If there’s one thing Washington insiders can agree on, it’s that bipartisanship is dead in the nation’s capital. The one exception may be a casual Italian restaurant called Ama.
The House minority leader, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, has been spotted there on several occasions, as have his fellow Democrats Chellie Pingree, a representative from Maine, and Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey. From the Republican side, the Food and Drug Administration commissioner, Dr. Marty Makary, has eaten there. So has President Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, Dr. Casey Means, who lauded Ama as a “must try” restaurant in her “Good Energy” newsletter.
Vani Hari, a rising figure in the Make America Healthy Again movement who calls herself the Food Babe, said that on her way into town, she sometimes directs her Uber driver to go to Ama straight from the airport.
Ama’s crossover appeal is a notable anomaly in a city where even the choice of a lunch or dinner spot has become highly politicized.
These days, Democratic power players favor the Italian restaurant Centrolina, a favorite of Kamala Harris. Butterworth’s, a new French bistro on Capitol Hill, is a see-and-be-seen destination for Trump loyalists who indulge in caviar bumps and beef-tallow fries. The Executive Branch, a members-only club co-founded by Donald Trump Jr., opened in June.
A bipartisan hot spot was not quite what Ama’s chef and co-owner, Johanna Hellrigl, had in mind when it opened last July within sight of the Capitol in the busy Navy Yard neighborhood, where many members of Congress and their staffers have apartments. Eight years in the making, Ama is a passion project to create what she calls a restaurant free of toxicity — in the food, the water and even the cleaning supplies.
In the process, Ama has created a detoxified political zone, uniting traditionally progressive ideals like locally grown food and organic farming with some key goals of the MAHA movement, like eliminating artificial dyes, seed oils and refined sugars. It’s a restaurant where each camp can see its own values projected on the plate, even if they don’t necessarily interact with each other.
“I set out to create a restaurant rooted in love,” Ms. Hellrigl said. “For your health. For my staff. For everything. I just didn’t realize what my restaurant being four blocks from the Capitol would mean.”
At first glance, Ama (a form of the Italian verb for love) looks like many a modern restaurant. The airy space has vintage Art-Nouveau posters and a long bar that opens onto the street. Open all day, it serves Italian coffee, cups of bone broth and housemade focaccia through lunch, and cocktails and generous plates of pasta to the after-work crowd. A private room has become a popular destination for political meetings of all stripes.
Less visible are the unusual, and expensive, measures Ms. Hellrigl has taken to realize her vision. Ama has a $30,000 catalytic carbon filtration system to remove contaminants while retaining essential minerals in the water served to guests, as well as that used for cooking and cleaning. She has banished single-use plastics, with the help of custom-designed stainless-steel food storage containers, beeswax wrap, and paper coffee cups that can biodegrade within 180 days. To wipe down surfaces, Ama uses ozonated water as a disinfectant instead of bleach.
Jocelyn Lyle, executive vice president of mission and partnerships at the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, said businesses often seek her help in figuring out what sustainability choices will make the biggest impact. “E.W.G.’s approach is that you don’t have to do everything,” she said. “But Johanna decided to do it all at once.”
In the kitchen, Ms. Hellrigl uses no refined sugars, or seed oils (which the MAHA movement has vilified without evidence, according to most scientists). The bar, overseen by her husband and business partner, Micah Wilder, excludes liquors with artificial dyes, including the popular, day-glo-orange aperitif Aperol (though many people would consider any alcoholic beverage toxic).
It makes sense that diners who care deeply about sustainability or follow alternative diets would find their way to Ama. But until recently, that group didn’t often include Washington’s political class. Even during the years when Michelle Obama crusaded for healthy, local food by planting an organic garden on the White House lawn, most movers and shakers still vied for tables at Cafe Milano in Georgetown or Tosca downtown. The scene, not the food, was what mattered.
Back then, if the good-food movement penetrated Capitol Hill at all, it was largely at the liberal end of the table, with conservative influencers like Rush Limbaugh mocking a nanny state run amok. As MAHA adherents come to power, Ama offers a high-profile setting where they can publicly telegraph their views about food.
“People who have come to work at H.H.S. or U.S.D.A. are talking about no additives, better grains, seed oils — even if they don’t believe it and are eating Doritos in their cars,” said Katherine Miller, a Democratic food policy consultant. “They want to go somewhere that reflects that.”
