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Private Dining Spots for Intimate Groups of 150 or Less in Washington, DC
Washington, DC hosts exclusive meetings of all types and sizes, making intimate dining spaces for groups a necessity. From Michelin-starred restaurants to museums and historic buildings, the nation’s capital does not disappoint. Check out some of our top choices for your next private dining experience for groups of 150 or less. Groups of 50 or less: CIRCA at Chinatown CIRCA at Chinatown is conveniently located right next to the Capital One Arena and two blocks from the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, making it an ideal spot for a private dinner, cocktail reception or banquet. The private dining room seats up to 34 guests or up to 20 guests for a cocktail reception, while the main bar can hold a maximum of 50 guests for any small gathering. President Woodrow Wilson House The house of the 28th U.S. president, located just off Embassy Row, offers intimate dining with classic Washington style. Groups of 36 or fewer can dine in the presidential dining room and larger groups are able to dine in the restored garden of the President Woodrow Wilson House. Guests can also tour the house with museum staff stationed to share information on the house and collection. minibar by José Andrés For an exclusive dining experience at a Michelin-starred restaurant, check out José Andrés’ minibar and reserve José’s Table. As the winner of the James Beard Award for Humanitarian of the Year in 2018, José Andrés will take your private event and kick it up a notch. José’s Table is adjacent to the kitchen and designed exclusively for parties of up to 6 people. The event space allows guests to enjoy minibar from an entirely different perspective, offering a sneak peek of José’s newest creations with rare wine pairings – it is the perfect spot for an exclusive small group experience. Dirty Habit At the epicenter of Chinatown nightlife, Dirty Habit brings a gorgeous modern twist to its private patio and alluring dining rooms. Whether it be the Birdcage, perfect for groups of 40-50 guests or the Eston Room, ideal for intimate dinners of up to 10 guests, Dirty Habit has multiple options. Visitors can look forward to globally-inspired, seasonal shared plates as well as inventive craft cocktails. Blue Duck Tavern Blue Duck Tavern offers an intimate experience for up to 20 people at the Chef’s Table. The space is ideal for hosting a small meeting, during which the restaurant’s culinary team will create a special three, four, or five-course menu. The Chef’s Table is available daily for breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner. Groups of 100 or less: Charlie Palmer Steak The Landscape Room at Charlie Palmer Steak features beautiful artwork and is a luxurious destination for intimate private dining. With seating for up to 20 people, the room is an ideal location for group dinners and business meetings. The Alcove has also been a favorite for many years. The room can be altered into various shapes and sizes, suiting groups from 25 to 100 people. Modena The authentic Italian fare at Modena in Northwest DC can be enjoyed by many groups with the restaurant’s abundant private space. The restaurant seats 65 in the main dining room, 12 guests seated in the semi-private dining room and 48 guests in a large private dining room. Reception style can accommodate up to 80 people. The Oval Room The Oval Room, located one block from The White House, offers modern American cuisine and plenty of dining options for groups. The restaurant has three private rooms - The Green Room can seat up to 36 guests seated or hold 65 guests for a standing reception; The Main Room can accommodate 65 guests seated or 100 guests for a standing reception; and The Curtain Room can combined accommodate up to 14 people for seated dining. Executive Chef Bryan Moscatello brings an array of options for lunch, dinner and dessert and even offers a Test Kitchen Tuesday interactive dining option for those interested in exploring his new techniques, ingredients and dishes. Groups of 150 or less: Clyde's of Gallery Place The classic American restaurant in Chinatown boasts a versatile grand room, the Piedmont Room, that allows for seated events from 20 to 130 guests or cocktail receptions for up to 200 guests. Joe's Seafood, Prime Steak and Stone Crab Joe's Seafood, Prime Steak and Stone Crab offers five spaces perfect for any entertaining occasion. The Gigi Room, the largest room, can accommodate 120 seated guests or 200 guests reception style. The space can also be partitioned into two smaller rooms, while the South Beach Room features leopard print carpeting and retro-style chandelier for 30 guests seated or 50 guests reception style. Villa Yara Nestled in Georgetown, Villa Yara is a Lebanese treasure offering an enchanting setting for private events, accommodating up to 100 guests. With diverse dining spaces, Yara’s Chamber provides intimate seating for 14 guests, while Yara’s Salon accommodates 40 guests with flexible seating for larger gatherings. For a magical outdoor experience, Yara’s Covered Garden seats 60 guests amidst flowers, art and a whimsical fountain, and can be covered for any weather. Inspired by the nostalgic tale of Yara, a character drawn from the essence of Lebanese singer Fairouz, Villa Yara transforms an old Georgetown home into a vibrant piece of Lebanon. The restaurant’s cuisine, rooted in the tradition of Mezza, is designed to be shared, making it the perfect place to enjoy specialty cocktails and traditional dishes with friends. Looking for more private dining options in the nation's capital? We've got plenty more great spots for group dining in DC.
