Best Hot Spot Restaurants in Columbia Heights / Brightwood

SHIA is a phenomenal restaurant and lives up to the excellence and creativity of Chef Edward Lee. We went there for our anniversary and they made it so special. It is an intimate and luxurious restaurant, with lovely music. I liked that the dining room wasn’t loud like most city restaurants. We loved the Korean-inspired cuisine. As usual, Chef Lee puts his creative magic touch to combine interesting flavors, textures, temperatures, and cultures in ways that you can’t replicate at home and will never get anywhere else. The service was superb — very personalized and personable. The staff was very knowledgeable about all the ingredients and answered our questions thoroughly. I first discovered Chef Lee at a charity event over a decade ago when he prepared half of the dinner courses. He outshone the other chef and I learned that he would soon be appearing on Iron Chef (which he won). I told him then that he would one day cook for the Korean Embassy or White House—and he has! We are huge fans of Chef Lee, having dined at 610 Magnolia (Louisville, KY) and Succotash (National Harbor/DC). SHIA is his best restaurant yet. I highly recommend that you go before it hits #1 on the Washingtonian. It reminded me of top dishes from Culinary Class Wars (Netflix). I’m going back for my sister’s birthday!

I was disappointed that although I told the mature de we were celebrating my nephew’s engagement they neglected to do their usual special treatment.

Good food, great setting. Service was excellent. Will go back.

We had a wonderful anniversary dinner at Iron Gate. We did the family menu with the wine pairing, which was excellent. We particularly like the oyster mezze and the fava bean mezze. The grilled branzino was delicious, as was the panna cotta dessert.

Brunch was amazing and the food and service is unmatched! Thank you all for such a great experience!