Café Riggs

Service held to the line

Patrick Curran checks the shape of service from the chef’s station at Café Riggs in Downtown Washington DC, where he is chef inside the Riggs Washington DC culinary program. Patrick Curran has held the role here since 2019, with a path that runs through the Culinary Institute of America, Momofuku CCDC, and the larger hotel kitchen of Riggs Washington DC. The throughline is discipline rather than display: repetition, timing, and the ability to keep a large room steady when breakfast, lunch, dinner, and the bar all ask different things of the same kitchen.

His work at Café Riggs is not isolated to one pass. Curran also carries the wider title of executive chef for Riggs Washington DC, which places the restaurant inside a broader property program. That matters in a hotel kitchen, where the craft is measured not only in the finish of a plate, but in the rhythm that lets the room reset and begin again. Café Riggs is the center point. The responsibility reaches beyond it.

A brasserie program with hotel discipline

The kitchen works in the register of a contemporary French-American brasserie, with a menu built for movement across the day rather than a single evening arc. French Onion Soup, Steak Frites, Eggs Royale, Bouillabaisse, and Veal Scalopini sit in the house language, while Curran’s own signatures, Wagyu tartare and prawn risotto, show the range he keeps within that frame. Tartare asks for clean handling and restraint. Risotto asks for patience at the stove, the grain brought forward slowly enough to hold texture.

The method here depends on familiar brasserie grammar: béarnaise, Mornay, romesco, pesto, poached eggs, fried potatoes, grilled beef, shellfish broth. Those are not decorative words on the menu; they are stations of control. Eggs Royale has to arrive with smoked salmon, hash browns, poached egg, and béarnaise in balance. Steak frites gives the pass very little cover. Bouillabaisse asks for depth without muddiness, heat without heaviness. In a large, polished room, the work has to read plainly from the first plate to the last.

The room inside the bank hall

The room keeps reminding the kitchen where it is. Café Riggs occupies the former grand hall of Riggs National Bank, with high ceilings, Corinthian columns, brass, marble, velvet booths, and Art Deco lines that give the service a formal edge before a plate reaches the table. The bar feels old-fashioned without turning theatrical. The dining room can carry conversation, which changes the pace of hospitality; the pass does not have to fight the room.

That architectural weight could make a restaurant stiff. Here, the counterpoint is the all-day brasserie habit: coffee and eggs, a midday sandwich, a bowl of soup, a steak, a cocktail, a late plate from the same disciplined program. Curran’s task is to let the hall stay grand while the food stays usable. The marble and the columns are matched by a kitchen that can keep Eggs Royale and Bouillabaisse clear under that ceiling.