Professional Congress Organizer
A key component of the international bidding process is your partnership with a Professional Congress Organizer. Organizers provides full service management for conferences including but not limited to design, program development, registration, site and venue selection and booking, audiovisuals, IT support, logistics, leisure management, marketing, printing and web services, sourcing speakers, funding, sponsorship and exhibitor sales, financial management and budget control. You may be a member of an international association whose congress has a Core PCO. If so, you must work very closely with this specific PCO to bid to host the congress. If not, you may choose your own. A Professional Congress Organizer is a vital component to the bid process, and you must use one in conjunction with Destination DC to have a successful congress. MCI MCI is the world’s leading provider of strategic engagement and activation solutions and has been a key driver of innovation in the meetings, events, association and congress industries since 1987. Through creative live experiences and digitization, globalization, brand enhancement and content strategies, MCI helps multinational companies and international associations to enhance organizational performance, grow globally, energize communities and drive business results. An independent, privately held company with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, MCI’s 1,600 experts in 58 cities and 30 countries help clients across Europe, the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and India, the Middle East and Africa to unlock their potential and deliver real change. Kenes Fifty years of knowledge, experience and market expertise have led Kenes Group to the forefront of global conference management and to becoming one of the world’s leading PCOs. Founded in Tel Aviv in 1965 and headquartered in Geneva and Tel Aviv, Kenes has hosted over 3,000 conferences in more than 100 cities around the globe, with over 115,000 participants per year. For the past five decades, Kenes has established and maintained its winning reputation as a global meeting and association management provider. Recognized as the world leader in meeting planning, Kenes is the only global PCO dedicated to medical and scientific events. Kenes boasts a long-standing client base of some of the world’s foremost organizations and associations, with more than 100 long term clients. International Conference Services (ICS) International Conference Services is passionate about organizing superior conferences, events and incentive programs, striving to inspire, create and succeed alongside clients while providing unique, world class experiences. ICS works worldwide and has a great understanding of the needs of various cultures. Team members originate from all parts of the world, bringing with them extensive experience from their respective countries and speaking a total of 15 languages: English, Cantonese, Farsi, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog and Taiwanese. McVeigh Associates McVeigh Associates is the industry leader in Strategic Meeting Management. McVeigh partners with Enterprise and Fortune 500 companies to coordinate every aspect of global meetings and conferences. The organization guarantees the achievement of business objectives through flawless execution, quantifiable cost savings, adherence to corporate compliance and a regard to public perception. For more than 20 years, McVeigh Associates has delivered customized, comprehensive services and value-added branding for clients’ meetings and events. Whether it’s managing customer or employee programs, a meeting for 5 or 5,000, or a regional or international meeting, McVeigh Associates delivers with passion, creativity and flexibility. McVeigh Associates assigns a dedicated business unit to establish and maintain strategic alliances with client stakeholders (brand teams, corporate travel, procurement, legal and compliance departments) and their preferred vendors. This distinct client-centric approach guarantees a superior product, clear message and high touch customer service – all pivotal elements in marketing strategies and deliverables in today’s corporate climate of SOX, compliance and public scrutiny of business travel spend. Meet key players in the Ambassador Circle community and attend an upcoming event.
