1310 Kitchen and Bar

The restaurant at 1310 Wisconsin Avenue NW occupies the mid-Wisconsin commercial zone, in the stretch between the lower commercial district near the canal and the upper boutique corridor above N Street. This section of Wisconsin has developed a neighborhood dining character that the tourist-facing restaurants of M Street do not have: the establishments here serve the people who live in Georgetown rather than primarily the people who visit it.

The kitchen works in the American seasonal mode, which means the menu reflects what is available and appropriate to the season rather than a fixed selection that does not change with the year. Seasonal American cooking at this level involves sourcing from local producers for the ingredients that the local agricultural calendar provides and building dishes that emphasize those ingredients in preparations that allow their quality to come through. The full bar program provides the cocktails and spirits selection that a neighborhood restaurant needs to function as a destination in the evening as well as for dinner.

The brunch program on weekends gives the restaurant a second significant service period that the Georgetown neighborhood restaurant format supports. Georgetown’s residential population makes it a brunch destination more than the tourist corridor restaurants, because the customers walk from nearby rather than driving in specifically for a meal. Weekend brunch at 1310 Kitchen and Bar serves the neighborhood in the Saturday and Sunday morning context that the tables fill for.

The Wisconsin Avenue dining room provides the casual neighborhood atmosphere that the brunch and dinner customers expect from a Wisconsin Avenue restaurant rather than a special-occasion destination. The combination of food, drink, and the room’s character produces the experience that a good neighborhood restaurant provides: somewhere you can return to regularly without the return feeling like a production.

Reservations can be made through the standard online channels. Hours run from dinner service on weekdays and from brunch through dinner on Saturday and Sunday. The Wisconsin Avenue address is accessible from the Georgetown Circulator and from the upper Wisconsin residential blocks. The seasonal American format is one of the more demanding restaurant concepts in the Georgetown market because it requires the kitchen to adapt the menu as local produce and sourcing availability changes through the year. A menu that is genuinely seasonal rather than nominally seasonal updates with each season’s ingredients, which requires the kitchen to develop new preparations and train the staff on new dishes more frequently than a static menu does. For the customer who returns to 1310 Kitchen and Bar throughout the year, this means the experience changes rather than repeating. The bar program provides a consistent anchor across seasons: the cocktail list, which incorporates seasonal fruits and herbs into the spirit base, mirrors the kitchen’s seasonal approach while maintaining the consistent bar character that the neighborhood expects from a Wisconsin Avenue restaurant. The Wisconsin Avenue address is accessible on the Georgetown Circulator route.