Lapis

Lapis is a family restaurant in the literal sense. Zubair and Shamim Popal fled Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion of the 1980s and built a life and eventually a restaurant group in Washington - the same group that now runs Lutece in Georgetown and Pascual on Capitol Hill. Shamim Popal, who arrived in 1987 not knowing how to cook rice, anchors the kitchen with recipes passed down through generations, and the cooking has held a Michelin Bib Gourmand in every DC edition of the guide. The room sits at 1847 Columbia Road NW in the middle of Adams Morgan, and the food is what you would hope: dumplings, lamb stew, rice cooked properly.

Below the restaurant is Lapop, a subterranean speakeasy-style cocktail bar and vinyl lounge with a marbled bar and curated bookshelves, where you can drink before dinner over small plates sent down from upstairs. That two-level arrangement is useful for a group where not everyone is drinking, because it separates the bar hour from the meal without separating the party. The non-alcoholic drink to order is the Anar - pomegranate juice with rose water, soda and lemon zest, named for the Persian and Dari word for pomegranate. Washingtonian highlighted it in its Dry January roundup of great non-alcoholic cocktails, describing it as a refreshing spirit-free option, and noted that Lapop added further spirit-free choices during that month. It is designed to sit against the dumplings and the lamb stew rather than to stand alone, and the rose water is what keeps it from being simply juice.

Two things are worth knowing before you go. First, all the meat served is halal, which matters for a good number of guests and is not always easy to establish from a menu. Second, the restaurant keeps a split service - lunch from 11am and dinner from 5pm, with the gap in between - and runs seven days, opening at 10am for weekend brunch, closing at 9pm Sunday through Thursday and 10pm on Friday and Saturday. Adams Morgan gets loud late; Lapis and Lapop sit at the quieter end of that, and The Green Zone and Namak are both within a couple of minutes' walk.