When I was a college student at Georgetown, Dean & DeLuca on M Street was one of the landmarks in the area filled with health obsessed and affluent grocers. By the time I returned to the DC area with my wife Jun, the store was closed. I had been wondering what place would occupy the former grocery space, and then came a blockbuster news that restaurateur Stephen Starr would partner with acclaimed Los Angeles chef Nancy Silverton to open a DC outpost of Silverton’s Osteria Mozza. I had always wanted to try Osteria Mozza in LA (especially after Silverton was featured in the Netflix Chef’s Table show so it was certainly a very exciting news. Ever since its opening last November, Osteria Mozza had quickly become one of the hottest dining destinations in the city. For our first date night of 2025, I decided we should check out the hype behind the restaurant. Overall, we had a very good meal with some showstoppers.

During the holiday season last year, Jun and I stopped by a Whole Foods store and asked a young staff member behind the ham section to carve out some prosciutto slices for us. It turned out to be a disaster with the staff member completely bungling the slicing of the ham so we ended up with uneven textures all across. That is perhaps why I very appreciated just how perfect the texture of prosciutto that came with very gently smoked mozzarella cheese to start the meal. According to the press, Starr knew he wanted to collaborate with Silverton after tasting her iconic focaccia de Recco. The thin slices of focaccia (with stracchino cheese inside) were indeed quite wonderful, even with a rather hefty $26 price tag, that we ended up finishing the entire pie (I think next time we try the focaccia again, we should bring a friend or two to share). Our server, perhaps sensing that we had done our fair share of Italian dining experience, wisely steered us toward dishes that are not as well known as Italian restaurants.

My favorite dish of the night was the corzetti stampati pasta accompanied by seared eggplant, olives and ricotta cheese. Jun thought the seasoning was a little too overpowering for her palate, but I absolutely loved the explosion of flavor without using any meats. Jun’s favorite dish, on the other hand, was half duck confit with Brussels sprouts and pear mostarda (think a spicy Italian condiment with mustard, almost tasting like wasabi). I thought the duck could lose some salt, but agreed with Jun that the duck meat’s texture was otherwise quite remarkable, especially with the spicy kick from the mostarda providing a very nice balance. For dessert, we split another famous dish from Silverton, a butterscotch budino with decadent caramel sauce that would win over any sweet tooth.       

Not surprisingly, getting a reservation for a table at Osteria Mozza requires advance planning, even with a relatively spacious dining room. The sleek, upscale dining space was already bustling with handsome crowds when we showed up for early dinner around 5 p.m. If you luck out on the table seating, perhaps you can grab seats at the central bar area that serves the same menu. The Italian wine list at the restaurant was quite impressive, too, covering diverse areas of Italy with very well-known producers and (somewhat surprisingly) at not totally unreasonable price points. When a star chef opens a new restaurant, it doesn’t always fully reflect the best the chef can showcase to the diners, perhaps due to his or her commitments in multiple projects. To that end, I was very glad to see what Osteria Mozza delivered with very high level of execution on Italian food with Silverton’s California ethos. We will be sure to be back to try other dishes on the menu.

Address: 3276 M Street NW, Washington, DC 20007

KenScale: 8.25/10 (Jun’s Score: 8.25/10)

Website: https://osteriamozzadc.com/

Reservation via Resy