Best Eggplant Parm in Washington, DC

Eggplant parm in Washington, DC: our top picks

Washington never grew a Little Italy on the scale of Baltimore’s or Philadelphia’s. By 1913 the city had about 3,000 Italian immigrants, many in row houses near Judiciary Square, and that year they got their own parish, Holy Rosary, which still stands on Third Street NW and runs the Casa Italiana cultural center. The houses around it went long ago to downtown real estate, so the old community’s surest survivor is a grocery: A. Litteri, opened in 1926 by the Sicilian immigrant Antonio Litteri and in the same Morse Street NE building near Union Market since 1932.

That Litteri lineage runs straight to Capitol Hill. Nostra Cucina, a small room on D Street NE, comes from the Joya family, who worked at Litteri for years before opening their own place in 2019; the sauces, pizza dough and pasta are made from scratch. Across the Hill, Caruso’s Grocery has played the red-sauce part straight since 2021, with a menu chef Matt Adler built from his father’s old restaurant in upstate New York, and Washingtonian has singled out its "expertly fried chicken parm."

Elsewhere the parm comes in very different rooms. Filomena has been below street level on the C&O Canal in Georgetown since 1983, with its Pasta Mamas rolling dough in the storefront window. RPM Italian, from Chicago’s Lettuce Entertain You and Bill and Giuliana Rancic, opened in Mount Vernon Triangle in 2016 and makes more than a dozen pastas in-house every day. And Pines of Florence, a scrappy veteran that once held down Connecticut Avenue and carried on in Arlington, came back to the District on M Street NW in late 2023, proof that a Washington red-sauce room can cross the river and still find its way home.

1. RPM Italian (Washington) — Parm Score 85. Eggplant parm comes up in 1 of the recent Google reviews we sampled, and the tone is positive. It is on the menu, too. 4.7 on Google across 5,891 reviews.
2. Matera Italian Restaurant & Bar (Washington) — Parm Score 68. Eggplant parm comes up in 1 of the recent Google reviews we sampled, and the tone is positive. 4.5 on Google across 180 reviews.
3. Nostra Cucina (Washington) — Parm Score 68. Eggplant parm is on the restaurant’s own menu (checked November 2026). 4.5 on Google across 446 reviews.

We ranked 3 restaurants within 10 miles of Washington, DC. 3 of them have the parm confirmed, by reviewers or on their own menu, and Parm Scores run from 68 to 85. Only places where reviews or the menu confirm the eggplant parm are listed. How Parm Score works.

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