Ron Tanaka of Cork.

Like Rodney Dangerfield, the D.C. dining scene doesn’t get a lot of respect. For years, the District was regarded as a second-class city when it came to restaurants. Fortunately, the last few years have seen great improvements to the reputation of D.C. dining, thanks in large part to chefs like Michel Richard, José Andrés, Eric Ziebold, Cathal Armstrong, and others who’ve brought a level of sophistication and imagination to local cooking that has allowed D.C. area restaurants to gain national recognition. Finally, it seems the District has arrived as a city with more than museums and monuments to draw tourists. Or so we thought.

Marian Burros, a former New York Times reporter and restaurant critic, wrote a piece for Politico that attempted to rank the ten best restaurants in Washington, just in time for all those inaugural visitors. But apparently there aren’t even 10 restaurants in D.C. she deems worth visiting, since her final list only came to eight. The article singles out staples of the area’s fine dining scene, like Citronelle, CityZen, Inn at Little Washington, Restaurant Eve, and D.C. outposts for celebrity chefs like Eric Ripert (West End Bistro) and Wolfgang Puck (The Source). Yawn.

She makes the typical New York complaint that D.C. restaurants simply don’t compare to those in Gotham, and apparently she had to do a lot of “digging” to find the eight she felt were worthy of praise. Beyond just claiming that the District lacks decent restaurants, she went a step further and decided to take a few swipes at some of the area’s celebrated spots. Art and Soul (the new restaurant by celebrity chef Art Smith) got knocked for being “too new” and having a celebrity chef that doesn’t spend much time in D.C., which is interesting since his fellow celebrity chefs, Ripert and Puck, don’t spend much time in Washington either.