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The Wharf InterContinental Is Finally Getting a Real Restaurant Again

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The Wharf InterContinental Is Finally Getting a Real Restaurant Again


A prime dining space located on the 50 yard line of D.C.’s glitzy Southwest Waterfront development that has struggled to keep a marquee restaurant has snagged a new chef to lead its latest attempt at success.

InterContinental Washington, D.C. just tapped tenured chef Jeffrey Williams to lead a new flagship restaurant at the foot of the fancy hotel. The team tells Eater the goal is to open by the end of the year, and the 152-seat, gold-toned space won’t undergo any major renovations (801 Wharf Street SW).

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Chef Jeffrey Williams will lead the Wharf Intercontinental’s new to-be-named restaurant.
InterContinental Washington, D.C.

Details on the to-be-named restaurant are slim for now. The cuisine plans to swing “modern American,” per a release, with a hyper-seasonal menu centered around homemade pastas and mid-Atlantic ingredients sourced from local farms and waterways.

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The Philadelphia native returns to D.C. with 15 years of culinary experience, starting at InterContinental’s sibling D.C. hotel the Willard . He went west to work in Los Angeles kitchens like Lillie’s Beverly Hills, Jane Q, STK, and Tin Roof Bistro.

The D.C. hotel’s newly announced project marks a fresh chapter for a storied space that famously lost two top-rated restaurants in just six years, in part, due to a (now-settled) dispute over how the hotel allegedly underpaid its hospitality workers.

The posh, 278-room hotel opened in 2017 with culinary star Kwame Onwuachi’s Afro-Caribbean hit Kith/Kin, earning him the the 2019 James Beard award for Rising Star Chef of the Year. He suddenly resigned in 2020, in hopes of seeking an ownership stake in his next venture. (Onwuachi just made a big Southwest Waterfront comeback at Salamander hotel’s Dōgon.)

Chef Kevin Tien’s Vietnamese fine-dining destination Moon Rabbit moved in that fall, quickly earning Tien a James Beard semifinalist nod as Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic and Food & Wine readers naming it one of the 10 best restaurants in the country. Tien announced plans to part ways with IHG in early 2023, and the restaurant abruptly closed that May.

After allegations that hotel management misled Moon Rabbit staff about proper compensation practices, D.C. recently ordered IHG to pay Moon Rabbit employees $126,650. (Tien’s critically acclaimed, now-independently run Moon Rabbit reopened in Penn Quarter this year, and was not involved in the case.) The Wharf’s hotel staffers ultimately won the right to unionize, and the year-old placeholder replacement to Moon Rabbit is generic surf-and-turf spot Dockside Restaurant and Bar.

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The space’s latest life as a seasonal American restaurant hopes to stick under its newly named executive chef (third time’s a charm?). Williams comes to town from his most recent executive chef role at Omni’s NOÉ Restaurant & Bar in Los Angeles.

“While I loved the year-round sunshine in California, coming home to D.C.’s four distinct seasons allows for ever-changing menus and dishes that give a true sense of place,” says Williams.

The Food Network winner says he got the bug to cook from his grandfather, who opened a fish market in Philadelphia and ran a community gardening program. His cross-country background also includes stints at Social Club in Miami and Nios in NYC.

The hotel is owned by the developers of the $3.6-billion Wharf project (Hoffman & Associates, Madison Marquette) and Carr Companies.



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

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


4 things to know about the weather:

  1. Chances of rain in the morning
  2. Gusty Sunday
  3. Chilly Monday
  4. 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.

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

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‘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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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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Rosselli opens in DC, serving classic Italian flavors from chef Carlos

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Rosselli opens in DC, serving classic Italian flavors from chef Carlos


Rosselli is the newest restaurant to open in DC.

Bringing in classic Italian flavors, Chef Carlos explained how he hopes his food is a unique addition to the Italian food scene in the DMV.

Chef also demoed a signature dish with Brian and Megan.

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