit. Conroy and the Popal Group are responsible for some of D.C.'s most acclaimed restaurants, including the French bistro Lutèce and Pascual, which Conroy leads with his wife Isabel Coss. They attribute their James Beard nomination to a more local approach.
“It's about doing something that's genuine,” said Conroy. “There's restaurants that open and it's just a cookie cutter from Pinterest and Instagram.”
That genuineness is apparent before you even open the door. The restaurant is in a converted D.C. rowhouse, and walking in feels like you’re entering a classy neighbor’s home. The space is filled with personal and artful touches without trying too hard. The food is picturesque, but there is flavor to back it up.
The front is dominated by a walk-in only bar space while the back has small marble tables for dining and reservations. In total the restaurant serves 160 guests a night, over half of which are walk-ins. They often get neighbors and industry folk coming in multiple nights a week.
”If you wanna be part of the neighborhood, you want people to be able to walk in,” said Conroy. “You're not gonna survive off one-time guests that don't come back. You want them to have an experience and then leave and tell five of their friends about it.”
Basque cheesecake at Maison Bar à Vins. (Photo by Giovanna Benette)
What’s On the Menu
The menu at Maison Bar à Vins is made for the snackers — small plates made for sharing or having alongside a glass of wine, or two. Think escargot with hazelnut, olives and octopus, and oysters with green apple. Prices range from $8 for small bites to $30+ for full plates.
The brioche-stuffed chicken and the Basque cheesecake battle it out nightly for the top selling item on the menu. The cheesecake, a barely solid, funky delight, has D.C. foodies in a chokehold. (“I’ll drop to my knees if the Basque cheesecake ever retires,” wrote Washington Post food critic Elazar Sontag.)
For this dish alone, the restaurant went through more than 65 pounds of cream cheese last week. Conroy told me he “might buy stock in Philadelphia Cream Cheese at this rate.” But his personal favorite is a seasonal dish of smoked trout with grilled strawberries, crème fraîche, and fresh dill.
”It’s of the moment and really speaks to the way we cook here,” said Conroy. Maison’s menu changes often, following what Conroy calls “micro-seasons,” or minute changes in local agriculture.
Suzanne Critchlow, who leads the Popal Restaurant Group’s bar program, keeps Maison’s basement wine cellar stocked with more than 1,000 bottles. The mostly natural wine menu is French-centered but includes bottles from around the world, from $60 “weeknight” rieslings to a $500 brut nature pinot noir from famed French winemaker Charles Dufour.
Country Terrine with cherry moustarde (middle), seaweed choux buns (left), and Maison brioche (right) at Maison Bar à Vins. (Photo by Deb Lindsey)
Paving the Way for a New Generation of DC Chefs
It’s been a notoriously brutal few years for D.C. restaurants, with government-wide layoffs and the new tipped minimum wage law squeezing profits. Still, Conroy says he is excited about where the local restaurant scene is headed.
Conroy is part of a newer generation of D.C. chefs that includes Rob Rubba at Oyster Oyster, Michael Rafidi at Albi, Masako Morishita at Perry’s and many others that are pushing the boundaries of the D.C. food scene. Rafidi and Morishita each won their own national James Beard awards in 2024 in the outstanding chef and emerging chef categories respectively.
“We're all in the same mindset right now,” said Conroy. “We care about where we're sourcing ingredients from, care about our staff, about our guests… not just a paycheck at the end of the week.”
He also admitted to being part of a secret D.C. chef group chat that works collaboratively with local farmers. My inquiry to join was immediately shot down. “We don’t talk about fight club,” he said.
The team plans to open the row home’s second floor with more sit-down tables later this year. Popal says this will give them more space for larger format dishes and snacks.
The restaurant group also plans to open a reincarnation of The Berliner, their German beer garden that closed in 2022, in Adams Morgan but have not announced an opening date yet.
