A halal smash burger chain that built its name in Baltimore and Riverdale Park has soft-opened its first Washington, D.C. location, setting up shop in a Georgetown storefront that has seen no shortage of turnover. Munchin Burger is now serving late-night smash burgers, chicken wings, and loaded fries at 3206 O Street NW, just off Wisconsin Avenue.
Halal food is a fit for a region with a measurable Muslim population, though the available estimate is imprecise: the Pew Research Center’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study puts the share of adults in the Washington metro area who identify as Muslim at 3%. Pew gives the metro estimate a margin of error of 4.9 percentage points, so it is a broad indicator rather than a precise head count. The figure offers regional context for a menu built around halal meat.
The soft opening was first reported by PoPville, which noted that the Georgetown spot sits inside a space that has previously housed Masala Street Indian Food, Pica Taco, GTown Bites, and, long before any of those, the neighborhood institution Georgetown Dinette. The Hyattsville Wire says Munchin Burger owner Saheb Singh planned to stay open later at the Riverdale Park location partly to accommodate University of Maryland students; the menu includes halal smash burgers, chicken wings, and loaded fries. The menu leans into regional flavor, too, with a Baltimore-themed burger topped with lump crab meat and Old Bay seasoning, and every protein on the menu, including the beef, chicken, and turkey bacon, is 100% halal.
From Baltimore Food Halls to a Georgetown Storefront
Munchin Burger didn't start out as a storefront operation. The Hyattsville Wire's reporting traces the brand's roots to Mount Vernon Marketplace in Baltimore, with a brief pop-up stint at R. House near Johns Hopkins University before the company pushed into Prince George's County and ultimately D.C. Before Georgetown, the chain opened a location in October 2024 at 4501 Woodberry Street in Riverdale Park, Maryland, positioned next to the Le Fantome Food Hall.
That expansion pattern now lands the brand on O Street NW, just off Wisconsin Avenue.
A Storefront With Three Decades of History
The building itself is about 100 years old. For years before any of the recent comings and goings, the address was home to Georgetown Dinette, a longtime neighborhood fixture that later closed.
The address’s history reaches far beyond its restaurant tenants. A historic survey for the Georgetown African American Historic Landmark Project identifies 3206 O Street as a former slave pen. In the 1910s, John Marshall acquired the property and other O Street parcels; the building later housed shoe shiners, hat blockers and cleaners, while his daughter Esther operated a beauty salon upstairs. Those earlier uses place the storefront within Georgetown’s layered Black history.
What followed was a stretch of short-lived tenants. The Georgetown Metropolitan's reporting lays out the sequence: GTown Bites, then Pica Taco in 2018, then Masala Street Indian Eatery in late 2021, each cycling through the space in the years after the Dinette's closure. Munchin Burger is now the latest operator betting it can make the O Street address stick.
Munchin Burger's D.C. Expansion
The Georgetown opening extends Munchin Burger's presence from Maryland into the District.
There's also an unexpected neighborhood footnote tied to the storefront's sidewalk. Per Eventbrite listings, the sidewalk directly in front of 3206 O Street NW serves as the designated meeting point for the History of Black Georgetown guided walking tour, which highlights historic African American landmarks throughout the neighborhood. It's a reminder that even a soft-opened burger counter sits on a block layered with its own local history.
