All-Purpose

My Take

I've eaten at All-Purpose, or carried it home, more than two dozen times, and it has never let me down. The dough is the reason: Mike Friedman spent ten months on the recipe, and you can taste it — a subtle sweetness, a little tang, a little nuttiness, under a light, piquant sauce. What lifts it beyond a pizzeria is everything around the pie. For two, order a couple of things from the salumi, insalate and antipasti, split a pizza, and ask them to stage the courses; the eggplant parm is a red-sauce classic done right, and the bar is well worth lingering at. DC isn't a great pizza town, and during my years there this was my favorite and most-frequented restaurant in the District. My half-brother Marco, who knows Italian food better than anyone I know, would take one bite and say it's not exactly Italian — but it's really good. From him, that's a blessing from the pope.

Public Knowledge

All-Purpose opened in Shaw in 2016 from the team behind The Red Hen, with chef Mike Friedman drawing on his New Jersey and Italian-American roots; the fermented-dough pies land between New York and Neapolitan — lighter and breadier than Neapolitan, never cracker-thin (Washingtonian). Time Out singles out the crackling deck-oven crust, the eggplant parm and the garlic knots, and notes the place is almost always full (Time Out). In 2016 Washingtonian put it first on its own list of DC restaurants Michelin's Bib Gourmand should have included (Washingtonian). The second location, on the Capitol Riverfront, has since closed (Yelp).

Ratings — Google 4.5 (1,079 reviews) · Tripadvisor 4.4 (151 reviews) · as of October 29, 2026. Sources: Google Maps · Tripadvisor · Yelp

Details

Price: $$

All-Purpose — Shaw · 1250 9th St NW, Washington, DC 20001 · (202) 849-6174 · allpurposedc.com · reservations on Resy