Cafe Dupont

Food, ambience and service, everything on point. This is what defines a fine dining experience. Julian and his Team are awesome.

It was the worse experience I had. The waiter was good, but food was so little and so expensive. 4 pieces of toasted bread for $ 16. Are you kidding me? and in very low quality. I wish I could give it zero stars.

Simone and Gaby were awesome. Gaby is such a gracious hostess! From the very beginning Simone was attentive despite the dining room being at capacity. She went above and beyond the call of duty to make sure we had everything we needed. Will definitely return because of these two ladies!

Came here tonight for our team #pajamajam dinner! The first thing that I noticed was that the service was on point. When we arrived, our bottomless mimosa bar was chilled and ready to go. I was only expecting to see orange juice as a mixer, but I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that we could choose from pink grapefruit juice, apple juice, and cranberry juice as well! There was fruit on the table and cute little menus at every seat. We may have come bustin’ in there in our pajama couture, but they treated us like we had on suits and ties.
They served different breads and jams served family style for the first course. Overall, I’d say that these breads were just ok. I love croissants, but those were a little hard for me. The jams were awesome though! For my entrée, I ordered pancakes. I’m supposed to be on a «lifestyle change», but when I see pancakes on a menu, I just can’t pass it up. One of my colleagues reassured me that I would love them and surprise, surprise… I absolutely did. They were pretty perfect as far as I’m concerned. Even though they didn’t come with sides, I ordered bacon anyway and it was cooked perfectly. I love my bacon crispy and soft at the same time. I never seem to get that combination anywhere, but Café Dupont got it right.
Overall, nothing bad to say here. Sit back, relax, and enjoy your meal at one of DC’s most scenic cafes. Or, don your PJs and have an über chic pajama jam. Your choice.

My husband and I met friends for brunch at Café Dupont, and we found the experience very underwhelming. The service was slow and disorganized. We had to ask 3 or 4 times for the toast that was supposed to accompany my husband’s corned beef hash – it finally came as the others were finishing their meals. No one checked to see if all was well or to refill coffee or water during the meal. We stopped someone and asked for hot sauce, and they said that they would put an order for hot sauce in the system, which meant that it wouldn’t come out until well after the meal because the kitchen was busy.
Food was OK, but nothing that I’d go back for.

This place is a great place to stop and have a nice relaxing meal in the hectic Dupont Circle area.
We enjoyed a thick juicy perfectly cooked burger and a perfectly salted french onion soup after a cold day running around the National Mall.
The service was a bit leisurely, but never the less delightful. the ambiance was relaxed and comfortable. Prices were reasonable, but not inexpensive.

We started with the charcuterie meats $ 16 and cheese $ 15 plates and what was a little annoying was the charcuterie meats listed were not what we were brought, it was a completely different array of cured meats so we ended up sending the meat plate back. We also ordered a nitro beer and a bourbon old fashioned which we received fairly quickly.
BACON CHEESE BURGER $ 17
Grilled Akaushi Beef, Boston Bib Lettuce Beef Steak Tomato, Pickled Red Onion, Brioche Bun, Mason Jar Pickles
The beef was very juicy and the burger had great flavor and texture, best part is the brioche bun. It was accompanied by crispy French fries in a little basket.
DUCK $ 30
Pan-​Seared Maple Leaf Farms Duck Breast, Chickpeas, Baby Bok Choy, Rhubarb Chutney
I ordered the duck medium rare which was perfectly cooked, I would’ve like to have had more of the fat rendered so as a result I really couldn’t eat the skin. The chickpeas were pureed and then fried I believe. The texture was interesting since it tasted like fried hummus as the only way I could describe it. The rhubarb chutney was too sweet for my taste but I enjoyed the baby bok choy as a great accompaniment to the duck.
BABY CARROTS $ 5
I ordered this side item and they were perfectly tender baby carrots, just a little too much butter for me but other than that I really enjoyed them.
HOMEMADE SORBETS & ICE CREAMS $ 9
We opted for an assortment of ice creams: vanilla bean, strawberry, espresso and chocolate.
Our server seemed to be overwhelmed with tables and his attention was slightly lacking but I’ve been here for brunch, drinks and now dinner; so far the service has been very slow all three out of three times. I used a Groupon that took 30% off our bill which brought the total to $ 94 including tip.