She said Ama’s intersection of old- and new-guard food philosophies also appeals to her clients who are trying to transcend partisanship: “If I have to get a Republican together with a Democrat anywhere in the city, it’s most likely going to be Ama.”
Many have already found their way there. Calley Means, an adviser to the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (and brother of Dr. Means), said he dines at Ama regularly. He praised Ms. Hellrigl’s pasture-raised meats and the regionally grown grains she uses for her from-scratch pastas.
“It’s a very positive place, and has grown a great following among those that are working on a MAHA agenda,” he said.
Ms. Pingree, the Democratic congresswoman from Maine, visited Ama shortly after it opened and was thrilled by its support for regenerative agriculture, buying locally and avoiding food waste, causes she has long championed.
She also felt at home. At the steakhouse Capital Grille, she said. “you can find any Republican there any night of the week. That becomes a place where I’m not sure I’d be welcome. You don’t have that feeling at Ama.”
Ms. Hellrigl grew up in the business. Her father, Andreas, was the chef at Palio, a Midtown Manhattan restaurant beloved for its vibrant mural of the famous Tuscan horse race for which it was named. There, he served dishes, like ravioli stuffed with goose liver and duck, from his home region Alto Adige, in Italy near the Austrian border.
At age 61, when Johanna was just 4, he died of pancreatic cancer. Looking back, Ms. Hellrigl attributes his illness to “metabolic problems” inherent to his life as a chef. Growing up, she spent late nights in the Palio kitchen, sometimes sleeping on two chairs pushed together in her mother’s office. She vowed never to enter the family business.
Ms. Hellrigl studied international affairs, then took a job with a nonprofit that worked around the globe to help women achieve roles in political leadership. But the kitchen soon called her back. In 2015, she cashed in her retirement savings to train as a professional chef. It was a high point of the farm-to-table era, and that ethos echoed the way she’d eaten while growing up in an Italian American home.
The birth of her son, in 2021, solidified her vision of a toxin-free restaurant. Ms. Hellrigl had a traumatic 92-hour labor that resulted in a C-section, and a difficult recovery in which she felt doctors dismissed her symptoms. She began to see a functional medicine doctor, who she says helped her to get to the root of the problem: a compromised immune system and a microbiome that had been depleted by five rounds of antibiotics and surgery.
Her improving health persuaded her to dive deeper into metabolic health. She read “Good Energy,” the best-selling book on the topic by Casey and Calley Means. She obtained a certification from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, a New York school that trains health coaches.
“All of these experiences helped me realize what truly matters — that I could create a restaurant that supports both planetary and human health,” she said.
That Ama has attracted so many politicians and elected officials is both a victory and a source of deep anxiety for Ms. Hellrigl. On the one hand, the morning stream of badge-wearing staffers who stop for coffee on their way to work has helped at a perilous economic moment in Washington, when many federal workers are losing, or fear losing, their jobs.
On the other hand, in a sharply divided city, political associations of any kind can have consequences. Protesters regularly show up outside Butterworth’s, ringing bells and holding signs with slogans like “MAGA is Un-American.” In March, the prominent chef Matt Baker faced a social media backlash in this overwhelmingly Democratic city, and a scolding from his hotel partner, after posting pro-Trump messages on X.
“It’s an unfortunate worry for restaurant owners when everything becomes partisan,” said Ms. Lyle of the Environmental Working Group. “That’s not the restaurant’s purpose, but it’s what happens when you live in a political environment like D.C.”
In an interview, Ms. Hellrigl expressed concern that an article that mentioned a prominent Democrat or Republican dining at Ama might create trouble.
But she can’t resist taking advantage of the moment. She has been quietly reaching out to regulars on both sides of the political aisle to see if Ama might host a dinner that provides Democrats and Republicans an opportunity to find common ground. The response has been positive, she said. Even in Washington, it seems, people are craving connection.
“I come from the Texas Legislature, and it’s just as partisan as it is up here,” said Representative Julie Johnson, a Democrat. “But we had a culture where we had cocktails and meals together, and that really helped move the needle.”
Ms. Johnson wishes there were more ways for members of Congress to purposefully dine together in Washington. “For now, if we unintentionally dine together at Ama, that’s the next best thing.”
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