The Pennsylvania Avenue Corner Marcel's Left Is Filling Back In, Upstairs and Down

"I was like, you know what? I should keep a little piece of it just because it meant so much to the customers," Elli Benchimol told Eater DC, explaining why one frosted glass partition stamped with fleur-de-lis survived her renovation of 2401 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. Nothing else in the room would look familiar to anyone who ate at Marcel's. Sage and olive walls replaced the beige, and matte-black arches now run overhead.

Ellizabetta La Strega opened there on September 8. Above the dining room, three floors that used to hold offices are being converted to homes, so the block where the West End meets Foggy Bottom is gaining residents just as its restaurants move toward later hours. Ellizabetta La Strega, Ayat, the Bourbon Lounge at the Four Seasons and Ten Ten West End all point the same way.

Twenty-five years, then a lease that didn't renew

Marcel's opened in March 1999 and closed on May 12, 2024. Chef Robert Wiedmaier's closing note, published by PoPville, said the restaurant "was unable to reach lease terms with the new building owner."

The space came close to going to someone else. According to Eater DC, Benchimol had planned Ellizabetta for an E Street lease that fell through. Then she noticed the Marcel's space was available again after the first prospective tenant dropped out. She already ran Apéro in Georgetown and its tasting room upstairs, La Bohème.

Jenn Castaneda-Jones and her husband, Stephen Jones, led the Marcel's kitchen. After it closed they moved to Apéro and La Bohème, and now they are back in the kitchen they left. Castaneda-Jones is culinary director across all three of Benchimol's restaurants. She told Eater the house motto is "Italian with a little piece of magic."

What the old kitchen cooks now

Most of the menu is new, and it doesn't stick to one region of Italy. Highlights from the opening coverage in Eater DC and Washingtonian:

• Bread and pasta: house garlic confit and rosemary focaccia, plus Meyer lemon tagliatelle with caviar, crème fraîche and lemon butter. The tagliatelle is about the only dish shared with Apéro.
• A carbonara variation: tortellini filled with ricotta and mozzarella in a traditional egg and Parmesan sauce.
• A vegan Bolognese made with a meat substitute, roasted mushrooms and a lot of wine. Castaneda-Jones told Eater it fooled the staff at a tasting.
• Mains: a "Wiccan" chicken Milanese with citrus gremolata, and crispy Berkshire porchetta with porcini sauce, potato purée and broccolini.
• Dishes for two: whole-roasted branzino with salmoriglio, or a rib-eye finished with rosemary, olives and gremolata.
• Lighter plates and desserts: fried artichokes, prawn arrabbiata, spumoni and tiramisu.

The space seats 170, and the private room at the back is called Bella Ciao. Benchimol designed the space herself and painted the acrylic portraits of about ten of her friends that hang in the dining room.

A day that starts at 3 p.m.

Ellizabetta keeps evening hours. On the restaurant's own site, the bar and all-day menu open at 3 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and at 4 p.m. on Sunday, and dinner starts at 5. The Witching Hour is the restaurant's version of aperitivo, and it runs twice on weeknights: 3 to 5 p.m. and again from 9 to 10 p.m., Tuesday through Thursday, plus 4 to 5 p.m. on Sunday. Spritzes come in orange goblets shaped like owls, with cicchetti that change every week.

The second session matters for anyone living nearby. It fits after a late night at the office, or after an evening at the Kennedy Center. The rest of the stretch splits the day up like this:

Ayat covers the daytime

Ayat is the lunch option on the stretch. The Palestinian restaurant opened on July 22 in a 3,500-square-foot, 100-seat space. Eater DC reported it as the New York restaurant's first location in Washington, with discounted lunch platters from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The whole menu is halal. It includes mansaf, maklouba, shawarma, mezze and bread baked daily. Olive oil, za'atar and pita come to the table free. Ayat doesn't serve alcohol, but you can bring your own. Its location page lists hours of 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and until 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.

Two hotel rooms redesigned for staying put

At the Georgetown end of the avenue, the Four Seasons spent about $1.5 million redesigning the Bourbon Lounge at Bourbon Steak, Washingtonian reported. The lounge reopened on Saturday, August 15. Marc Bromley, the hotel's regional vice president and general manager, called it "a destination in and of itself." The Four Seasons announcement describes it as the restaurant's first major renovation since it opened in 2008. The lounge is now designed as an experience of its own instead of an overflow area for the dining room.

The new look borrows from Georgetown residential salons: dark wood, a dark-stone bar, velvet booths, and a brass-and-glass arch dividing the lounge from the dining room. General manager Andres Sweek told Washingtonian that about 70 percent of the lounge menu is new. Additions include a bone-marrow burger, sesame lobster toast, lamb kofta "pops" and fried chicken bites, and two of the earlier burgers stayed on. In the hotel's release, Chef Michael Mina called it a "relaxed and approachable" way into the restaurant.

Near Washington Circle, Ten Ten West End inside the One Washington Circle DC hotel has a new executive chef, Nicholas Fulginiti, the Georgetowner reported. He previously ran the kitchens at District Winery and The Duck & The Peach. The restaurant describes its food as seasonal American with a Mid-Atlantic focus. An October guide from The Washington Lobbyist singled out a spicy pork-sausage ragù with lumache, whipped ricotta, basil and Aleppo pepper. Ten Ten also serves breakfast, with avocado toast at $15 and a classic breakfast at $22 on the current menu. It is the stretch's morning stop, the role Ayat plays at midday.

In August, Eater DC called this "once-sleepy Pennsylvania Avenue NW stretch" a place "having a resurgence this summer," naming Ayat and the Bourbon Steak redesign. Taken together, the four restaurants cover the day from breakfast at Ten Ten to an 11 p.m. close on weekends at Ayat and Ellizabetta.

Sixty homes above the dining room

The scaffolding on 2401 Pennsylvania Avenue is the next part of the story. Developer Monument Realty began construction on July 17, 2026, to turn the building's three office floors into 60 homes. The building already had 40 residential units, so it will have 100 when the work is done. Nelson Architects designed the conversion, ZDS is doing the interiors, and Donohoe is the builder. The developer expects to finish in spring 2027.

Ellizabetta's patio depends on the same schedule. The restaurant has a 25-seat outdoor area that, according to Eater DC, opens once the scaffolding comes down. That points to a first outdoor season next year, with up to 60 new households living upstairs. For this winter, the corner Marcel's held for 25 years is indoors only: a fireplace, the old glass partition and a 9 p.m. Witching Hour.

If you own a home within walking distance of this stretch, the offices-to-homes conversion and the new restaurant hours are part of what your home is worth. The team at Fleur Howgill follows how changes on corners like 2401 Pennsylvania Avenue affect nearby buildings. To see where your home stands as the corner fills back in, Request a Confidential Home Valuation.