Burrata is the the best I’ve had. Steak was the star of the show, duck amazing and the mash potato was awesome. Cornelius H knows his stuff!

Had dinner and breakfast in here. Morning service is kinda slow but night service is great. Recommend to come during happy hour and order some snacks/​tapas. Breakfast is quite small portion (yes, for an Asian girl, it’s not enough Lol)

I’ve only been here twice before, I used to frequent Bar DuPont quite regularly. My fiancé and I met at BD a year ago so figured we would revisit where it all started, you walk through BD to get to CD and the vibe shifts immediately. CD is perfect for when you want a quiet meal, Miles our waiter was superb the entire evening! When we were first seated he brought over complimentary champagne as a congrats on our anniversary, it was the sweetest gesture. The guy who was supposed to stay on top of our beverage refills wasn’t on top of it at all… but Miles picked up the pace where he slacked. They start you off with pumpkin bread that’s accompanied by salmon spread, absolutely amaze! For our appetizers we had the shrimp, pork belly, and poutine fries. The pork belly was great, the shrimp was standard, and the poutine fries were blah– they were nothing like the yummy ones I’m used to next door, not sure what went wrong there but hopefully they fix it. I had the duck as an entrée which was absolutely yummy and the fiancé had the ny strip which was pretty good. We finished it off with a pretty good apple pie (which was more like a tart). Would we go out of our way to come back? No. Was the service provided by Miles great? Absolutely. Was the food amazing overall? The entrees made up for the blah appetizers to an extent.

I just got drinks here but it was really nice. They have a good cocktail menu and the service was really professional. The Bar Dupont section closes their happy hour at 6, but the Café has it until 7. Drinks here are as high quality as the Gibson. The vibe is mature and sleek.

Egg Benedict and Egg Chesapeake are delicious for brunch. It is also good atmosphere. It is reasonable price. But cup was dirty. It had a lot of dust. I changed the cups more than three times. When you eat Egg Benedict or Egg Chesapeake, no salad and no vegetables on them. I like its sauce and crab cakes. But no additional sides make me little bit disappointed. Also, server doesn’t care about us. After we finished our food, we wait almost 15−20mins to get check.
I like the food, but it is not perfect experience for me.

Service is a little slow during mid-​week happy hour. One of the waiters was not very friendly, and although he was efficient in his job„ a smile would have been nice. We were here three times and he was the same each time. The other waiters and waitresses we had were very personable. We had a few beers and glasses of wine, and on one visit a cheese tray. This was a very nice snack, with four thick slices of American cheeses. I believe one was a bleu cheese, one was Brie, one was one was a sharp cheddar, and one might have been a Parmesan. There were crackers, some toasted bread, grapes and apple slices. Three spreads were also on the tray, a plum butter, spicy green spread, and a dried fruit mustardo. It was delicious!

I came here on a Saturday morning in summer and enjoyed the experience. A friend had recommended it and I was suspect, with it being a hotel restaurant. However, it had an international sort of ambiance and excellent food. Service was a bit slow and not particularly amazing, BUT nothing to really complain about. I was between the corn beef hash and the salmon benedict and the best she could help with was «the hash is more filling.» Ok… But really, it’s ok. Speaking of the food:
Salmon Benedict — my friend recommended it and it was excellent. Creamy, rich, sensuous, and went well with the roasted tomatoes
Corn Beef Hash — my friend ordered it. It was GOOD, but perhaps not outstanding. Perhaps too many peppers and not enough potatoes.
Coffee — outstanding coffee and I’m very very picky
Croissant — not a bad one! Pretty flaky and fresh
Bottom line, very good breakfast, nice place to hang out and chat and drink too much excellent coffee for a few hours.

