Why isn't as good as Boston, though? Or am I just going to the wrong places?

Metro population is not the whole answer: Compare Portland OR's restaurant reputation with DC and then compare Portland Metro at 2 million vs DC at 5 million.

The differnces: fresh local food; innovative chefs and owners; customers who CARE about good (healthy/fresh) food.

I haven't looked at Metro average family incomes, but I'd guess inside the DC beltway income numbers are lower than central Portland, pulling the Metro average down in DC. But Portland Metro is not a high income/high living cost area.

My guesses at the answer to DC's poor-but-perpetually improving eating-out reputation: Its the Government, Stupid (lol). Lobbyists probably don't go searching for fresh local cuisine but instead are quite happy with Martinis and Humongous Steaks. These are NOT classy, discerning people.

But enough of my liberal DFH elitist ramblings - and please, no comments on whether DFHs can, per se, be elitist. Some questions are just not accepted in public discouse.

That was snarky me, above, not some anonymous troll.

San Francisco is smaller (12th-largest MSA vs. 8th for DC) but has a much more vibrant restaurant scene. I think your second explanation is a better one--DC just hasn't been a foodie town in the past.

I guess this means DC/Maryland/Virginia had to try harder to get the worse traffic with least population among these four. When I was growing up, at least for sea food, Baltimore had a great reputation for dining. I can't speak from personal experience anymore, but friends tell me that there are a lot of good places.

Ughh, while i agree with much of the sentiments. Much of the areas that compromise geographical expansionism in dining in New York, and most certainly Chicago, were once quite "bad" areas as well.

I think D.C.'s lack of good food is more historic in nature. Outside of its African American populace, it has no real history of working class ethnic people, who paved the way for much of the dining in major metropolitan cities.

Let's face it, the white people who make up D.C. are rarely indigenous, nor are they of the blue collar variety that often spawns good food. A bunch of technocrats, bootlickers, lawyers, politicians, and journalists may want good food, but they rarely produce it.

I say this about once a month. Ezra is smarter than me, but his youth shows.

DC has been on an upward food trajectory since the late 1970's. It was really bad back then. The area did have working class ethnics, but they were Scots-Irish from Appalachia. No Italian-Americans. There were some decent Jewish delis in the 1950's (e.g., Hofberg's, Posin's), but that was about it. Ooops, I forgot Crisfield's. IIRC, it is still open near the DC line on Georgia Avenue; doing exactly what it did so well in the postwar era.

What I've seen is a steady upward increase since the late 1970's. The Federal bureaucracy transitioned from green-eyeshade clerks to yuppie swine who demand good swill. We had fortunate invasions of conquering Vietnamese and Ethiopians and Central Americans.

It's better today than it was in 2000. But it is far, far better in 2000 than it was in 1977.

Since the US doesn't have Michelin for a flawed but semi-sorta-objective comparison of restaurants between cities, I decided to use Mobil's 5 star rating system (mainly because it's free)...

http://mobiltravelguide.howstuffworks.com/restaurants-channel.htm

New York: 4 Five Star, 17 Four Star
Chicago: 2 Five Star, 5 Four Star
San Fransisco: 1 Five Star, 7 Four Star
Boston: 0 Five Star, 5 Four Star
Los Angles: 0 Five Star, 3 Four Star
D.C.: 0 Five Star, 3 Four Star

So don't feel bad DC-ites... according to a gas station you have just as many fine dining take-out-a-second-mortgage-to-order-a-bottle-of-wine
options as people in LA do.

I don't find generalizations about food culture in metro areas, particularly larger metro areas, to be very descriptive of the food life in those places.

There are a number of reasons for this. To give a few examples:

I live in Denver but work in New York much of the time. Most of the noted fine dining in NYC is socially and financially out of reach for most people I know. It's true that New York has a gold mine of neighborhood places, but they are scattered across the city, and, like anywhere else, you have to know where they are. Most of the people I know in the area, both in Manhattan and outside, scarcely partake.

I lived for years in the Bay Area, but because of the sprawl, most of the great farmer's markets and the noted restaurants are remote. As a result, the food life of most people I know (and most people I know tend to put more attention to this than I would say is typical) is not much different than you'd find anywhere within driving distance of a Whole Foods and a competent restaurant ghetto.

