Washington, D.C

What’s the best meal Keith Duggan can get for €120 in Washington?

Published

4 months ago

December 28, 2025

What’s the best meal Keith Duggan can get for €120 in Washington?

Every day this week, our foreign correspondents will accept the challenge of finding the best meal possible in their city for the equivalent of €120. First, Keith Duggan introduces us to dinner in a Washington bookshop.

You won’t live the high life in Washington, DC on a dining budget of €120, but nor will you starve.

The return of Donald Trump in January this year coincided with a prolonged winter blast of snow and the sense of an entirely new era in the city.

Within weeks, Butterworth’s, on Capitol Hill, began appearing in news and magazine articles as a popular meeting spot among the ascendant Maga set – it was the restaurant of choice for Steve Bannon when he participated in the “Lunch with the FT” feature, cheerfully assuring readers that Trump would run for a third term.

Aside from attracting Maga-ites it has drawn rave reviews for an unfussy reimagining of standard bistro favourites and terrific staff. They’ll happily let you in the door in Butterworth’s with your modest budget. But it won’t take them long to serve you.

You could book an evening dinner table, split the crispy cauliflower with miso caramel ($18), have mains of dry-aged duck breast with kale and sauce verjus ($37) or lamb heart Bolognese ($29, and a Maga fave, one imagines), definitely forsake the cocktail menu and have a couple of glasses of Sancerre – and still leave a standard tip of at least 20 per cent.

But a better option, on this budget, would be to take yourself off to one of Washington’s venerable old haunts, Kramers. It’s essentially a wonderful independent bookshop masquerading as both a bar and cafe/restaurant that has been a fixture on Connecticut Avenue, just above the famous green and water fountain on Dupont Circle, since the 1940s.

It was where the concept of the bookshop cafe originated in the United States and for a time, in the boozier decades, it remained open all night.

Now, like much of Washington, the shutters come down early.

Celebrated past visitors include Maya Angelou and Barack Obama, but the place hit national headlines in 1998 when the owner, Bill Kramer, fought a court petition from independent counsel Kenneth Starr to have the bookshop reveal the titles of the books bought by one of its customers, Monica Lewinsky.

[ Patrick Freyne’s quest for the best Christmas sandwich in Dublin: ‘I give it five Santas out of five’Opens in new window ]

It’s a hugely popular weekend brunch location, particularly when it’s still warm enough to sit outside. Unsuspecting first-time visitors often move from the poetry section through a narrow doorway and in to the darkened bar, mirroring the pathway of many an actual poet. The bar is low-lit, even during the day. The restaurant is at the rear.

A dish from Kramers in Washington DC. Photograph: Instagram

Decor is minimalist, to put it politely, but the menu is eclectic and everything is good. Steak and eggs ($29) and Kramers Benedict ($22) are brunch staples. For dinner, the cream of crab soup ($14) is served with grilled ciabatta and the crispy Brussels sprouts ($12), with lemon, parmesan and a side of ranch dressing, do much to rehab the reputation of that maligned veg.

Pizzas and those ginormous American sandwiches also feature, but highlights on the mains are blackened salmon ($25) and the shrimp and grits with Andouille sausage in a spicy tomato sauce ($22). It’s the sort of place that invites parking of calorific anxieties at the door.

The Triple Chocolate Devil’s Food Cake ($12) is the best reason to visit Kramers, and possibly Washington itself. It’s an obscenity, in the best sense.

The wine list is short and modestly priced: a bottle of the (only) Sauvignon Blanc is $35. So that’s a three-course meal for two for $120 (if you skip the caffeine) – a bill which would suggest a tip of around $30. And you might even pick up a book. kramers.com

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Washington, D.C

Storm Team4 Forecast: A chilly, gusty Sunday before a cool start to the week

Published

8 hours ago

April 19, 2026

Press Room

Storm Team4 Forecast: A chilly, gusty Sunday before a cool start to the week

4 things to know about the weather:

Chances of rain in the morning
Gusty Sunday
Chilly Monday
Temps will rise again through the work week

Download the NBC Washington app on iOS and Android to check the weather radar on the go.

After a nice and warm Saturday, changes arrive for part two of the weekend.

The first half of your Sunday will have a chance for showers. Winds will pick up with our next system and are expected to gust to about 20-30 mph. Cooler air will settle in, and lows Sunday night fall into the 40s.

Highs temps Monday will reach only into the mid to upper 50s.

However, temperatures will rise through the week, so you won’t need your jackets every day.

QuickCast

SUNDAY:
Showers, then partly cloudy
Wind: NW 10-15 mph
Gusts @ 30 mph
HIGH: Lower 60s

MONDAY:
Partly cloudy
Wind: NW 10-15 mph
Gusts @ 25 mph
HIGH: Upper 50s

Stay with Storm Team4 for the latest forecast. Download the NBC Washington app on iOS and Android to get severe weather alerts on your phone.