My co-​workers and I came here for dinner last night and sat in the beautiful private room. It was a gorgeous day outside so most people seemed to opt for outdoor dining, which I think would have been great. This place just screams spring and summer to me!
I started by ordering a specialty cocktail, the cherry blossom martini, which comes with absolut hibiskus vodka, absolut citron vodka, gordon’s gin and st. germaine pomegranate juice. They were obviously on the strong side but DAMN were they good. So good that I may or may not have had 3 of them… ;)
Fresh bread came out for the table which was interesting because it had 2 kinds of butter, one plain and one something else. The natural assumption was that it would be like an herb or garlic butter. Nope! It was some type of salmon butter that tasted like lox. For us who don’t love lox a little forewarning would have been cool before slathering a slice of bread, but it’s all good.
Then we pretty much all ordered the butternut squash and apple soup, at the recommendation of the waiter. If you aren’t lactose intolerant GET THIS SOUP. So so good! The only kinda crappy thing is that they have sticks of fresh apple which you can’t easily get to using your soup spoon in the shallow bowl. But this soup was just phenomenal! My meal should have just ended here.
So I’m on track to give this place 5 stars… cool ambiance, delicious drink, amazing soup… and then my entrée comes out. I ordered the chicken breast, which comes with walnut mushroom dumplings and cardamom kumquats. I was really interested in how the kumquats could be used in a way that wouldn’t overpower the dish. The answer may be that you can’t. Kumquats are so potent, the citrus flavor took over the whole dish when I started eating it. I basically had to leave the kumquats untouched. The mushroom dumplings were good (and ordinarily I don’t even like mushroom) and the chicken was fine (like nothing out of the ordinary). The entire dish would have been helped by some type of sauce or something to make the dish less dry and more cohesive. I think the intention was for there to be some kind of sauce, but by the time it was served it was definitely dried up.
Also: go home kumquats, you’re drunk.

Café Dupont offers a really lovely dining experience. First of all, it’s got lots of options in terms of venue. Right on the corner is the bar, Bar Dupont, which is a great happy hour spot for the working professional and a fairly packed place on the weekends. Bar Dupont has a bar area with lots of seating, or you can go into the back of the bar with tables, which is a little quieter.
Across the call is Café Dupont, which is the actual dining venue (you can also access it from the street). Not only is the food here incredible, but the service is terrific. Our waitress needed about 20 extra minutes to find us a table even though we had a reservation, and because of the «wait» (I mean, we were at the bar drinking, having a great time), the waiter needlessly comped our drinks. He also had a great attitude the entire evening, even though we were the last ones to leave (sorry about that!).
I ordered the scallops, and had I not been on a date, I would have photographed them for you. In fact, I would have photographed all the food. So wonderfully presented. And the scallops were delicious. There were only three of them, though, served with two pieces of what I think was pork fat (let’s be honest, I was hungry and ate it whatever it was). I’ve seen other reviews that say the portions are small, but I guess you don’t come here to pig out. But omgmygoodness the crème brûlée was to die for. Honestly. If that’s all you order here, you are golden.
Finally, I want to highlight the drinks because they really are made well here. I’ve ordered the standard mixed drink, a Manhattan and one of their specialty drinks. And while it’s hard to disappoint me when serving alcohol, I do think that they put a lot of care into crafting their beverages here.
All in all, I usually don’t like to go to the same place twice, but I’ll be back to Café Dupont for a fourth time soon.

I recently dined here with a group for a friend’s bachelorette party. The bride-​to-​be was staying at the Dupont Circle hotel for work so it was an easy choice to begin our night here. We had an 9 pm reservation for a party of eight. Upon arriving, we were greeted by a friendly hostess. She immediately directed us to a semi-​private room.
Our waiter promptly came by to introduce himself (totally forgot his name) and check in with us about drink orders. Being a celebration, we started with a bottle of champagne. The bottle was delivered, expertly popped, and poured for the table. Since we were still waiting on a few members of our party, we began with a charcuterie board as an appetizer.
Given that we were in a semi-​private room, we felt comfortable playing a few games. We were busy giggling away and passing around someone’s phone while playing Heads Up. Our waiter never missed a beat and continued pouring champagne.
Once the remaining members of our party arrived, we finally quieted down long enough to place our dinner order. I went with the seasonal green salad and the cavatelli pasta. My salad was quite good with pumpkin seeds, pears and dried cranberries. My entrée was even better. The cavatelli pasta had the softest melt in your mouth lamb shank served with it. The sauce was creamy but not too rich.
Café Dupont was very cool with the fact that I had brought in homemade cupcakes for dessert for our party. So cool with it, they even gave us a plate of chocolate covered strawberries on the house.
Overall the service was fantastic, the food was great and the price was more than reasonable.

