Via Umbria

Bill and Suzy Menard spent two decades in love with the Italian region of Umbria before they opened the address at 1525 Wisconsin Avenue NW in 2015. Via Umbria is what that long accumulation of knowledge and relationship produced: an Italian market, wine shop, restaurant, cafe, cooking school, and event space, all under the same roof on a Wisconsin Avenue block that has grown more interesting around it since the opening. The scope of what the Menards built is unusual enough to require a few sentences just to list: a fresh food market with local produce, butcher counter, cheese counter, imported specialty foods, espresso bar, evening restaurant, cooking school with professional equipment, and an art gallery. It is the full ecosystem of Italian food culture transplanted to Georgetown.

The wine program is organized around the family winemakers of Umbria, imported directly. The Menards developed personal relationships with the producers over their years of travel, and the selection on the shelves reflects those relationships rather than a commercial buying approach that would have sourced from the same Italian brands available at every wine shop in Washington. Sagrantino di Montefalco, Grechetto, and the other regional grapes that define Umbrian wine are available at Via Umbria in a depth that the standard Washington wine retailer does not carry.

The market section carries imported Italian goods alongside fresh local produce, which places it in the category of curated food markets that exist at the intersection of specialty retail and daily grocery. Cheese from Italian producers, cured meats, pasta, olive oil, and pantry items are assembled with the same selective logic as the wine. The butcher counter provides a protein selection that serves both the market customer taking items home and the restaurant kitchen preparing the evening menu.

The cooking school is equipped at the level that serious instruction requires. Classes cover Italian cuisine from the technique base through the regional specialties, and the school’s connection to the Umbrian food culture the Menards built the business around gives the curriculum a specificity that generic Italian cooking instruction lacks.

The restaurant component, which operates in the evening, extends the market and cafe operation into a full dinner service. The cooking at Via Umbria reflects the same sourcing and philosophy as the market: Italian ingredients prepared with respect for the regional traditions that Bill and Suzy Menard learned in Umbria over two decades. For a first visit, the wine bar is the natural entry point for exploration, and the cheese and charcuterie selection gives a rapid survey of what the market’s importing relationships produce in practice. The Wisconsin Avenue address at 1525 was listed for lease in 2023, which reflected the broader pressures on the market following the pandemic years. Via Umbria’s concept, which required the staffing and operational scale of a market, restaurant, cooking school, and cafe simultaneously, was among the more ambitious multi-concept operations in Georgetown. Visitors who want to check current status should visit viaumbria.com or call ahead. The address remains a significant point in the history of Georgetown’s food culture, representing a decade of Italian market-restaurant concepts that the Menards brought to Wisconsin Avenue from their years of travel.