Lindsay DiSalvo, the assistant general manager at Metropolitan Hospitality Group, which operates several restaurants in the Washington region, recently spent one of her rare days off poring through the résumés of 15 applicants for a coming venture without finding anyone suitable. “I was freaking out,” she said.

The more experienced workers, she said, are attracted to the increasing number of Washington restaurants with high-profile chefs, leaving midlevel establishments like hers struggling with inexperienced and often fickle help. One woman seeking a position at the bar, she said, “could not name a single varietal of wine.”

Mr. Albisu said pride long ago succumbed to desperation. “I can name two dozen people who left my company to start a new place who came back looking for their old jobs back,” he said. “In the old days we would say, ‘Hell, no.’ Now we say, ‘Sure.’ We chefs call each other and say: ‘Have you fired anyone we can repurpose? I know he can’t plate, but maybe he can just grill.’”

Chris Floyd, the owner of Capital Restaurant Resources, a recruitment firm, said a central problem is that Washington does not naturally attract people interested in food. “People don’t come here for restaurant careers,” he said. “They came here to be in government or go to grad school or be lawyers. The population hasn’t caught up with the demand in the hospitality industry.”

So chefs and restaurant owners are casting their recruitment nets more widely.

“What we need to start doing better than ever is breaking down the stereotypes of who typically gets these jobs,” Mr. Meyer, the founder of Union Square Hospitality Group, said during a recent panel discussion in Washington. “We are holding job fairs right now with organizations we were not even thinking about five years ago,” he said, including those that assist people with learning disabilities, older workers and former prisoners.

Many Washington restaurateurs turn to D.C. Central Kitchen, which trains ex-prisoners, the formerly homeless and recovering addicts. In the past two years, 87 percent of its 177 graduates found jobs, said Alexander Justice Moore, the organization’s chief development officer.