All Purpose Pizzeria (Shaw)

All Purpose opened in Shaw in 2016 from chef Michael Friedman, whose other restaurant, The Red Hen, had already established him in the city. The pizza is Jersey-style - thin, crunchy at the edge, closer to a bar pie than a Neapolitan - and it comes alongside house-made charcuterie and red-sauce classics in a room built to be loud and social rather than reverent. The Shaw original at 1250 9th Street NW anchors a small group that also includes a Capitol Riverfront outpost near Navy Yard. It earned early acclaim from the Washington Post after its debut and was named to Washingtonian's 100 Very Best Restaurants 2025 at number 69.

The reason it appears here dates from January 2025, when All Purpose introduced a dedicated dry cocktail menu at both locations - a real menu rather than an expanded soda list. Resy noted the launch in its roundup of DC bars with superb zero-proof cocktails. Two named drinks anchor it. The Golden Boot is built on pineapple juice with basil, lemon juice and soda, which gives it a herbal edge that cuts through pizza in the way a spritz would. The Positano Punch is the more constructed of the pair: pomegranate and apple with rosemary simple syrup and grapefruit bitters, and the bitters are what stop it reading as a soft drink. Both are priced and served as cocktails rather than as an afterthought, which is the practical difference for a table where one person is not drinking.

What makes the room genuinely useful for non-drinkers is the format. This is a pizzeria with a weekend drag brunch and a consistently busy dining room, so the social occasion does not depend on the bar. Practical notes: dinner starts at 5pm every day, running to 9pm on Monday, 10pm Tuesday through Thursday, 11pm on Friday and Saturday and 9pm on Sunday, with weekend brunch from 11am to 2.30pm. It sits a short walk from Mount Vernon Square and Shaw Metro stations, and Blagden Alley is around the corner if the evening continues.