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Washington, D.C

‘It’s a twilight zone’: Iran war casts deep shadows over IMF gathering in Washington

Published

1 day ago

April 18, 2026

Press Room

‘It’s a twilight zone’: Iran war casts deep shadows over IMF gathering in Washington

The most severe energy shock since the 1970s, the risk of a global recession and households everywhere stomaching a renewed surge in the cost of living – hitting the most vulnerable hardest.

In a sweltering hot Washington DC this week, the message at the International Monetary Fund meetings was chilling: things had been looking up for living standards around the world. But then came the Iran war.

“Some countries are in panic,” said the fund’s managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, addressing the finance ministers and central bank bosses in town for the IMF and World Bank spring meetings. “The sooner it [the Iran war] ends, the better for everybody.”

Such gatherings are not typically used to fight geopolitical battles. “You don’t get people shouting at one another at these things,” one senior figure remarked. But, as a record-breaking April heatwave swept the US capital, no one could ignore the mounting damage from the Iran war.

Those familiar with the mood over breakfast at a meeting of the G20’s representatives on Thursday, which included Donald Trump’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and the outgoing US Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell – said the atmosphere in the room was sombre amid an open exchange of serious views.

“It is such a twilight-zone meeting,” said Mohamed El-Erian, a former IMF deputy managing director who is now chief economic adviser at the Allianz insurance group. “There are several shadows hanging over it: one is the shadow that comes from concern about the global economy as a whole.

“The second is that some countries are going to be particularly hard hit, and it’s mostly countries that very few people are talking about. But the third concern is the adding of insult to injury: the fact that the US, which started a war of choice, is going to be hit, but by a lot less than elsewhere in relative terms.”

Before Thursday’s breakfast, Rachel Reeves had started her day with an early-morning jog. Joined by her counterparts from Spain, Australia and New Zealand for a run down the iconic National Mall, she posted an Instagram selfie with a not-so-subtle dig: “Friends that run together – work together.”

A day earlier, the chancellor had told a CNBC conference that she thought “friends are allowed to disagree on things” as she criticised Trump’s Iran war as a “mistake” and a “folly” that had not made the world safer.

Rachel Reeves posted this image on Instagram from Washington DC on Thursday with the message: ‘Friends that run together – work together.’ Photograph: Rachel Reeves/Instagram

Speaking at a venue just steps away from the White House, before a one-on-one meeting with Bessent, she said this “fair message” was needed because UK families and businesses were feeling the pain from higher energy prices triggered by the conflict.

Those close to Reeves insist her meeting remained cordial. Britain and the US have significant shared interests in AI, financial services and trade. The chancellor also said the UK government had little time for the Iranian regime.

But with the IMF having warned on Tuesday that the Iran war could risk a global recession – in which Britain would be the biggest G7 casualty – it was clear Reeves had travelled to Washington ready to pick a fight.

“I’m struck by how vocal she has been and the words she used,” said one global financier. “We know the disagreement between Bessent and [European Central Bank president] Christine Lagarde earlier in the year. But that was in private.”

At a cocktail party held at the British ambassador’s residence for hundreds of diplomats and financiers – including the Bank of England’s governor, Andrew Bailey, the chief executive of Barclays, CS Venkatakrishnan, and dozens of senior figures – this transatlantic tension, weeks before King Charles’s US state visit, was a major topic of conversation.

The other, in the balmy residence gardens, was one of its former occupants, Peter Mandelson, as revelations about the former ambassador’s appointment threatened to further rock the UK government.

Before the war, the agenda for the IMF had been about global cooperation; the adoption of AI, jobs and work to eradicate poverty. Each of those tasks had now been complicated, but not least the task of countries working together.

For many at the meetings, the focus was on forging closer global cooperation without the world’s pre-eminent superpower.

“Everybody is talking about how you hedge against American decisions,” said David Miliband, the former UK foreign secretary, who now runs the International Rescue Committee. “You can’t do without them, because they’re 25% of the global economy. But, in a lot of fora, they’ve pulled out.

“So everyone has to think, how does one structure international cooperation? The old west is not coming back. And so everyone has to figure out how to position themselves for that world.”

For those gathering in Washington, there was irony in the fact that they were meeting in the halls of institutions founded, under US leadership, to promote global cooperation after the second world war. The whole idea of the Bretton Woods institutions was to avoid the dire economic conditions and warfare of the 1930s and 1940s. Yet this year’s meeting was taking place amid these intertwining problems.

In their conversations about the best economic policy response to the shock of conflict, the economists also knew the real power to make a difference lay two blocks across town from the IMF and the World Bank – behind the security cordons and construction equipment blocking the White House from public view. “It is not clear they can do anything about it,” said El-Erian.

Still, with a booming economy driven by AI – including Anthropic’s powerful Mythos model, the topic of much conversation – most countries cannot afford to completely break off US ties.

“People want to find ways to insulate themselves from the mess. But, on the other hand, they admire the US private sector,” El-Erian said. “The best way I’ve heard it put, is: they want to go long the private sector and short the mess. But it’s almost impossible to do.”

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