Mashama Bailey is bringing her Savannah magic to Pennsylvania Avenue

Mashama Bailey is bringing her Savannah magic to Pennsylvania Avenue

The address alone is enough to raise an eyebrow. 1331 Pennsylvania Avenue NW sits three blocks from the White House, in a hotel where the dining has historically leaned toward the kind of room-service-adjacent safety that hotel restaurants are famous for. That is about to change, in a pretty significant way.

Mashama Bailey and her business partner Johno Morisano are opening two restaurants inside the JW Marriott Washington DC. The first, Diner Bar by The Grey, arrives in December. The second, The Grey on Penn, follows next spring. They are doing it through their hospitality brand Grey Spaces, in partnership with Danny Meyer's Union Square Events.

If you need a refresher on why this matters: Bailey has been described by the Financial Times as "the most important chef in America." Raised in New York and Savannah, she studied in New York City and Burgundy, France before training at Prune under Gabrielle Hamilton, who introduced her to Morisano. Together they created The Grey in a former Greyhound bus terminal, a previously segregated building steeped in historical significance. In 2019, Bailey won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southeast, an accolade topped in 2022 when she became the first Black woman ever to win the James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef.

Since opening in December 2014, The Grey has earned a number of accolades, including being named a Food and Wine Restaurant of the Year and one of Time Magazine's "The World's Greatest Places." With the premiere of Netflix's Chef's Table Season 6, Bailey became the first African American chef to star on the show. The Grey's reputation, in other words, is not theoretical.

What Diner Bar actually is

DC's Diner Bar is a spinoff of the bar area at The Grey in Savannah, also called the Diner Bar. That Savannah space originally belonged to the bus terminal's newsstand and lunch counter, Union News Cafe, when the building opened in 1938. Bailey says they want to capture the spirit of what Union News Cafe was: "super casual, easy, approachable."

The 100-seat, all-day spot aims to continue Grey Spaces's mission of bringing Port City Southern cuisine around the U.S., while infusing it with Washington DC flair. It will offer breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus a late-night bar snack menu, all as part of a multi-million dollar property investment by the hotel's owner.

The menu Bailey has described for DC is not a straight copy of what's on the table in Savannah. Bailey says most of the menu will be specific to DC, including breakfast items such as a barbecued salmon biscuit sandwich, chicken and waffles, and a Southern fry-up with eggs, beef sausage, baked beans, and potatoes. Morisano says there may eventually be more complex Grey signatures on the menu, like lamb heart. Crab fritters have also been mentioned as an early anchor dish.

The room itself carries through the design language of the original. The new restaurant is covered in rich blue hues, warm woods, brass, and Art Deco touches that nod to Grey Spaces's hometown of Savannah and the original Grey restaurant. In the morning, brighter lighting washes over the space; in the evening, the atmosphere shifts to something moodier and warmer-toned. The Diner Bar space was designed by Venus Williams' interior design company V Starr, intended to echo the once-segregated Greyhound bus station, built in 1938, that houses the team's original Savannah restaurant.

Then comes The Grey on Penn

Next spring, The Grey on Penn is scheduled to replace the hotel's Avenue Grill with an upscale restaurant that will serve weekend brunch. Bailey says that the second restaurant is "just a little bit more adventurous and travels a little bit more." Morisano calls it "performative" and "a complete experience," which may include live jazz performances on Sundays. The Grey on Penn buildout will begin after Diner Bar opens.

It is worth pausing on what Grey Spaces says it is trying to do conceptually, because it is not simply about Southern food transplanted north. Morisano and Bailey have structured their U.S. expansion strategy around their "Southern Food on the Move" philosophy, which retraces the migration patterns of Southerners who traveled north and brought their culinary traditions with them. DC fits that framework almost too neatly.

Bailey put it plainly in a press statement: "Southern food has never been static. It has always moved with people, and along the way it has adapted, evolved and taken on new influences. Washington has such an interesting place in that story because it sits between North and South and has been shaped by generations of people coming here from somewhere else. With Diner Bar by the Grey, we have an opportunity to explore what Southern food looks like in Washington today while still staying connected to where we come from."

The bigger picture for DC diners

Pennsylvania Avenue at the hotel-restaurant level has long trended toward the inoffensive. The corridor draws embassy staffers, lobbyists, out-of-town officials, and tourists from the Mall, and the food has often reflected what that mix was assumed to want. Bailey and Morisano are betting they want something better.

Even with the power-corridor Pennsylvania Avenue address, Morisano says the goal is to create restaurants for locals just as much as hotel guests. That framing matters. It is the difference between a hotel annexe and a real DC restaurant that happens to be inside a hotel.

For anyone who has eaten at The Grey in Savannah, and walked out feeling like the building itself was part of the meal, the news that Bailey is thinking that deliberately about what DC means to her food is genuinely exciting. At The Grey, which opened in 2014, Bailey folded together Georgia and New York, French training and Black Southern food, family memories, Savannah's history as a port city, and the bus depot's past. Whatever she folds into the DC version of that story will be worth watching.

Diner Bar by The Grey opens in December at 1331 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. The Grey on Penn follows next spring in the same building.

Sources

• Washingtonian: 'Acclaimed Savannah Chef Mashama Bailey Is Opening Two DC Restaurants'
• Robb Report: 'Mashama Bailey and Johno Morisano Are Expanding Their Dining Empire to Washington, D.C.'
• Yahoo/Food & Wine: 'Mashama Bailey's Next Chapter Includes Crab Fritters, Southern Breakfasts, and a D.C. Address'
• The Grey / Grey Spaces official site
• Institute of Culinary Education: 'ICE Alum Mashama Bailey Wins Top Honors at 2022 James Beard Awards'
• Fine Dining Lovers: Mashama Bailey profile
• JW Marriott Washington, DC official site