Restaurants in Arlington may have to do some work to win the favor of The Washington Post’s new food critic.
Elazar Sontag, who moved to D.C. to replace longtime critic Tom Sietsema in late 2025, dined at 189 restaurants to compile a new ranking of the 40 best restaurants in the D.C. area. Not a single Arlington restaurant made his list — although in Falls Church, the Eden Center’s Truong Tien made a strong showing to rank as No. 10.
Sontag spoke highly of Truong Tien’s bun bo Hue — a beef-and-pork soup with a sweet lemongrass broth — along with the banh beo, steamed rice cakes with dried shrimp. And he left open the possibility of even more discoveries at the commercial center that serves as a hub of Northern Virginia’s Vietnamese community…