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‘My passion’

Cilantro gives restaurateur outlet for authentic Mexican cuisine

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Gladys Fernandez, Cilantro Cocina De Mexico, Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, gay news, Washington Blade
Gladys Fernandez, Cilantro Cocina De Mexico, Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, gay news, Washington Blade

Gladys Fernandez says running Cilantro Cocina De Mexico in Rehoboth Beach is exhausting but worth the effort. (Washington Blade photo by Patrick Folliard)

Gladys Fernandez
Cilantro Cocina De Mexico
122A Rehoboth Ave.
Rehoboth Beach, Del.
302-226-1000
cilantrococinademexico.com

Opening a restaurant is tough anywhere. But making a go of it in Rehoboth Beach can be even harder. The rents are sky high and you have to make most of your money during the summer season.

But despite the downsides, Gladys Fernandez, owner and executive chef of Cilantro Cocina De Mexico, was up for the challenge. She was certain that the Delaware summer town needed what she had to offer. And now, after serving a steady stream of satisfied customers for just over two years, Fernandez is doubly confident that she made the right decision.

ā€œIā€™d eaten everywhere in Rehoboth and never encountered the kind of refined, really fresh authentic Mexican cuisine that is my passion,ā€ says Fernandez, a former Arlington resident. ā€œI just knew that if I could find a good spot with some street traffic, the people would come.ā€

And find she did. Located in the center of town on the south side of busy main drag Rehoboth Avenue, Cilantro (named for the lacey herb used in many Mexican dishes) is housed in a homey green storefront with inviting front and back patios (the back patio with its fairy lights, flowering plants and candle light sconces is especially charming). The inside ā€” divided into dining room, bar and lounge area ā€” is colorful and tastefully decorated with Mexican folkloric art.

ā€œIt didnā€™t always look like this,ā€ says Fernandez, 49. ā€œWhen I signed the lease, the interior was painted in dark, murky tones and there was a huge mural of a swamp on the wall. Not a happy place, but weā€™ve changed all that.ā€

Fernandez describes her cuisine as strictly Mexican ā€” the real thing, not commercial but homemade from the cocina (kitchen). ā€œLa comida preparada en el momento,” she says. ā€œEvery single dish is made one at a time. Not easy when you have a party of 10, but it makes all the difference.ā€

Her specialties include Chiles Reellenos Adelita (a fabulous stuffed pepper), and the fluffy overstuffed Taquitos Dorados de la Merced. You wonā€™t find a crispy taco here. Currently, sheā€™s expanding the moderately priced menu to include more seafood offerings.

Born in Mexico City into a family originally from Puebla (a southern Mexican state known for its tasty amalgam of pre-Hispanic and Spanish foods), Fernandez learned to cook at her grandmother Matildeā€™s side.

ā€œShe was an amazing cook,ā€ she says. ā€œShe used only fresh ingredients and consistently turned out delicious food. Weā€™re a big family (Fernandez is the oldest of eight children), so basically my grandmother was cooking all day and night. Now Iā€™m doing the same but maybe a little more gourmet.ā€

Shortly after arriving in D.C. in 1981, Fernandez went to work at a busy Mexican restaurant in Adams Morgan. She remembers her first night on the job thinking, ā€œWell, if they believe this is authentic Mexican food, theyā€™re sadly mistaken. I can do much better.ā€

Over the years she worked mainly as a server before opening her own Mexican restaurant in Arlington and later a bar in Adams Morgan where she learned the demands of owning businesses. She sold both ventures in 1997, but always harbored ambitions ā€œof doing the restaurant thing one more time, but differently and better.ā€

For Fernandez, Cilantro is the opportunity to get it right.

She credits her longtime girlfriend Yadira Mora with turning her on to Rehoboth Beach early in their relationship. ā€œWeā€™ve always been happy in Rehoboth, and I love having a business here,ā€ Fernandez says. ā€œFrom the start, Rehobothā€™s LGBT community has supported us. Weā€™ve always felt extremely welcomed and appreciated.ā€

For Rehoboth restaurateurs, the winters are typically slow, but summers are brutally busy. Fernandez works from morning until midnight or later seven days a week.

