Chefs Patrick O’Connell and Eric Ziebold Win Top Honors in the AAA Diamond Awards

It was a good showing for the Washington area on the 2013 AAA list of the best hotels
and restaurants in the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, and Mexico. For the seventh
year in a row, chef
Eric Ziebold’s cooking at CityZen won the restaurant the highest honor, the Five Diamond Award,
the only DC restaurant to score five diamonds. CityZen is in the Mandarin Oriental
Hotel, which made the list as a Four Diamond Award winner. Another standout was chef

Patrick O’Connell and his Inn at Little Washington, in Washington, Virginia, which won Five Diamond
awards in the hotel and restaurant categories. The inn’s dining room has won the restaurant
Five Diamond Award for 25 consecutive years.

Other DC winners of Five Diamond Awards were three hotels, the Four Seasons, the Ritz-Carlton
Georgetown, and the Ritz-Carlton West End.

Four Diamond Award winners in the restaurant category include Adour, Bourbon Steak,
Komi, Marcel’s, and Westend Bistro in DC; Restaurant Eve in Alexandria; Volt in Frederick,
Maryland; and Sherwood’s Landing in St. Michaels.

Several of the winners appear on
The Washingtonian’s current list of 100 Very Best Restaurants; pick up a copy of the February issue,
on newsstands now, for the full results.

Carol Ross Joynt