Maison Bar a Vins finalist

A wine bar that opened in Washington in September is now one of 10 restaurants still standing in the James Beard Awards race for Best New Restaurant. Maison Bar à Vins made the finalist list announced on March 31, and the winners are scheduled for June 15 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. (jamesbeard.org) That category is one of the few national James Beard prizes, so Maison is not competing only with District restaurants. The James Beard Foundation says the Restaurant and Chef Awards have run since 1990 and treat Best New Restaurant as a nationwide field. (jamesbeard.org) Maison is in Adams Morgan, inside a nineteenth-century brownstone that the team turned into a French-inspired wine bar and full restaurant. Eater reported that the project came from the Popal Group, the family-run Washington company behind Lapis, Lutèce, Pascual, and LaPop. (dc.eater.com) The opening date matters here because the award is built for places in their first year. Washingtonian reported in September that Maison was set to debut on September 13, 2025, which put it squarely in the window for the 2026 awards cycle. (washingtonian.com) The people behind it already had a track record before Maison opened. City Cast Washington said owner Omar Popal pitched the room as a dinner-party house, while chef Matt Conroy, known from Lutèce, built the food around French plates that still work for a neighborhood drop-in. (dc.citycast.fm) That mix is part of why the place drew attention fast. Resy highlighted dishes like smoked eel croquettes, roast chicken stuffed with brioche and green garlic, and choux buns with housemade coconut ice cream, alongside what it called one of the area’s more interesting wine lists. (blog.resy.com) Maison did not come out of nowhere in the awards process. The James Beard Foundation first named it a semifinalist on January 21 before cutting the field to finalists on March 31. (jamesbeard.org 1) (jamesbeard.org 2) The local angle is sharper than it looks because Washington did not flood this category with entries. WJLA said Maison was the only District restaurant on the Best New Restaurant finalist list, which gives one Adams Morgan address an outsized share of the city’s attention before the June ceremony. (wjla.com) That leaves the next two months looking less like a quiet victory lap and more like a national audition. Every reservation, review, and round of coverage now lands while Maison is carrying both a new-restaurant label and a James Beard finalist tag at the same time. (wjla.com) (jamesbeard.org)