ā€œEven though Cilantro has passed its second birthday and is doing very well, Gladys still wants to be there at all time to make sure everything is done just so. She never stops,ā€ says Mora. ā€œI call her la mujer maravilla [wonder woman]!ā€

Fernandez concedes that living and working together isnā€™t always easy, but it works for them. ā€œIā€™m in the kitchen cooking and Yadira is in the front of the house seating and attending to customers. An entire shift can pass with us not seeing each other.ā€

Ultimately, nothing makes Fernandez happier than when a customer compliments her on the food or drink whether itā€™s her exquisitely fresh ceviche or delicious house margarita made with fresh squeezed lime juice and agave nectar. Those moments, she says, make all the long hours and headaches worth it.

ā€œCilantro is the result of love,ā€ adds Fernandez. ā€œFor my girlfriend who introduced me to Rehoboth and my lifelong love for authentic Mexican cuisine.ā€

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Dining

New D.C. restaurants opening just in time for spring

Mexican fare, burgers, fancy cocktails, and more on tap

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Many restaurants, bars, and hotels are planning events across the city for the National Cherry Blossom Festival later this month.

Shaking off winter slumber, the D.C. dining scene this spring is gathering steam. Just a taste of the openings and happenings are below:

Already Open

Pascual (732 Maryland Ave., N.E.): This modern Mexican restaurant is helmed by chefs Isabel Coss and Matt Conroy of LutĆØce, and run by The Popal Group (which also owns Lapop and Lapis). Pascual gets its name from the patron saint of cooks and kitchens. The menu, which rests on fire-grilled dishes, is inspired by Cossā€™s Mexico City roots, and both chefsā€™ past work at top Mexican restaurants. Pascual plans to add a daytime bakery and coffee shop called VolcĆ”n.

Moon Rabbit (927 F St., N.W.): Chef Kevin Tien abruptly closed his Moon Rabbit restaurant on the Wharf a year ago during union negotiations by staff of the Intercontinental Hotel, where the restaurant was located. This reopening represents a welcome comeback of this fine-dining Vietnamese restaurant. The restaurant concept will be the same, but will have new dishes for the new space.

Joia Burger (3213 Mt. Pleasant St., N.W.): Itā€™s smash patties and French fries that make up the entire menu of this fun-filled carryout spot. Run by Purple Patch chef/owner Patrice Cleary, she brings burgers (including veggie burgers) in a family-friendly and homey atmosphere, as well as vibrant ube soft serve as a nod to her Filipino heritage.

Coming soon

Press Club (1506 19th St., N.W.) is an intriguing new spot from industry old-timers including Will Patton (from Bresca and JĆ“nt). Located in Dupont Circle, it will be a new bar and cocktail lounge based on the format of records (i.e. sides A and B). The a la carte ā€œTrack Listā€ menu is a cocktail menu that rotates biannually featuring the teamā€™s favorite spirits and techniques. The curated ā€œPlay Listā€ menu is a bi-monthly rotating cocktail flights highlighting more seasonal ingredients, presented tableside with supplemental bites. The cocktails will draw inspiration from songs loved by the founders and are arranged to resemble the flow of a record.

Immigrant Food (4245 N. Fairfax Dr.): The restaurant group combining global dishes and advocacy is set to open a new spot in Ballston. Immigrant Food has three locations already: the Planet Word Museum, by the White House and in Union Market. The restaurant will feature both indoor and outdoor dining areas by the Ballston Metro.

 Bar Japonais (1520 14th St., N.W.): This restaurant is still forthcoming in the former Estadio space, set for later this spring. It will be a take on its sister restaurant Bar Chinois in Mount Vernon Square. Bar Japonais will bring together French and Japanese influences. Developed in the izakaya style, the restaurant will have Japanese-leaning food and French-leaning cocktails, and has weekly events in the works.

