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Food & Drink

Ayat lands in Foggy Bottom, and the timing could not be more loaded

Brooklyn's beloved Palestinian restaurant opens its first D.C. location steps from GWU - and right in the middle of the conversations it was always built around.

Ayat lands in Foggy Bottom, and the timing could not be more loaded

The address alone says something. Ayat DC sits at 2112 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, on the ground floor of a glass-skinned office building that also houses lobbying firms, white-shoe law offices, and - of all things - the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington. Outside, GWU campus buildings press in on three sides. Down the block, the corridors that shape foreign policy run from the State Department to the White House. Abdul Elenani, the co-founder and CEO of the restaurant, put it plainly: 'Expanding to DC allows us to share our message of community and our cultural pride in a city where a lot of those conversations and decisions about Palestine happen.' Then, more simply: 'DC is what shapes the world.'

Ayat opened its first Washington location on July 21, 2026, with a 6 p.m. soft opening at 2112 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. It is the chain's first outpost outside the New York-New Jersey corridor - and its most deliberately chosen.

From Bay Ridge to Pennsylvania Avenue

When Ayat Masoud and her husband Abdul Elenani opened the original Ayat in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, in 2020, they wanted to 'spread the message about what's happening in Palestine through food and culture' in the neighborhood where they had both grown up. The pandemic was raging. The gamble, by any rational measure, was terrible. It paid off anyway.

Their 'Palestinian soul food' restaurant, with a prominent mural of a woman weeping and Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem guarded by Israeli soldiers, became a local favorite in a neighborhood where many restaurants fly a Palestinian flag. Word spread well beyond Bay Ridge. The original Bay Ridge restaurant earned a Michelin Guide listing - not a star, but a Guide inclusion that signals the inspectors paid attention. Since then, Ayat expanded to eight locations across four boroughs and New Jersey.

Serving explicitly Palestinian food has always been inherently political for Elenani, especially since the Gaza War - after October 7, the restaurant endured a campaign of negative reviews. None of that slowed the expansion. If anything, it accelerated it. Elenani has said he is 'going to drive myself to the max to make sure I open up as many locations as possible to communicate that culture and tradition.'

Why Foggy Bottom

The neighborhood choice was deliberate on multiple levels. Elenani cited GWU students' energy - particularly their protests over the war in Gaza - as part of the appeal. 'Foggy Bottom felt like the right place for us,' he said. 'It's a neighborhood where government, culture and education all intersect.'

He wanted to be 'somewhere central and accessible, where people already gather and where Palestinian food and culture could be part of the everyday fabric of the city.' A restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue, a five-minute walk from the State Department and a short ride from Capitol Hill, accomplishes that in a way no other D.C. block quite could.

Elenani has said that 'being here feels especially meaningful to us as it gives us the opportunity to help shift the narrative in favor of Palestinian humanity and visibility.' That is the explicit mission. The food is how they pursue it.

What's on the table

The menu at Ayat has always leaned traditional over trendy. It includes classics such as mansaf, a lamb stew prepared with fermented yogurt; maqluba, an upside-down layered dish of chicken, rice, and vegetables; and msakhan, consisting of sumac-spiced onions, pine nuts, and chicken on taboon-style bread. The restaurant also offers mezze including hummus, baba ghanoush, and stuffed grape leaves, along with fattat dishes that layer meat or chicken with rice, chickpeas, yogurt or tahini, and crispy pita.

Elenani expects the DC location to focus more on the work lunch crowd than its New York counterparts, but he does not plan to change the menu. An order might start with a Palestinian mezze platter of hummus, baba ganoush, muhammarah, tabbouleh, tahina, and labne, and move on to a mixed grill kebab platter over rice. All food at the restaurant is halal.

The DC location is also positioned to catch an audience that already has some Palestinian food literacy. Elenani has said he thinks D.C. diners already understand Palestinian cooking, in part because of chef Michael Rafidi's Albi and Yellow. Those two restaurants have spent years making the case that the food of the Levant belongs at the top of D.C.'s dining conversation. Ayat arrives with a different register - less fine-dining theater, more the communal warmth of a shared meal - but it arrives into a city that is ready.

Getting there

Ayat is at 2112 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, near the George Washington University campus. The closest Metro stop is Foggy Bottom-GWU on the Blue, Orange, and Silver lines. Street parking in this part of the city is tight, especially around dinner. Given that the GWU block goes quiet in the evening and the lunch-to-dinner crowd here is largely professional, a midday visit during the week is probably the smoothest entry point while the team is still settling in. The restaurant is in its soft-opening period, so check the latest schedule on Instagram before heading over.

The restaurant is named after Elenani's wife. Ayat is described as a bistro where you will find 'honest, authentic Palestinian food made with love' - created in honor of his wife, Ayat, a Palestinian lawyer with a real passion for food. The name has always carried weight. On Pennsylvania Avenue, it carries a little more.

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