good food in National Mall area

For your aims, you picked a good hotel location -- good start. Given your transportation constraints and time frame, you probably want to stick to just a few neighborhoods. Were I in your shoes, I would keep it to: Capitol Hill (& Mall); U St Corridor & Logan Circle; Georgetown (which is an easy bus ride). Counting time in pursuit of meals, you might add Chinatown and Dupont Circle to that mix.

One of D.C.'s dirty secrets is that its fancy restaurants are almost exclusively mediocre. What the town does well is ethnic food. Within walking distance of the National Mall, the best places to eat food that isn't priced for expense accounts are in the nooks of Capitol Hill, mostly along the east and south portions of the neighborhood (as opposed to the west, which is closer to more office buildings). You should have a few good options in terms of Indian and Thai, among others.

For Ethiopian, Little Ethiopia and Georgetown both have good options. As for safety, the few blocks north of U St and east of about 16th St might not make you feel safe at night. If you get more than about a mile outside the Capitol into either NE or SE or SW, you also probably would not be safe -- but these probably aren't places you would seek out on a short trip. (NB: Old-timers do not consider U St corridor safe, but they are basing that on dated information.)

Between Dupont and U St neighborhood, just south of Adams Morgan, you can find some good Malaysian food on 18th St.

Jaleo is weaker than New York tapas i.e. Tia Pol et al, and Zaytinya is probably similar in quality -- but, much more so than with Jaleo, people go to Zaytinya for the scene rather than the food. Oyamel is the newer tapas place in D.C. that people talk about.

As for hidden gems: if a Chinese tea house called Ching Ching Cha still exists in Georgetown, then it is worth a visit. Also, Quick Pita is the best fast food in D.C., and they would deliver to your hotel. Opened by Lebanese (?) immigrants I think. (NB: The Georgetown location, the main one, is the one to use -- the lunch extension they have for businesspeople & bureaucrats in the Old Post Office is no good.)

Finally, a word about the monuments etc. The best ones in the Mall area are pretty clearly the Jefferson and Lincoln, plus the FDR and Vietnam. As for the Smithsonian, you should really try to do more than one of the museums. The National Gallery of Art has the best collection of Renaissance art outside of Europe. The West Wing is better than the East, but the East is a spectacular building with some treasures in it. No other Smithsonian museum matches these, but Air and Space and American History and Natural History are all justifiably tourist spots. The Native American Museum is interesting, and right in that neighborhood, though I haven't been since its first year, when its collections remained scant. The Botanical Gardens are nice. The Sackler and Freer are magnificent if you like African or Japanese art, respectively. Hirshorn Museum can be skipped on a quick trip, as can the Corcoran. Some people argue that The Holocaust Museum is the best in D.C. I have never been, and I cannot schedule it as easily now that I have morphed into a New Yorker, but I will quit making excuses later this spring when I make my bi-monthly family visit to Washington.

CityOfGlass in Washington DC & Baltimore Area