Dogon, at Salamander Hotel (1330 Maryland Ave., S.W.), is a highly anticipated opening from celebrity chef Kwame Onwauchi. The opening represents his return to D.C. with a concept inspired by D.C. Surveyor Benjamin Banneker and Onwauchiā€™s heritage to the West African Dogon tribe. Pronounced ā€œDoh-gon,ā€ the restaurant will serve vibrant cuisine through an Afro-Caribbean lens and draw from Onwuachiā€™s unique Nigerian, Jamaican, Trinidadian, and Creole background. 

Alfreda (2016 P St., N.W.): A pizzeria in Dupont Circle, named for the chefā€™s grandmother. The pizzas – made on a sourdough crust and including gluten-free options – are based on more traditional techniques, but using global flavors. The menu also includes salads, small plates, and a long wine list.

Beresovsky’s Deli: Gay-owned KNEAD Hospitality + Design is teasing a deli later this year. It will be located inside the preexisting Mah-Ze-Dahr Navy Yard location. 

Events

The Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington (RAMW), is expanding from its winter and summer Restaurant Weeks to give diners another opportunity to celebrate the change of seasons with Spring Wine Fling. Spring Wine Fling is a platform for local eateries to highlight their wine programs with creative pairings. Participating locations will showcase their wine programs through curated wines paired with two-course prefix $55 menu offered during dinner service. 

National Cherry Blossom Festival: RAMW is also working with the National Cherry Blossom Festival. The National Park Service has anticipated peak bloom dates for 2024 between March 23ā€“26. The festival has developed a full list (called ā€œcherry picksā€) of where to eat as part of the celebration. Many restaurants, bars, and hotels have also set up activations and events across the city.

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Pastry chef Alex Levin creates desserts with global influences

And now heā€™s on a quest to bake the perfect chocolate chip cookie

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Alex Levin

A decade as a decorated pastry chef in Washington, D.C., and Alex Levin knows how to create a global realm of desserts. But he also knows that the whole is tastier than the sum of its parts.

Levin serves as Executive Pastry Chef and as part of the executive team for Schlow Restaurant Group, where heā€™s worked since 2017. Heā€™s crafted desserts for the groupā€™s breadth of restaurant cuisines, from Spanish at Tico (recently rebranded as Japanese Nama Ko), American at now-closed Riggsby, Japanese at Nama and Nama Ko, and Italian at the several Alta Strada spots. He also throws an annual sold-out bakery pop-up for Thanksgiving and for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. ā€œThereā€™s something fun and so meaningful to spend nine straight days making food that will be a part of so many peopleā€™s celebrations,ā€ he says.

Yet as a gay man, he also strives for representation and a focus on supporting the LGBTQ community.

After graduating from Yale and focusing on a career in management and finance, Levin fled that industry to attend the Culinary Institute of America to follow his passion for pastry and restaurant management. After graduation, he trained at restaurants like Jean Georges and Cafe Boulud in New York, and moved to D.C. in 2013 to open Osteria Morini as pastry chef. There, he made a name for himself, earning a spot on Eaterā€™s Young Guns in 2015 and in 2016, he earned the title of Best Pastry Chef from the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington. 

It was a time of invention in the dessert space. Levin was deeply embedded in some of that boundary-stretching.

ā€œWhen I first became a pastry chef, all of my mentors were pushing me to create deconstructed desserts. I really fell in love with that approach, because it challenged me to think very far outside of the box to have a guest really understand that a plate with five components on it could be considered a lemon tart.ā€

Yet at Schlow, running dessert programs across the city for an increasingly demanding clientele, his approach evolved. The deconstructed version might look more beautiful, but he realized that it also has to taste even better than its classic counterpart.

ā€œI realized that sometimes there is no reason to alter a classic dessert but to add perhaps a modern shift. Thatā€™s where I feel most comfortable now. It allows me to continue to express creativity both visually and with flavor to create the best version of a classic dessert.ā€

At Alta Strada (which has landed in the Washington Postā€™s Dining Guide for several years), Levin leans in to the restaurantā€™s homey style, with a touch of his signature flair, in the several desserts he makes. Traditional bomboloni get a glow up, given depth and tang with ricotta, vanilla, and orange in the batter and receiving a liberal dusting of cinnamon sugar; theyā€™re served on a platter with chocolate hazelnut crema (i.e. liquid Nutella). He also crafts a brownie-cheesecake mashup: a whipped ricotta (sense a theme?) cheesecake sits atop a rich brownie, the black-and-white dessert set off by a single Luxardo cherry on top.

