Michael Schlow told Axios in June that D.C. "has its ups and downs" and that what he loves about the restaurant business is perseverance. He said it the same week his old supper club reopened two blocks off the circle, inside a hotel that had just finished rebuilding an entire restaurant from scratch for the first time since the original version closed in 2019.
That quote reads like a modest, seasoned-operator line. It undersells what actually happened. Since 2020, Schlow's D.C. footprint has shrunk by four restaurants: Prima, Casolare, Alta Strada, and Nama Ko all closed, with Alta Strada near Logan Circle going under in part because of softer downtown foot traffic. Instead of treating that as a signal to pull back further, Schlow put a reported $6 million into rebuilding The Riggsby at 2121 P Street NW, inside the Royal Sonesta. That is not a modest bet. It is the opposite of what the closures around it would predict.
The Return, Rebuilt
The new Riggsby isn't a copy of the old one. Schlow brought back the chopped salad and the steak Diane, the dishes regulars will recognize immediately. But he also reworked the menu in places, including a tartare now finished with fried capers and crispy frico instead of the anchovy-caper version that closed with the original room in 2019. The redesign, handled again by Edit Lab by Streetsense, the same firm behind the first Riggsby, leans into deep corner booths, a fireplace, and a bar built for the kind of Old Fashioned conversation that doesn't happen standing up.
The location matters as much as the menu. Schlow didn't reopen in the old spot, a former Dupont hotel that changed ownership in 2019 and is now home to Lyle. He picked a different building on the same P Street corridor and rebuilt around it. That is a deliberate choice to stay in this specific two or three blocks rather than relocate to a neighborhood with less baggage.
A Chain Made the Same Call, Independently
Schlow's bet is personal. The second bet on this stretch isn't. Hai Hospitality, the company behind Austin's Uchi, opened its D.C. location at 1700 M St NW on May 12, a 185-seat room designed around a "Swinging Sixties" theme, complete with two private dining rooms and separate back entrances built for guests who'd rather not be seen walking in the front. Hai Hospitality is expanding city by city right now, and CEO Tony Montero has said each location gets tailored to feel like it belongs in that particular city rather than a copy-pasted concept. That means someone at the company ran the numbers on this stretch of D.C. and decided it was worth the investment, with no emotional attachment to the neighborhood the way Schlow has.
The kitchen is run by chef de cuisine Rob Drennan, who trained at Rose's Restaurant Group (Rose's Luxury, Pineapple and Pearls) before working at the three-Michelin-starred Maaemo in Oslo. The menu blends Uchi staples like hama chili and hot rock wagyu with D.C.-specific additions, including a crispy tuna rice and a lobster coconut curry. Weekday happy hour runs from 4 to 6 p.m., and the splurge end of the menu is a nine-course tasting for two at $120. Hai Hospitality is already planning a spinoff, Uchiko, for Bethesda next year, which suggests this isn't a one-off experiment. It's the first move in a broader regional plan, and Dupont Circle got picked first.
Here's what that looks like side by side.
| The Riggsby | Uchi | |
|---|---|---|
| Address | 2121 P Street NW | 1700 M Street NW |
| Reopened / Opened | June 2026 | May 12, 2026 |
| Backing | Michael Schlow, independent | Hai Hospitality, multi-city expansion |
| Investment detail | $6 million redesign | 185-seat build, two private rooms |
| Signature dish | Steak Diane, chopped salad | Hama chili, hot rock wagyu |
| Splurge option | Supper menu, daily 5 to 10 p.m. | $120 nine-course tasting for two |
Two very different kinds of operators, one an independent chef repairing his own reputation and the other a company running a national rollout, landed on the same handful of blocks within weeks of each other. That's not a coincidence worth shrugging off. It's two separate risk calculations arriving at the same answer.
The Night That Tests It
The timing gets sharper this weekend. Art All Night returns to Logan Circle on Saturday, September 12, running from 3 p.m. to midnight under this year's theme, Let's Dance, built around the neighborhood's theatrical and spectacle-driven side. It's part of a citywide festival now in its 15th year. Last year's event pulled more than 250,000 attendees and featured over 1,200 artists and performers across all eight wards, and this year the festival is running its first mobile app, which includes a Dine All Night feature highlighting restaurants offering extended hours and special menus for the weekend.
Logan Circle isn't the only neighborhood hosting. Mount Pleasant and U Street run their versions Friday night, while Chevy Chase, Van Ness, Shaw, and a downtown activation across Anthem Row and the Carnegie Library Lawn all run Saturday alongside Logan Circle. That's the frame worth holding onto: this isn't a small, local block party. It's one node in a coordinated, citywide test of whether people will still come out, spend money, and fill a commercial corridor after dark, in a year when the dominant D.C. dining story has been softer traffic and shuttered rooms.
Whether The Riggsby or Uchi formally participate in Dine All Night wasn't confirmed as of this writing, so it's worth checking the festival app or each restaurant directly if that's the plan for Saturday night. But the coincidence of timing still holds regardless: the two most expensive dining bets this stretch of Dupont and Logan has seen all year get their first real stress test the same weekend the entire neighborhood is asked to prove it can still draw a crowd.
What This Actually Tells You
Read enough D.C. restaurant coverage from this year and the throughline is contraction. Softer downtown traffic. Longtime operators pulling back. Rooms that used to anchor a block going dark. That's a real pattern, and Schlow's own list of closures is part of it.
But the counter-evidence isn't scattered across the city. It's concentrated on this specific stretch of P Street and M Street, where a chef who just lost four restaurants chose to rebuild here rather than somewhere with less history, and a national chain running careful city-by-city math chose the same few blocks independently. Two very different kinds of confidence, pointed at the same handful of addresses, in the same season.
That's worth knowing if you already live here, because it changes what a walk down P Street or M Street looks like this month compared to six months ago. It's also worth knowing this Saturday, when the neighborhood gets its loudest, most public chance yet to show whether that confidence was earned.
If you're the kind of person who tracks what a neighborhood's changing restaurant map says about where it's headed, that instinct is exactly what Ethan Carson brings to reading Dupont and Logan Circle block by block. Explore the Portfolio to see how that same attention shows up in the homes and buildings around these blocks.