Q&A with Mrs. Virginia Ali, Matriarch of Ben’s Chili Bowl
What keeps a restaurant open for more than 65 years? What is it that draws national attention to a neighborhood eatery? What magnetic force can possibly be behind the amount of love and dedication that this city (this coast, this country) feels for Ben’s Chili Bowl and its half-smokes? Certainly one factor is its location on U Street – once known as DC’s Black Broadway – and the symbol of community Ben’s became as the city prevailed through segregation, the societal upheaval of the 1960s and ensuing decades of drastic change in the neighborhood. But the leading reason Ben’s has grown to be an institution in the nation’s capital is its people. The restaurant’s dedicated staff is led with heart by Virginia Ali, the widow of Ben, with whom she cofounded the restaurant when she was just 24 years old. Virginia is approaching 90 years old, yet she remains a walking lesson in warmth and hospitality. She wants every customer to feel at home and thanks to her smile and a pat on the back, everyone does. It’s clear that she’d give you whatever you needed to feel comfortable and cared for. You can begin to see why Martin Luther King, Jr., for one, chose to spend many of his DC lunchtimes at Ben’s, and why the restaurant stayed open and served meals during the riots on U Street after the civil rights leader was assassinated. In the week leading up to the March on Washington’s 60th anniversary, we had the chance to talk to Virginia about MLK and other Ben’s lore: Ben’s arrived on the scene, in a segregated country, five years before the March on Washington. What did DC feel like to you during those five years? VA: In 1958, I left Industrial Bank (where I’d worked since 1952) to open the restaurant. We were going through the civil rights movement down south. Washington had begun to open up a few places to be integrated. And it was after the March that we passed the Civil Rights Bill. The March was on August 28, 1963. And the Uprising [the assassination of Dr. King] took place five years later. Has Ben’s been integrated since it opened? VA: Of course! We were never the prejudiced people. White people could go wherever they wanted. If they’d gone to the Howard Theatre to see one of our big entertainers, there’d be a whole bunch of white people [in the restaurant after]. To put it in perspective, behind me, if you walk to the end of this alley, around that circle where those beautiful townhouses are, it was Children’s Hospital. Children’s Hospital! Which had all kinds of doctors and lawyers and everybody running down here for lunch. You know what I mean? Thompson’s Dairy was one of the big businesses in the community that delivered milk to my house every day. … Smith’s Storage right up the street; C & P [Chesapeake and Potomac] Telephone Company was in the area … so there were large businesses here. That brought everyone together? VA: Yeah. We all lived together. Do you remember any specifics from interactions with MLK? VA: Well, I do remember one: one day we were talking and he said he’d had a meeting with President Kennedy. And with Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph and young John Lewis, and I don’t remember who else. And he had told President Kennedy, in order to bring attention to these injustices to Black people, he was going to bring a large group of protestors here. And he told me President Kennedy said to him, “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Because if you bring a large group of people here, and there’s an incident, it will set your movement back, Dr. King.” Dr. King said, “There will be. No. Incident.” Wow. VA: He brought 250,000 people. A sea of people. Did you attend the March? VA: Ben and I were there. A sea of people. And not a single incident. Just a very inspiring, beautiful day. And the very next year, guess what happened? They passed the Civil Rights Bill. The very next year. Do you have ideas about making more progress in America? VA: You know, the way I’ve operated my business certainly came from the teachings of my dad, my mom, from my home growing up. The way we lived. And that philosophy was: always, always, treat people the way you want to be treated. All people. Whether it’s the president, the judge, the guy on the corner, whatever it is – just treat all people the way you would like to be treated. And if you do that, you don’t have a problem. It’s that simple. It’s not rocket science at all. And it doesn’t take anything to do it but kindness. Ben’s is celebrating its 65th anniversary. It’s amazing to see such a happy story has lasted for so long. Do you ever think about what you would have done if there had never been Ben’s Chili Bowl? VA: No. And I do know that I love what I do. And when people came to me and said, “Are you going to stay here? Why didn’t you open someplace else?” I said, “This is the nation’s capital! It’s got to get better, right?” It’s got to get better. We are the nation’s capital. Check out Ben's Chili Bowl next time you're in DC. And if you want a taste of Ben's at home, order nationwide today.
