Reply to When are the restaurant tables that are on the street...

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Outdoor dining here is a joke. It's seasonal and puts you on a roadway next to moving cars or on a sidewalk next to moving pedestrians. Nothing pleasurable or scenic about it. Go to California where restaurants are built to accommodate outdoor dining. Then come back here and realize how awful the DC "al fresco" dining experience truly is.[/quote]

I agree with this. It is actually very hard to find restaurants in DC with pleasant rooftops or patios. Most are just tacked on as cheaply as possible, which is also true for the vast majority of "streeteries."

The truth is that if you really want a nice outdoor dining experience, you need it be away from all cars altogether, because cars are not conducive to dining (too noisy and polluting, no one wants to shout over the sound of traffic or be able to smell exhaust while eating). Which would mean creating more pedestrian-only areas. I'm not a huge fan of the Wharf, but one thing they get right is that it's mostly a pedestrian zone, so all the patios and roof decks feel like more pleasant places to eat.

I live just off H Street and have never eaten at any of the streeteries that have popped up. A few places have invested well into outdoor patios that are actually quite pleasant (Maketto being the best example, I've heard Copycat's new outdoor space is is nice as well) but most of the outdoor dining on H is pitiful. Like the Biergarten House has a massive outdoor space but it's cheaply furnished and I've seen rats run through it because it sits right on the alley. H Street Country Club's roof deck is small and really more of a bar experience, not so much for dining. There just are not great options and the streeteries don't really change that.[/quote]

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