I live now in Denver, which is not likely to make many people's lists. But we have a few places with excellent and creative regional cuisine. And we have a couple of places (Potager, Colterra) working with local farmers to serve local, seasonal cuisine, similar to what Alice Waters pioneered 35 years ago in Northern California. And even though the Boulder farmer's market is 30 miles away, it's only a 40 minute drive (whereas the Berkeley farmer's market, even tough the same distance from my folks' house, would be more than double that each way).

So even though we have a less notable food culture here, what we have is far more accessible and readily visible to those of us who live here. And more a part of our everyday life than when I lived anywhere else.

DC is way smaller than any of those areas.

It's not way smaller. There are lots of ways to count the populations of cities. I prefer the big picture, total urban area approach of the Combined Statistical Area (CSA):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_United_States_Combined_Statistical_Areas

As you'll note, greater Baltimore/DC is very nearly as large as Chicagoland if you use the same method to count both urban areas. I doubt population has much to do with Chicago's (or LA's or NYC's) culinary advantages over Washington, as the latter is pretty clearly a fairly large metropolis even by global standards (it's much larger, for instance, than Berlin or Madrid or Rome or Milan, all of which, I suspect, have DC beat when it comes to fashion and food).

I think of DC as just being very culturally conservative, and this spills over into lots of areas. Something about the pursuit of power, I suspect. For the same reasons, we see that Washingtonians absolutely suck when it comes to fashion.

This comment seems ill informed and redolent of a certain kind of snobbery. The notion that there is a shortage of good restaurants in DC seems dubious to me. As you point out, DC is not New York by a long shot -- the population of the city itself is only a little over 500,000. But as someone who eats out frequently (and tries not to drop $250 per person in the process) I think there are any number of good places to eat here, including the vast array of ethnic cuisines, e.g. Thai, Ethiopian, Indian, the various Asian fusion places. And yes, the difference here now, as opposed to 20-25 years ago is unbelievable.

To add to what Will said above... what the guy on the linked site is lamenting is a lack of places that cost $275 a person (Per Se) in D.C.

I've eaten at L'Espalier in Boston which makes Per Se look like a bargain, but still cost me over $300 with a (relatively) cheap bottle of wine for two... what is the benefit for the average dinner of having a lot of these kind of places around? I think most people could really only ever plan to eat at these places on very special occasions, so what does it matter if you have 3 of them or 20 of them?

Seems like it's just bragging rights that don't really affect most people.

Ooops... I meant to say "looks like a bargain compared to Per Se"... sorry if that was confusing.

Surely DC's lobbyists, stuffed with cash, make up part of the disparity.

Maybe all it would take would be one or two first-class restaurants; as, e.g., RuthChris lost the lobbyist trade to them, either RuthChris or another outsider would jump on the opportunity.

(I speak as one for whom RuthChris is plenty good enough, though.)

No mention of Philadelphia? Philly is a much, much better food town than DC, probably not that much bigger than Metro DC by this point either. In terms of value for money, and lack of snobbery, I would put Philly ahead of Boston or New York, maybe the best food town on the East Coast. Lots of young, up and coming aggressive chefs willing to take chances.

I second the Philly comment. After three years in center city Philadelphia (greater metro population 5.8 million, compared to "over five million" for D.C.), I moved to D.C. in 2002, where I spent the next five years longing for Philly restaurants. Oh, I found some good ones in D.C. - Vidallia, Creme, Mendocino Grill, and Firefly, among others, and above all Zaytinya. However, sorting the excellent restaurants out from the abundant mediocre ones was so much more laborious than in Philly.

Some of you folks really need to read www.donrockwell.com. Oh, and Maestro has been closed since 2006.

Gee, DC used to be a pretty good food town back in the 80s. If nothing else, they had Jean Louis Palladin cooking in the basement of the Watergate. Coming from Boston back then, the food scene in DC was great with Le Caprice, Kincaid's, La Taberna de la Alabadera, Galileo, I Ricci, Chez Francoise, The Big Cheese, and I don't remember all the others. What was the weird place on K Street with the alligator tail and kangaroo bangers? Dominique's?

I know Jean Louis checked out years again, first Vegas, then lung cancer, but has the place really fallen apart since then?