Not every small town in America is accustomed to a regular stream of black S.U.V.s, secret service agents and the thrum of helicopters. But for Washington, Va., with a population of fewer than 100 people, it’s a regular part of life. The village, just over an hour from a more famous Washington — Washington, D.C. — is home to the Inn at Little Washington, a restaurant and hotel that in more than 40 years of existence has hosted presidents and first ladies, Supreme Court justices and senators, and maybe even your aunt who drove in from Pittsburgh just for dinner.
Almost immediately after it opened in 1978, the Inn at Little Washington drew rave reviews. One, two and then three Michelin stars followed. Its tables have been kept full by diners from the next town over and as far away as China, and most notably, from Washington and its inner circle. For some in the capital, dinner at the Inn, all eight courses of its $388 prix fixe French-influenced menu, has become more than a cause for bragging rights at a cocktail party. It’s become a place to dine off the record.
On any given night, Supreme Court justices might be dining within earshot of a senator or lobbyists in open opposition to a case they are hearing. Among them might be a couple who drove up from Florida for a significant wedding anniversary, and another starting a trip to the United States not in the nation’s capital but with a meal at the Inn. In the next room, the governor of Virginia might be celebrating his birthday with a meal and a bottle of local wine. A cabinet member, or a general, or an ambassador or a secretary of state could be a few chairs away.
The highly orchestrated production of seating D.C.’s movers and shakers for dinner is a task undertaken with practiced diplomacy by the Inn’s chef and founder, Patrick O’Connell. A self-taught cook who studied Julia Child’s “Mastering the Arka of French Cooking”with monastic devotion, Mr. O’Connell has been a Washington darling since he catered the wedding reception of Elizabeth Taylor and John Warner, the future senator of Virginia, in 1976.
Mr. O’Connell and his then partner, Reinhardt Lynch, opened the Inn in the deep-red countryside of 1970s Virginia, transforming an abandoned car garage into a restaurant serving a European style of food that had previously been unavailable in a rural area not far from Shenandoah National Park. The men parted ways in 2007, and today the area is largely dotted with Trump-Vance signs, with the occasional Harris-Walz banner popping up in a field or along the side of the road.
