A James Beard finalist to watch

A wine bar in an Adams Morgan brownstone just jumped into one of the hardest reservation fights in Washington: Maison Bar à Vins is one of the 2026 James Beard Foundation finalists for Best New Restaurant. The foundation announced the finalists on March 31, and the winner will be named on June 15 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. (jamesbeard.org) Maison is not competing in a local category. Best New Restaurant is a national award, and the 2026 finalist list includes 10 places from cities including Milwaukee, Houston, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, New York, Washington, Las Vegas, and Seattle. (jamesbeard.org) That category is built for places that are still in their first burst of momentum. The James Beard Foundation’s criteria say Best New Restaurant covers restaurants opening after September 30, 2024 for the 2026 awards cycle, which is why a place that opened in September 2025 can be in the running now. (jbf-media.s3.amazonaws.com) Maison opened at 1834 Columbia Road Northwest in Adams Morgan, inside a nineteenth-century brownstone that was originally a residence and still has five working fireplaces. Washingtonian reported before opening that the project was set to debut on September 13, 2025. (washingtonian.com) The restaurant was built to solve a very specific problem at Lutèce, the Georgetown neo-bistro from the same team. Co-owner Omar Popal told Washingtonian that Lutèce has only six bar seats, so Maison was designed as the place where people could walk in for a glass of Petit Chablis instead of chasing one of a handful of stools. (washingtonian.com) The people behind it already had a track record before Maison opened. Maison’s website says it is the latest project from The Popal Group, the Afghan family-run company behind Lapis, Lutèce, Pascual, and LaPop, with chef Matt Conroy leading the kitchen. (maisondc.com) Conroy is not a newcomer getting discovered out of nowhere. Maison’s site says he was a 2025 James Beard Foundation semifinalist for Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic, and his earlier Brooklyn restaurant Oxomoco earned a Michelin star in 2019 before he moved to Washington in 2020 to run Lutèce and later open Pascual and Maison. (maisondc.com) The food that got Maison noticed is more restaurant than snack bar. Washingtonian’s opening preview described smoked eel croquettes, seaweed choux buns with whipped fish roe, escargots with bone marrow and mushrooms, housemade terrine, and pasta with Maine mussels, while also reporting that the bar planned to stock more than 1,000 bottles of wine. (washingtonian.com) By the time the James Beard finalists came out, Maison had already moved past “new opening” status into national-list territory. The restaurant says Resy included it on “The Restaurants That Defined Dining in America in 2025,” and Eater DC described it as the Adams Morgan offshoot of Lutèce when it advanced from semifinalist to finalist. (maisondc.com) (dc.eater.com) That is why this finalist spot changes the room immediately. A neighborhood wine bar with fireplaces and walk-in energy is now spending the next nine weeks in the same national conversation as the country’s other Best New Restaurant contenders, right up to the June 15 ceremony in Chicago. (jamesbeard.org)