Hitching Post

Cooked to order at the Petworth pass

The fried chicken waits for the oil, not the other way around. At Hitching Post in Washington DC, owner Barry Dindyal has kept the pass running patiently since 2012, doing most of the cooking himself alongside an assistant chef named James. Everything is made on site and to order, so the result depends on what the hands do before the plate leaves the kitchen.

Hitching Post began in 1967, when Alvin and Adrienne Carter opened a Southern cooking place in the lower floor of their Petworth home at 200 Upshur St NW. The Carter table was built on fried whiting, collard greens, smoked ribs, and the kind of cooking that could hold a neighborhood through long evenings. In 2012, Barry Dindyal bought the business and kept its Southern core while adding his own line of spice and texture. The original owners still live above the restaurant and continue to dine there. That continuity matters here because the food has never been detached from the house.

Frying as the house method

The kitchen’s center of gravity is still the fryer. Fried chicken, blackened catfish, fried oysters, fried whiting, mac and cheese, collard greens, corn bread, coleslaw, and white rice make the plate grammar plain. The chicken is cooked fresh, with a wait that can run 20 minutes or more, and that time is not decorative. It is the method. The crust has to set, the meat has to carry through, and the sides have to land with enough heat and heft to make the plate feel complete.

Dindyal’s additions do not erase the Carter line. Chili Garlic Calamari brings turmeric and red chili to hand-cut squid, with romaine and carrot salad; crispy spinach folds baby spinach, tomatoes, onions, yogurt, and tamarind into the list of dishes regulars talk about. A Chilean Sea Bass Sandwich has appeared with sea salt, saffron, Texas toast, lettuce, tomato, and coleslaw. The pattern is complementary rather than replacement. Southern soul food remains the frame, while the spice work adds a second accent at the same counter.

The room under the house

The room is small, closer to 20 people than to a full dining hall, with indoor tables and a porch that keeps the restaurant in conversation with Upshur Street. A jukebox, booths, tables, a bar, and flat-screen TVs belong to the renovation after 2012, but the old-time charm is still part of the service. People sing along to old music, watch games, and settle into generous plates that arrive when the kitchen is ready, not when impatience asks.

That intimacy changes the feel of the craft. The pass is not hidden behind theater; it sits inside the rhythm of a neighborhood place where fried whiting can share a menu with crispy spinach, where tourists from Lincoln Cottage sit near regulars from Petworth, and where a meal carries the weight of repeat use. The wait becomes part of the room.

A house held through change

Hitching Post carries Michelin Bib Gourmand recognition for this address, but awards are not the point of the cooking. A restaurant opened in 1967 still works from the same Petworth house, with Southern staples, Indian inflection, and a counter that asks for time. The plate that explains it is fried chicken with collard greens, sent out from the Upshur Street kitchen.