Pascual | Washington, D.C.
With the recently opened Pascual, Chef Isabel Coss and her husband Matt Conroy celebrate contemporary Mexican cuisine with smoky dishes and drinks from the wood-fired grill.
My last time dining at a restaurant in the Popal Group, Lutèce, I had just graduated college hours before. My future — even for that summer — was all but unknown. Yet restaurants like Lutèce affirmed one thing: Willing to start from the bottom, I wanted to land a job in the hospitality industry with my mind set on one day designing, opening, and operating restaurants and hotels of my own.
Back in New York City several days later, I trailed at Gramercy Tavern, renowned restaurateur Danny Meyer’s iconic Michelin-star restaurant in Manhattan’s Gramercy Park. I landed a Front of House position as a Host and Support. In early October, I’ll be rounding out my fourth month at GT, slowly yet surely moving my way up the ranks.
With close friends still at Georgetown for their final year, I paid a visit to Georgetown last weekend, stopping by each of the campus’s familiar haunts from The Tombs, the college bar, to the HFSC, where hours upon hours of my undergraduate career were spent studying (and many more not studying). Even in the short time since I graduated, I sensed I was now looking at Georgetown from outside the Bubble, familiar with the colors and shapes within, but aware — perhaps for the first time — of its decided presence.
I had another place I was keen to visit: Pascual.
Opened in February 2024, Pascual is the latest of the Popal Group’s restaurants. Pascual is headed by Chef Isabel Coss, the pastry chef at Lutèce, and her husband Matt Conroy, the Chef-Partner at Lutèce. Pascual, named after San Pasqual, the patron saint of cooks and kitchens, celebrates Mexican cuisine from across the region.
I snagged a Monday night reservation for my best friend Hannah and I on my last night in D.C.
Upon entering the cozy oasis, Hannah and I were off to the races:
We primed our pallets with the nixtamalized figs — a decidedly smoky, creamy dish. We were in for a treat with the glazed hamachi collar, served with salsa Veneno, Thai basil, and lime. Serve any dish with Thai basil and lime and I’ll be there! Like the figs, the smokiness of the hamachi carried the dish.
With our next course, we moved to the chanterelle tlayuda — an heirloom tortilla decorated with mole, corn, chanterelle mushrooms, and, my personal favorite, squash blossoms. The crispiness of the tortilla (the wood-fired grill is working overtime here at Pascual!) coupled with the oh-so-soft chanterelle mushrooms and squash blossoms is a treat to eat. A must try. For the main event, we split the perfectly smoked half chicken with fried rice, salsa morita, and spring onions.
What I loved about Pascual was the breadth and depth of the chef’s celebration of Mexican cuisine. Though I know this is ignorant (although I suspect I’m in good company), I often associated Mexican cuisine with a handful of simple dishes and ingredients (al pastor tacos, salsa verdes, tamales). Coss and Conroy demonstrate just how wrong that assumption is: Mexican cuisine is far and wide. Thai basil?! Squash blossoms?! Figs?!
Though our stomachs had little room to spare, we finished our meal with the dark chocolate ganache with blackberry, mezcal, and pasilla meringue. Our server brought us a gift from the bar, a pour of Xila “It’s Spicy Rico,” a dare-I-say smoky aperitif from Mexico with notes of hibiscus and cloves.
A last story for you: Before leaving, I walked to the pastel-toned, spa-like bathroom in the restaurant downstairs. Like Lutèce, the bathroom’s décor certainly drew my eye — the Popals sure know how to design a good bathroom — but what really caught my eye was a blown-up poster of the July 2024 Food & Wine cover resting against the back wall. Earlier that summer, Food & Wine had run a 16-page spread on Gramercy Tavern in that same issue to celebrate the restaurant’s 30th anniversary, calling it a “great American restaurant.” Ever since, the magazine, with its cover of a fish taco, had been sitting on my kitchen counter. It turns out the crispy fish taco was Coss’s crispy fish taco from Pascual!
And so it seems that the invisible — and not-so-invisible — strings have begun to connect: two restaurants I know and love share a prominent spot in a top culinary magazine.
Pascual is open for dinner from 5 to 9 on Thursday, Sunday, and Monday, and from 5 to 9:30 on Friday and Saturday. The restaurant is located at 732 Maryland Ave NE, Washington, DC 20002. Make a reservation through Resy here.