Plenty of restaurants claim to offer a transportive experience. Usually, I roll my eyes, but sometimes you stumble upon a portal to another place. When you ascend the stairs to Qui Qui in Shaw, you’re on an island for the next couple of hours. You wouldn’t know it from the view outside, but there’s a raucous Puerto Rican party up here four nights a week.
Salsa singers and reggaeton rappers belt out hits through a speaker propped up on a stack of Medalla beer boxes. Pastel colors splash across the dining room, with touches of aquamarine and coral paint that match the surface of nearby plates. Don Q rum bottles hold tap water for the table.
From the sidewalk of Seventh Street NW, though, the only clue to the vibrant atmosphere in the second-story space housed above neighborhood cocktail bar the Passenger is a Puerto Rican flag hanging in the window of the brick building.
Although you may not be able to get in without a reservation, “some people are like … ‘It’s D.C.’s best-kept secret,’” said chef Ismael Mendez, who has kept the restaurant running steady since taking over the space from the late, witch-themed bar Hex in 2021.
Did I mention the food is fantastic? Mendez, 50, serves Caribbean comfort food with a flair befitting his fine-dining chops; the New Jersey native, with a Mexican mother and Puerto Rican father, studied at L’Academie de Cuisine before cooking at coastal Italian hot spot Masseria, working at the locavore kitchen A Rake’s Progress inside the Line hotel and helping open South American-themed Mercy Me in the West End.
The sazón is strong with this one: Mendez’s kitchen exhibits a powerful (but never overbearing) hand with salt, fat and acid. Progressing from passion fruit margaritas to fried bites of blood sausage to a flan draped in burnt caramel guava sauce, every section of the frequently changing menu deserves a taste. You’ll want to make room for it all.
Exhibit A: the chuleta kan kan, a two-pound pork chop-chicharrón hybrid claimed to have been invented in the late 1950s by La Guardarraya, a criollo restaurant in southwest Puerto Rico. This beautiful beast includes three sections of pig: A skin-on, bone-in loin chop remains attached to the rib and pork belly. Much of the white pork fat that often gets trimmed away is scored into square blocks, giving the specialty its distinctive “mohawk.”
Mendez’s team marinates the hunks of meat for three days, then deep-fries them to order and serves them on a curvy white platter with smashed, fried plantains and a small metal caldera of white rice and pink beans. If you’re sitting at a narrow high-top for two, you’ll need a bigger table.
Sourced from a small farm in Virginia, the generous portion of pork is a study in contrasts. The skin on the edge of the chop’s haircut resists your molars with an audible crunch, but there’s plenty of give in the loin, and cubes of belly practically melt in your mouth.
Counteracting all that fat is an aji criollo, a thick green sauce of garlic, peppers and herbs that thrums with lime juice and vinegar. Coupled with pickled red onions and scattered cilantro leaves, the aji lifts your palate up.
In search of another puckering presence to stand up to fried pork? Go for the Parchita cocktail, a blend of tequila, lime juice and passion fruit liqueur with a tangy Tajin rim. The Mexican-Borinquen theme repeats in a passion fruit tres leches cake that turns cuatro with the addition of coconut milk.
While the restaurant’s name is an onomatopoeic reference to pigs — Qui Qui was also a shared nickname between Mendez and a late cousin — the chef knows his cosmopolitan audience hungers for meat-free dishes.
I’m shocked to learn his soulful stewed beans are vegan. You can thank the foundation of most dishes here — a sofrito built on garlic, cilantro, culantro and aji dulce peppers grown by Moon Valley Farm in Woodsboro, Md. There’s no Goya sofrito here; the kitchen prepares around 32 quarts of the fresh stuff a week. If you feel like tapping your watch while waiting for the next course to come out, keep that type of effort in mind.
More good news for vegetarians: Qui Qui offers the expected roast pork pernil, but also a jackfruit version. The mofongo, a molded mash of pounded plantains, also starts out plant-based, so you can order it plain if you prefer. Pescatarians should opt for the shrimp version. Shellfish propped up on the plantain mash are surrounded by herbs and a heady broth dotted with green oil. The essence of shrimp is further concentrated in an asopao, traditionally a soup but here more of a brothy rice.
Mendez follows a mantra of “casual, not refined.” The technique is evident and the presentation pretty, but the chef doesn’t want the restaurant to feel stuffy. Still: Its accessibility shouldn’t prevent Qui Qui from taking its rightful place among other heralded restaurants in the area that produce polished Caribbean cooking, including St. James, Colada Shop and La Famosa.
“I’m just trying to bring our cuisine, I guess, for the world, as they say — para el mundo,” Mendez said. “It can compete with French culinary or Italian culinary or American culinary. We want, basically, a seat at the table.”
Qui Qui
1539 Seventh St. NW, 202-642-3179. quiquidc.com.
Hours: 5 to 9 p.m. Thursday, 5 to 10 p.m. Friday, noon to 3 p.m. and 5 to 10 p.m. Saturday, noon to 8 p.m. Sunday.
Nearest Metro: Shaw-Howard, about two blocks away.
Prices: $3.50 to $54.
