Professional eaters tend to give a lot of weight to the more rarified dining destinations when debating the quality of a city’s restaurant scene: the places where the chefs have labored for Michelin stars, the kitchens that define themselves by their connections to surrounding farms and local waterways, and the establishments where you’re greeted at the door by gracious hosts who hand you a book-length wine list.

This approach has merits, but not many, not the least of which is that it favors people with more disposable income. But it also leads to the more modest immigrant restaurants that expand a city’s palate and frequently give neighborhoods their caché, being ignored. It short-changes the lesser-named chefs, the ones without press agents, who put as much thought into their restaurants as the folks who invest in mixologists and custom-made plates. It ignores the strip-mall and taqueria chefs or even, say, a bartender-turned-chef who studied and experimented and decided to try his hand at cooking, to great effect.

These are the places that, to my way of thinking, give a dining scene its character. They’re the places that don’t necessarily attract tourists but, instead, entice the locals to eat there, time and again.

Below are 10 of my current favorite places to eat in Washington. You may have never heard of any of them, but they’re as worthy of your time and attention as any restaurant operated under the name of José Andrés or Aaron Silverman.