Providence: A New Gem on H Street

Published: May 8, 2025

On a rainy, blustery night recently, Providencia was buzzing. Stashed away in an alley off H Street NE, inside it’s warm and inviting, lined with triangular terracotta bricks and centered around an unadorned poured concrete bartop framed by an illuminated backbar. Locals in twos and threes huddled around the narrow, intimate space, vibing to the R&B pumping through the sound system, chatting and laughing over cocktails.

Providencia is the brainchild of restaurateur Erik Bruner-Yang — chef-owner of H Street’s beloved Taiwanese-Cambodian joint Maketto — and ex-Maketto bartenders Pedro Tobar and Daniel Gonzalez. And from the towering baked Alaska (Dominican meringue atop cubed fruit, jellies, and shaved ice) to a cocktail of Little Hats and Fast Trains (Japanese whisky, tamarind, Angostura, soda, mazapán espuma), the menu draws playfully from its creators’ Taiwanese, Dominican Republic and Salvadoran backgrounds.

It’s the ideal hideaway — and one of the latest additions to what’s once again becoming one of D.C.’s most magnetic dining districts.

“I had no intention to open a new place, but the space in the alley was available and I drive or walk by it every day,” Bruner-Yang says of his latest venture. “I just knew if someone else opened a bar here, I would have super FOMO — like, man, what a cute idea. So, we just did it and we’ve slowly been growing into it.”

As they grow, so does the neighborhood, an eclectic mix of cutting-edge restaurants, dive bars, old standards, fast food joints, sneaker shops, corner stores, and cafes. Without a central Metro stop, it’s a bit inaccessible compared to D.C.’s other entertainment districts. But in its isolation, locals have managed to nurture a strong community feel, leaning on nearby support while also becoming a destination for diners around the DMV and beyond.

And thanks to pioneering entrepreneurs like Bruner-Yang, H Street’s bar and restaurant scene seems to be turning another leaf, drawing a new crop of ambitious restaurateurs that have stayed true to the neighborhood’s spirit.

H Street, much like the rest of D.C., has gone through a series of ebbs and flows since its initial inception as Swampdoodle, a small settlement formed in the mid-19th century. A railroad brought commerce to the area just a few decades later, ushering in the city’s first Sears Roebuck department store among other shopping and dining destinations. Later came post-World War II suburbanization, the dwindling local population launching a skid that continued as the 1968 riots left the area reeling in their wake.

By the early 2000s, a generation of new businesses — drawn by a community revitalization initiative, courtesy of the D.C. Office of Planning — had set up shop along the corridor, breathing new life into the thoroughfare that had laid neglected for decades. Suddenly there was nightlife by way of the Atlas Theater (then a cinema, now a performing arts space), the now-shuttered Rock and Roll Hotel, and countless bars and restaurants, a few of which remain today. The ensuing period of gentrification was so swift and profound, in fact, that Forbes named H Street NE the sixth-most “hipster place” in America in late 2012.

"This is one of D.C.’s oldest and most historic neighborhoods, and we would love to see it shine once again." — Silvan Kraemer and David Fritsche, co-owners of Stable

Of course, things change. COVID rocked the corridor, putting an end to after-dark staples like Rock and Roll Hotel, impacting economic growth, and causing some businesses to flee once their 10-year leases — signed during the area’s 2010s boom — expired. Yet a core group of places have remained, managing by the skin of their teeth to survive the virus’s economic toll and, eventually, serve as beacons to yet another wave of revitalization.

“We’ve been here for eight years running. We wanted to invest in a location that would grow and evolve with us, so H Street was the natural pick,” explain Silvan Kraemer and David Fritsche, co-owners of H Street mainstay Stable. “We’ve had to work really hard to bring people out amongst the shifting landscape of closures, the aftereffects of the pandemic, and beyond.
This is one of D.C.’s oldest and most historic neighborhoods, and we would love to see it shine once again.”

“The majority of the restaurants here cater to the neighborhood,” says Paolo Dungca, chef-owner of H Street Filipino hubs KAYU and Hiraya, which opened in 2023. “We’re still working towards building a reputation because we’re still technically kind of new. People representing H Street to the level of drawing a crowd would be Daru, Maketto, Toki Underground. We want people to be aware that they can have different cultural foods here — like Maketto is Taiwanese and Cambodian, Daru is Indian, Toki is Japanese, Cane is Caribbean, and we’re Filipino. You have different offerings compared to other neighborhoods out there.”

Today’s H Street is still a shifting landscape. Each block on H Street has a different flavor, a place where stately marble banks with graffitied walls and fast-food joints occupy one corner while Whole Foods, Orange Theory, and a Casper mattress store look on from the next. And it’s exactly that hodgepodge, makeshift identity that keeps restaurateurs coming back year after year, ebb after ebb.