On a quiet Capitol Hill corner, where the institutional weight of government buildings gives way to rows of historic homes, Erin Gorman has opened a place she hopes feels less like a restaurant and more like an extension of the neighborhood itself.
She calls it Second Address (303 Massachusetts Ave. NE).
The name carries layered meaning. It nods to a Turkish expression from her husband’s family, the idea of a place that is not quite home, but where you spend so much time it becomes something like one.
It also reflects a more local sensibility, rooted in history and geography. Gorman’s teenaged daughter, a self-described history enthusiast, drew a connection to Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, delivered at a moment when the country was grappling with how to come together after division. The idea stuck with Gorman as it gave multiple senses to the space and the name.
For Gorman, who has lived on Capitol Hill for about two decades, the concept is not abstract. She wanted to create a place where people could land between work and home, between errands and obligations, between the public and private rhythms that define life in this part of Washington.
“This is the other place [you] can go,” she said.
House with Many Rooms
From the sidewalk, Second Address reads as a modest café. Step inside, and the perception shifts with every step up the stairs.
The ground floor is a coffee bar and kitchen: quick, efficient, designed for the morning rush. Neighbors stop in for a cup of coffee or pastry to go, or a simple breakfast before heading to work. The building opens upward, each level offering a different way to inhabit the space.
Upstairs, the second-floor dining room hosts breakfast and lunch service. It’s bright, understated, and flexible, set up for casual meals but equally suited to small group gatherings. Gorman has already seen a mix of uses: neighborhood meetups, visiting student groups, and informal business lunches.
The third floor is something else entirely: a quiet lounge, intentionally designed for people who need a place to work outside their homes. There’s no pressure to turn tables quickly, no background din of a dinner crowd. It’s closer to a library than a café, what Gorman describes as a “quiet car” for the neighborhood.
The concept reflects a shift in how Capitol Hill residents use public space. With more people working remotely, the need for informal, flexible environments has grown. Gorman has watched it happen in real time. “We’ve had quite a number of people come by and say, ‘I so need this,’” she said.
Menu Rooted in Experience
The food at Second Address mirrors the space: light, deliberate, and built around everyday rhythms rather than occasion dining.
Gorman brings a long, if unconventional, background to the kitchen. She has worked in the coffee industry and run a chocolate company focused on relationships with cocoa farmers. She and her husband also spent years farming in Southern Maryland, raising animals and growing food while maintaining their home on the Hill.
That experience shapes the menu in ways both obvious and subtle. There is an emphasis on ingredients, especially produce and eggs, sourced as directly as possible from farms. Many items come through the Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative, known for its network of small-scale growers and pasture-raised livestock.
Recipes are simple, prioritizing ingredients over intervention. “I didn’t want to get in the way of them,” Gorman said of the produce.
The result is a menu that leans toward vegetables, seasonal combinations, and simple presentations. Breakfast and lunch dominate: scrambled eggs, omelets, fresh berries, French toast, and sandwiches designed to feel substantial without being heavy.
Meat is present but not central, reflecting both Gorman’s farming background and culinary influences from Turkish cuisine. Gorman says Turkish meals often prioritize vegetables, grains, and seasonal eating patterns over large portions of protein.
It’s a menu that feels calibrated to the light rhythms of spring, something you can return to multiple times a week and still discover something new each occasion.
Tea, Too
If coffee anchors the morning crowd, tea is equally important here. Gorman describes herself as a devoted tea drinker, and Second Address reflects a gap she noticed in the neighborhood. For years, finding high-quality tea meant leaving Capitol Hill entirely.
That absence is addressed through a robust tea program built around Rishi Tea, a supplier known for direct sourcing and organic practices. The selection is broad but curated, offering an alternative to the standard coffee-centric café experience.
Designed with Intention
The interior design reinforces the restaurant’s ethos of connection to place, to materials, and to people. On the ground floor, handcrafted willow art hangings, made by an Ohio farmer who grows and weaves the material himself, bring a tactile, almost sculptural quality to the space. The choice is not incidental. It reflects Gorman’s interest in bridging the gap between producers and consumers, even in the physical environment of the restaurant.
Upstairs, the dining room is simple and adaptable, with arrangements that can shift to accommodate larger groups. A rear section can host gatherings of up to 20 people, offering a semi-private setting without the formality or cost of a dedicated private room. It’s first-come, first-served, Gorman said.
Outside lighting echoes the “Washington Globe” aesthetic common on Capitol Hill, scaled to fit the building and its daytime focus. The patio, modest but inviting, captures the neighborhood’s foot traffic —especially on weekends, when families and visitors move through the area.
Filling a Gap
Second Address is only open for breakfast and lunch, a deliberate choice.
“There’s a lot of places that do dinner, and they do really well,” Gorman said. But in this part of Capitol Hill, daytime options are more limited, she added. The restaurant fills that gap while aligning with Gorman’s own life. As a parent, she structured the business around hours that allow her to be home in the evening.
The decision also shapes the atmosphere, and Gorman did it with purpose. Without the turnover pressure of dinner service, the space feels slower, more flexible, closer to a community living room than a traditional restaurant.
Neighborhood Space
What could ultimately define Second Address is not its menu or its layout, but the way it is used.
Gorman is already experimenting with ways to bring people in beyond meals. She has been in conversation with Labyrinth Games & Puzzles about hosting Saturday afternoon events, something that could draw families looking for structured activities.
There is interest from book clubs, small groups, and residents seeking an informal gathering space. Some visitors come in twice a day, once with family, later alone, returning for quiet work or a moment of solitude.
“It’s not loud. Nobody’s going to bother you,” Gorman said. That quality, rare in a city where space (as other items) is often transactional, may be the restaurant’s strongest asset.
The Egg Test
Ask Gorman what she orders herself, and the answer is immediate: the omelet.
It’s not just preference, it’s expertise. Years of raising chickens on her own farm have made her exacting about eggs, down to the color of the yolk and what it signals about a hen’s diet and environment.
Pasture-raised eggs have a deep orange yolk and a richness that supermarket eggs lack, she explains. It’s a small detail, but one that reflects the broader philosophy behind the restaurant: pay attention to the fundamentals and let them speak. “I would eat it every day,” she said.
An “Other Place”
Standing on the sidewalk, it’s easy to miss what Second Address contains. From the outside, it reads as another neighborhood café. It’s pleasant, but the idea of a rowhouse converted to commercial use is by now familiar on the Hill. Step inside and the view unfolds quite differently, bottom to top.
There is a quick-stop coffee bar, dining room for lingering lunches, and the upstairs lounge for quiet work. There are families and freelancers, neighbors and visitors, all moving through the same building in different ways.
Gorman built it that way on purpose. She wanted a place that could hold multiple versions of daily life. It’s a morning stop, a meeting point, a retreat, a reset. All at one address. It’s not home, and while you can work there, it’s not quite the office, either. It’s something in between your living room, your office, and your favorite daytime coffee shop.
It’s your second address. Wait. It’s your Second Address.
Second Address, 303 Massachusetts Ave. NE, Tuesday – Sunday, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. www.secondaddressdc.com