Can we say ahmazinggggggggggg.
Truthfully, I’m not a breakfast fan. I’m really picky about my waffles, fruit and eggs because a lot of people who serve breakfast usually don’t do it well.
In this case, Café Dupont’s execution of brunch was superb. My boyfriend and I arrived at 12 and were promptly seated at a booth near the back of the restaurant with a perfect view of outside.
We ordered the following: «Make your Mimosas (includes a bottle of champagne and fresh juices), Belgium Waffle with berries, Buttermilk Pancakes, and additional sides of scrambled eggs and bacon.
The food was excellent. Literally one of the best breakfasts I’ve had in my life. The food looked great and tasted even better. The waffle, eggs, pancakes, bacon were all fresh, yummy and needed NO additional seasoning.
The mimosa deal was amazing too… instead of buying two glasses for $ 9/​each, we spent $ 25 for a bottle of champagne and two juices for mixing. It was well worth it!
Service was also impeccable… our waiter was attentive and super on point. I looooooveeed the atmosphere here as well. Gorgeous, open natural light radiates throughout… I HAVE to come back in the summer!
After tax and 20% tip, we spent $ 89…but it was so worth it! This is the perfect place for brunch!

Disclaimer: I think Café Dupont deserves 3.5 rather than a 3-​star rating but alas.
To be honest, I had dinner at Café Dupont more out of necessity than desire. I was staying at the hotel for a weekend and my train arrived late in the evening. Rather than wandering around DC, I decided to make a reservation here, which, apparently, was absolutely unnecessary on a Friday night at 10PM. The dining room was completely empty.
Octopus [$ 14]: I was pleasantly surprised by how good this dish was. Most places don’t prepare octopus very well, but not here. It was mostly crunchy, only with the slightest chew. Yes, it was an appetizer, but it was a little small for what it was and the price though.
Fluke Crudo [$ 14]: This was really fantastic. The fluke was perfectly thin and had the right amount of acid.
Scallops [$ 25]: What really drew me to ordering the scallops entrée was the quail egg. I like an egg on anything. The scallops were cooked fine, but there were only three of them with a side of Brussels sprouts.
Honestly though, this dish was ordinary. I could find the same at any restaurant across the city.
Chocolate Bar [$ 8]: I have a sweet tooth, but this was OD. In fact, it was diabetes inducing. Basically, the dessert is a dark chocolate fudge bar with a small scoop of ice cream and sea salt. The aforementioned items did nothing to cut the chocolate. The basil was left off, though I doubt that would do anything to make eating this dish any easier. I really had to power through.
Just cut the chocolate bar in half and add some citrus and then we can start talking.
My drink, I can’t remember what it was called, but I do remember that it was not good. It tasted like Apple Cinnamon Theraflu. And at $ 14 per drink, I don’t want to be reminded of being sick in bed.
The waitress was really sweet. She was honest with her recommendations and provided really good service. Though, it’s a stretch to say that she was a day over 20. It just so happened that she was the one who made my drink…(you can put two and two together).
All in all, if you’re staying in the DuPont Circle Hotel, check out the café, but I don’t see the need to come here specially.

Went here for lunch but the brunch menu really didn’t have much for non breakfast type food.
All 3 people in our group decided to have the grilled cheese and mesclun salads.
I must say that finding the grilled cheese option on the menu requires some closer and careful reading. It’s grouped in with a bunch of other options. It read more like a side, but maybe that’s what it’s meant to be. $ 6, not bad. They came cut up into 4 pieces, which I thought was cute. The cheese was generous and a great balance of flavor.
The salads were well prepared and presentable, but a very small portion for the $ 11 price tag. I wouldn’t say anything special about them.
Maybe would go back when I want a legit breakfast, but unlikely to return for lunch.