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).

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.

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.

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.