Image: Roasted Fennel with Romesco Sauce.
Last Updated: March 2022
Current Status: Open for dine-in. Tasting menu only.
Overview:
Xiquet occupies a three-story building in Glover Park, sharing the first floor with Slate Wine Bar. It uses all three levels through the course of the tasting menu experience. You being with amuse-bouche-like bites and an aperitivo at the first-floor bar. The heart of the meal is in the third-floor dining room where just a few tables look straight into a glass-enclosed kitchen. The meal concludes with petit fours and after-dinner drinks in the “mezzanine” lounge. From start to finish it is about fourteen courses and several hundred dollars. Along the way you are likely to have several bites that are sublime and be served by a slew of staff. As you descend the steps to leave, there is a good chance a wave of deep contentment will wash over you.
Chef/Owner Danny Lledó’s cooking is precise, balanced, and rooted in the cooking of his native Spain. The dishes are well-conceived to play various flavors and textures off each other. The cooking is serious more than playful, building on classics rather than embracing the avant-garde. Uni on brioche was about the most edgy dish. The dishes constantly reference Spain, from the cured tuna slices of mojama and orange juice-marianated olives that start the meal, to the romesco sauce under roasted fennel, to the Iberian pork version of Beef Wellington, all the way to the tribute to Valencian oranges as the last dessert course. It is a lot of dishes, but not so much food that you leave stuffed (but you definitely do want to come ready to eat – a big lunch would throw off the balance). There are a few add-on options – untried by us – that might push you over the top.
A wine pairing is available for the entire meal, but they also will pour half-glasses from the list without committing to the whole pairing or a bottle. The equally classic wine list mostly draws from Spain, France and California. The entire meal is a deeply satisfying experience that is like an exhibition of Impressionist painters. It is relaxing, comforting, delightful and, for those that savor the moment, an immersive treat.
Summary:
Cuisine: Spanish
Neighborhood: Georgetown
Address: 2404 Wisconsin Ave B, Washington, DC 20007
Website: https://www.xiquetdl.com/
Reservations: Tock
Other Critics/Voices:
Washington Post: Tom included it in a group review of new fine dining spots. “A parade of perfectly calibrated dishes that leave you wanting nothing more than perhaps another serving of red prawns from the coastal town of Denia — some of the most spectacular seafood ever to cross my lips.”
Washingtonian: Preview from 2020. Included on a comparison chart of new tasting menu spots in the 2022 restaurant issue.
DonRockwell.com – no thread yet
Michelin: One Star