Jim Abdo, Innkeeper

As if he doesn’t have enough cool projects (from Monroe Street Market at Catholic U with Bozzuto and Pritzker, to the city’s first pod-style hotel, in Foggy Bottom), this man now has a serious hospitality offering down the street from the Inn at Little Washington a couple hours outside DC. In January he opened the White Moose Inn, and while it has just six suites, they’re all luxurious and in the middle of the wide-open spaces that caused Jim to buy a second house nearby 26 year ago. (In his usual high-energy mode, Jim shows us he can be not just an innkeeper, but a bellhop.)

He and his family now weekend on many acres of pastoral farmland.

Here’s one of the amazing things about his Inn. One night a month, he invites a celebrity chef to stay over and cook up a storm for the Inn’s lucky guests. On Friday your publisher joined the group for a visit from famed Frederik de Pue (of DC’s Table and Menu MBK), who prepared a remarkable five-course asparagus-themed dinner (although what you see here is the rhubarb compote desert).

Jim (who appears here to be explaining to a guest why she cannot stay forever in the idyllic 150-year-old retreat on Main Street) suggests the following dining strategy to visitors from DC: Come stay for a Thursday and Friday, dine at the White Moose on Thursday with the celebrity chef, then on Friday night walk down the street (half a block on the other side of Jim) to the Inn at Little Washington. Get the best of both worlds, and some memorably fresh air and food.