Two of Washington, D.C.'s most decorated restaurants are about to try something rare for the fine-dining world: letting guests decide what their meal is worth. On Wednesday, Aug. 26, Navy Yard's Albi and Shaw's Oyster Oyster will open their dining rooms for Pay What You Can Day, serving their normal menus to anyone willing to walk in, regardless of what they can afford to pay.
The event is part of a global campaign that has ballooned from a modest 2025 gathering of 20 Mexico City restaurants into a movement spanning more than 100 restaurants across 13-plus countries, according to Axios. Reservations for Aug. 26 are now open at both D.C. spots, and the campaign traces its roots to Mexico City chefs Norma Listman and Saqib Keval, who run the restaurant Masala y Maíz, per the same report. The idea itself began even earlier: Listman and Keval first tested their “Paga Lo Que Puedas” model at Masala y Maíz after a 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck Mexico City on September 19, 2017, when the pair served hot meals to first responders before the restaurant had officially opened, according to The Oaklandside.
Two of D.C.'s Most Celebrated Kitchens Sign On
Albi, chef Michael Rafidi's Levantine restaurant in Navy Yard, will serve its regular à la carte menu that day rather than a stripped-down version, the Axios report notes. The restaurant has had a banner year: it became the first restaurant outside New York City to earn a four-star rating from The New York Times in June, and Washingtonian named it D.C.'s number-one restaurant in 2026, both according to Washingtonian. Rafidi also won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef in 2024, an honor he used at the ceremony to dedicate the award to Palestine, drawing on his family's heritage in Ramallah, where his maternal grandparents lived before immigrating to the U.S. in 1948, as reported by The Forward.
Across town in Shaw, Oyster Oyster will offer its summer tasting menu, which typically runs about $75 per person, the same Axios account states. Chef Rob Rubba's plant-centric tasting room won the James Beard Outstanding Chef award in 2023 and holds both a Michelin Star and a Michelin Green Star for sustainability, a distinction tied in part to details like its menus printed with embedded flower seeds that diners can take home and plant, according to DCist. Under the campaign's rules, drinks at both restaurants will still be charged at their usual prices, with only the food itself open to whatever guests choose to pay, per Axios.
An Odd Overlap With Restaurant Week
The timing lands squarely inside Metropolitan Washington Summer Restaurant Week, which runs Aug. 24-30 and offers fixed multi-course meals priced from $25 for lunch up to $65 for dinner across the region, according to the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington. Rubba told Axios that Restaurant Week often feels like the same playbook year after year, and he said Pay What You Can Day instead gives restaurants a chance to show their personality and creates an opportunity for anyone to enjoy the restaurant for a day. Organizers say participating restaurants often bring in roughly as much revenue on Pay What You Can Day as they would on a normal day, per Axios reporting from author Anna Spiegel.
A Rough Stretch for D.C. Dining Rooms
The gesture arrives as D.C.'s restaurant industry weathers real strain. Federal layoffs and the government shutdown have hit restaurants hard, Axios reports, part of a broader squeeze that saw the District record 102 restaurant closures in 2025, more than double the number seen in 2022, driven by federal layoffs, reduced dining frequency and rising operational costs, according to an industry report cited by FOX 5 DC. The D.C. Council responded last year by voting to pause a scheduled increase in the tipped minimum wage under Initiative 82, while Mayor Muriel Bowser proposed repealing the ballot measure entirely in her FY 2026 budget, per coverage of the labor-cost fight.
Pay-what-you-can dining has traditionally lived in the world of nonprofit community cafes, mobile food pantries and shelter kitchens, making its adoption by Michelin-recognized fine dining a notable departure, as KQED has noted. Under the campaign's model, launched in 2020, diners at participating restaurants decide for themselves what they can pay for a meal, while staff still serve their regular food and regular hospitality no matter what ends up on the check, according to Axios. New York's Michelin-recognized Kabawa and HAGS are also taking part this year, joining Albi and Oyster Oyster among the more than 100 restaurants worldwide observing the day, per the campaign's own account reported by BroadwayWorld.
Whether the model can hold up in a city already reeling from closures and layoffs is an open question, but for one day at least, two of D.C.'s toughest reservations will be open to whatever a guest can put down. Reservations for Aug. 26 are open now at both Albi and Oyster Oyster.
