My spouse and I visited Café du Parc on a Saturday afternoon
in mid-February 2018. The Café is open daily from 7:00 am until 10:00 pm. You
can book a spot using the online Open Table reservation system (although we
arrived as walk-ins).
Café du Parc is located in the gorgeous Beaux-Arts Willard
Intercontinental Hotel, just across the street from the side entrance to the
White House and also across a different street from its Visitor Center. (In
fact, we were early for our tour time at the White House, so we stopped in to
the Café to have a drink and a snack.) The Willard began as a series of six
small houses built in 1816 to offer rented rooms. More than 30 years later,
Henry Willard combined the six buildings and enlarged them to create his hotel.
The current 12-story structure opened in 1901; however, it sat vacant for three
decades (from 1958 until 1986), when Intercontinental Hotels Group (which also
owns the Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza brands, among others) bought it and
restored it to its former turn-of-the-century grandeur. The hotel has hosted
many notable events and guests, including past Presidents Abraham Lincoln,
Franklin Pierce, Ulysses S. Grant, Millard Fillmore, Calvin Coolidge, authors
Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson, Charles Dickens, and other famous figures like
Martin Luther King and Samuel Morse.
The restaurant offers several places to dine. On the street
level, guests can sit in the casual brasserie area (either at tables or at the
small drinks bar) or outdoors on the sidewalk patio. A long staircase (or tiny
elevator) leads guests upstairs to the main dining room, where a private event
space (the Pershing Room) is also available. We regret now that we didn’t make
the effort to see the second-floor dining room, because we hear that it is beautiful!
Café du Parc serves French cuisine. We enjoyed some wine and
shared the crab cake appetizer, which was quality lump crab sautéed and plated
alongside a small green salad.
We enjoyed our quick visit to Café du Parc, and we can
envision returning, especially in the summertime when we can dine outdoors.
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