Flavio

Flavio at 1073 31st Street NW occupies a position in Georgetown’s Italian restaurant landscape at the 31st Street block south of M Street, in the section of the neighborhood that has the canal and the residential Georgetown fabric rather than the main commercial corridor. The Italian restaurant format at this address serves the evening and weekend dining population that the 31st Street and canal-area residential blocks generate.

The Italian aperitivo tradition, which Flavio incorporates into the early evening service, is the pre-dinner drinking culture that northern Italian cities developed and that the Campari and Aperol spritz culture made internationally visible. The aperitivo hour, typically from the late afternoon through the dinner service beginning, involves bitter liqueurs, sparkling wine, and the small food offerings that the bar provides to encourage the drinking to continue until the dinner table is ready. The Aperol spritz, the Campari and soda, and the Negroni are the canonical aperitivo cocktails; Flavio’s bar program provides these alongside the Italian wine selection.

The pasta program at Flavio serves the same function that fresh pasta serves at any Georgetown Italian restaurant: it provides the product that distinguishes the kitchen from the delivery pizza and the chain Italian restaurant. A handmade pasta at a restaurant like Flavio represents the kitchen’s skill and ingredient commitment in the most direct way possible, because there is nowhere for the pasta maker to hide behind complicated sauces or elaborate presentations.

The 31st Street neighborhood, which includes Bar a Vin and Chez Billy Sud on the same block, has developed a dining character that the proximity of several quality restaurants produces. Flavio contributes the Italian perspective to a block that otherwise represents the French culinary tradition.

Hours run from dinner service Tuesday through Friday and from lunch through dinner on Saturday and Sunday. The Italian aperitivo hour that Flavio incorporates into its early evening service is the social ritual that the Campari and Aperol industries made international but that Italian cafe and bar culture developed from a pre-dinner drinking tradition that was practical as much as social: the bitter liqueur, which is the defining flavor of the aperitivo category, was originally consumed before dinner for its digestive stimulant properties. The Campari soda, the Aperol spritz, and the Negroni all share this bitter dimension. At Flavio’s 31st Street address, the aperitivo hour provides the transition from the working day to the dinner service that Italian social life organized around the pre-dinner drink. Hours run from dinner service Tuesday through Friday and from lunch through dinner Saturday and Sunday. The 31st Street dining block where Flavio operates is among Georgetown’s more concentrated restaurant addresses, with Bar a Vin and Chez Billy Sud on the same block providing the French wine bar and Provençal restaurant. The Italian and French dining options on 31st Street give the Georgetown customer a European dining block that is distinct from the more diverse M Street commercial strip.