The area’s restaurant scene continues to garner national attention and accolades for its quality and diversity.

Parkway Deli & Restaurant and Shalla Restaurant & Bar, both in Silver Spring, were featured in The Washington Post’s Fall Dining Guide for 2022.

Food critic Tom Sietsema wrote in his April review of Parkway Deli that, despite a few mistakes, the restaurant “still nails comfort”:

The menu brings together many desires covering breakfast, lunch and dinner. If you go for one dish, make it a chicken soup. Tender chunks of chicken pack the golden broth, lightly herbaceous and stuffed with a handful of carrots, celery, onions and egg noodles. (Matzoh balls are optional.) Every spoonful has the power of a hug. As for the sandwiches, the reuben hits the sweet spot with tangy sauerkraut, sweet Russian dressing and half a pound of finely shaved corned beef. The finest in baking is a slice of warm spiced carrot cake that can easily satisfy three forks.

The restaurant’s famous pickle bar returned in May after being closed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sietsema named the restaurant one of her 7 favorite places to eat right now in June.

Also included in the fall restaurant guide, Shalla Restaurant & Bar was named by Sietsema as one of its 7 favorite places to eat this August:

Clouds of incense, part of Shalla’s coffee ceremony, greeted me on my first visit to the restaurant that once housed groovy Jackie’s and where I splurged on an upgraded version of kitfo, Ethiopian steak tartare. The surface of the ground raw beef, glazed with butter infused with cardamom, mitmita and other spices, was carved with small red ripples. Likewise, wavy balls of homemade cottage cheese – one green with collard greens, another orange with cayenne pepper – helped fill the platter. Wedges of kocho, made with the grated and fermented root of the enset plant, a member of the banana family, accompanied raw beef and served as a starchy alternative to injera rolls.

Shalla Restaurant & Bar opened last year at 8081 Georgia Ave., the former location of the Balagger Lounge and Jackie’s Restaurant. Belete Weletaw, Mekonnen Eshete, both of Washington, DC, and Temesgen Gebeyehu, of Silver Spring’s Hillandale neighborhood, are the directors. According to Sietsema, Shalla was named after Lake Shala in south-central Ethiopia, where Gebeyehu was previously employed as a surveyor.

Photo: Parkway Deli/Facebook (h/t Silver Spring Urban Neighborhood)