The $95 Chef's Table at DC's Most Talked-About Steakhouse
His slogan is "Eat more beef," which is either the least sophisticated thing a five-star Michelin chef has ever said or the most.
The tray comes out and there is no menu on it, just meat, and somebody starts telling you how old each animal was. Thirty months for this one. Ten years for that one. Marbling, breed, how long it hung.
I have sat through a lot of tableside presentations. This is the first one where I wanted to take notes.
The Restaurant
Ox & Olive is at 3201 Cherry Hill Lane, a cobblestone alley in Georgetown most people have walked past without noticing. Fifty seats. It opened on May 7, 2026, in the space Reverie left behind, and DC has not stopped talking about it since. The Chef's Table was booked out for its first month, which tells you everything about the appetite for this.
The look is contemporary gothic run into neon, and the martini list is doing as much work as the beef. Not the expense-account chophouse with the leather banquettes and the wine list nobody reads. Something younger, smaller, and considerably more interested in itself.
Two months old at the time of writing. This is an early read, not a settled verdict.
The Chefs
Ryan Ratino holds five Michelin stars across six venues. Two at Jônt, his sixteen-seat counter on 14th Street. One at Bresca below it. One at MAASS in Fort Lauderdale, one at Ômo by Jônt in Orlando. He is thirty-five, the youngest chef in America to earn two stars, and his own team will tell you he sits second only to Thomas Keller in total stars.
His slogan for this place is "Eat more beef."
That gap is the point. Ratino grew up in Medina, Ohio, on meat and potatoes, went through Le Cordon Bleu in Orlando, then Caviar Russe, WD-50, minibar. He has spent a career on tweezers. Here he has explicitly put them down. His words, roughly, were that the team wanted to nerd out on steak and sides, and that there is a deliberate lack of tweezers in this dining room.
The sourcing is where the fine dining brain shows. More than fifteen small producers. Older Japanese wagyu, Australian Holsteins, a friend's farm back in Ohio. Animals from thirty months to ten years, dry-aged twenty-eight to sixty days. The steaks get broiled and then finished over charcoal to build the crust. That is a fussy, two-stage process applied to something as unpretentious as a piece of beef, and it's the thesis of the whole restaurant.
The Menu
There's à la carte, and there's the $95 Chef's Table, which is what I took. First visit, always the chef's table if I can get it.
The Chef's Table runs a spread of appetizers, then the sides, then dessert. The steak is not included. That's the part nobody mentions when they quote the $95, and it matters, because the steak is why you came.
The tray arrives between the snacks and the mains. That's the pivot the whole meal turns on.
The Food
The Brioche Pull Apartsopen it, with cultured butter, beef tallow, marinated olives, and a house-made beef and cheddar summer sausage. Bread and butter as a statement rather than an afterthought.
The Prawn Cocktailis the shrimp cocktail rebuilt from scratch, garnished piece by piece. It should feel like a gimmick. It doesn't.
The Mini Brisket Hot Dogs are Chicago-style, each one individually dressed. This is the dish everyone photographs, and also, quietly, the one that tells you how seriously the kitchen is taking its own joke.
The Steak Tartare "Eclaire" puts tartare into a choux shell. The quotation marks are theirs and they're earned.
The Beef & Onion Consommé has been going for about twenty-four hours by the time it reaches you. A clear broth is the hardest thing on this list to get right and the easiest to overlook.
The Stone Fruit Salad comes with beef bacon, which is the kind of sentence that only makes sense in this room.
The Turbot is seared and served with English peas, garlic herb butter, and Petrossian caviar. Cooking a delicate fish surrounded by beef fat and caviar at a steakhouse is a small act of thesis-defending, and it works.
Then the tray. Their beef sommelier walks the cuts and talks you through breed, age, and marbling until you make an actual informed choice. I have never used that job title in a sentence before. I went for the Kuroge Jade Black Wagyu and the Shimane A5, because I like fat and I have no shame about it. Medium rare, both. They came out exactly right.
Sides are Whipped Potato, Onion Rings, and Farm Greens. The potato is the one to order.
Dessert is a fork in the road. The Carrot Cake is filled with more carrot cake, plus cream cheese, pineapple, and brown butter, which is a dessert that refuses to apologize for itself. The Chocolate Mille Feuille is a chocolate puff pastry with vanilla cream, maraschino cherries, caramel, and sesame seeds on top.
The Service
The beef sommelier is the service story. Not a gimmick title. Somebody stands at your table and talks breed, age, and marbling until you know what you're ordering, which is more than most steakhouses at any price bother to do.
The room runs young and loud, and the martini program is not a courtesy. Ratino's group also runs The Press Club, currently number 34 on The World's 50 Best Bars.
The Prices
The Chef's Table is $95 per person, and it does not include the steak. À la carte staples, strip loin, tenderloin, short rib, sit around $50. The large-format and Japanese cuts on the tray are priced well above that and change nightly on what the kitchen could source that week.
Some farms only send them four loins in a week. Price accordingly.
Who's It For
Steak people who are bored of steakhouses. If your last three good pieces of beef came at places with dark wood, a sommelier in a waistcoat, and a $200 wine list you didn't want, this is the correction.
Not for a quiet dinner. Fifty seats in a Georgetown alley two months after opening is a room with volume, and the martinis are not helping anyone stay calm.
If you can't get the Chef's Table, and for a while you won't, go à la carte or pull up to the bar. But the tray is the thing, and the tray comes to every table.
Somewhere in Ohio there's a farmer who has no idea any of this is happening.
Notes
Address: 3201 Cherry Hill Lane NW, Washington, DC
Reservations: OpenTable. Fifty seats, booked well out.
Opened: May 7, 2026
Format: À la carte, plus a $95 Chef's Table that does not include the steak. Cuts presented tableside with age, breed, marbling, and dry-aging detail.
The beef: 15+ small producers. Animals 30 months to 10 years. Dry-aged 28 to 60 days. Broiled, then finished over charcoal.
Chef:Ryan Ratino, five Michelin stars across six venues. Michelin Guide 2023 Young Chef Award, DC.
Group: Hive Hospitality, also behind Jônt, Bresca, MAASS, Ômo by Jônt, and The Press Club
Instagram: @oxandolive.dc
About the Author
Kelly Gomez is a creative director who eats well, travels far, and lives with intention. She has sat at tables that required months of planning, flown routes that cross a dozen time zones, and found herself in rooms most people never find. She is precise about what she loves and honest about what falls short.
A WSET Level 2 Wine Certified writer and Advanced Open Water Diver, Kelly covers luxury travel, hotels, fine dining, wineries, diving destinations, and the trips built around them.
Her work reaches a US-based audience of travelers between 25 and 44, with a near-even gender split and a meaningful following.