At Nama Ko, Levinā€™s menu is more concise but takes some additional liberties. The star is the Miso Honey Black Truffle soft serve ice cream, drizzled in chocolate sauce and caramel, under a shower of chocolate and toffee (thereā€™s also a passionfruit sorbet with ube shortbread crumble). Now an expert at adjusting his soft serve machine to the right ratio of sugar, dairy, and flavor, Levin matches the sushi restaurantā€™s entrees with the ice creamā€™s balanced umami. Speaking of matching: he also plates a matcha crĆØme brulee.

ā€œWhen planning the dessert program for Nama Ko, I wanted to do something totally different for dessert ā€” something the restaurant could be known for all on its own. The program had to be fun and allow the guests to have a Japanese dessert but with a twist. Once we landed on soft serve, the proposed flavors needed to have a level of simplicity and complexity.ā€ The rollout received accolades, including in Washington City Paper and Eaterā€™s Soft Serve map.

Levin, though, also serves as director of Strategic Business Initiatives. He coordinates operations, recruiting, reporting, marketing, menu design, and photography. He is constantly rethinking: refining his rotating selection of chocolate bonbons for special events, using colored cocoa butter for visual effect. He stays up on cookbooks, YouTube, and Instagram as resources for explanations and demos, ā€œeven how to braid a challah dough using a new technique.ā€

After coming out in 2000, Levin says he never encountered much homophobia in the culinary industry. In D.C., he works to support LGBTQ groups, personally and through his restaurants. ā€œThat might mean making Thanksgiving desserts for SMYALā€™s annual Thanksgiving dinner for the kids, or even transforming one of our restaurants into a destination for D.C.ā€™s annual Pride.ā€ Levin also picks up a shift at the special seated dinner tables at the annual Chefs for Equality event, one the largest (and most fabulous) fundraisers for Human Rights Campaign.

Levin wonā€™t rest on his soft serve laurels, continuing to find creative space. Stay tuned to his latest project, going on three years: to create ā€œthe best chocolate chip cookie. The current version is pretty close, but I continue to make some small modifications to improve the outcome.ā€

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D.C.ā€™s Restaurant Week is back with expanded pricing structure

ā€˜More dining options to customers at a variety of price pointsā€™

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Jamie Leedsā€™s ever-popular Hankā€™s Oyster Bar is among venues participating in Restaurant Week. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

The wintertime culinary highlight is back: Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington (RAMW) Winter Restaurant Week returns Monday, Jan. 15, through Sunday, Jan. 21.

The big news: Restaurant Week is expanding its pricing structure. Participating restaurants can offer multi-course brunch (including on Jan. 15, in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day) and lunch menus for $25 or $35 per person. Dinner menus now run for $40, $55, or $65 per person. And again, many restaurants will also offer cocktail and wine (and non-alcoholic) pairings, giving diners various ways to drink (or not) along with their meals.

RAMW President & CEO Shawn Townsend said that the new ā€œmenu prices have been added to the promotion to allow more restaurants to participate and have these participants offer more dining options to customers at a variety of price points that fit every budget.ā€

More than 250 restaurants across the city, Maryland, and Northern Virginia are participating this year.

A non-comprehensive list of new restaurants:

ā€¢ Latin-inspired Flora at luxe Wharf hotel Pendry

ā€¢ Modern Malaysian restaurant Makan in Columbia Heights

ā€¢ Mita in Shaw, a showstopping vegetarian restaurant that opened less than a month ago

ā€¢ Ceibo in Adams Morgan, a unique Uruguayan restaurant that opened in October

ā€¢ Code Red in Adams Morgan, a halfway hidden mood-lit speakeasy-style spot

ā€¢ Mercy Me at Yours Truly Hotel, which just debuted a new menu

ā€¢ Little Black Bird, a cozy wine bar

ā€¢ Michelin-starred Xiquet DL in Woodley Park, where the everyday tasting menu runs a cool $265

ā€¢ Big-name celebrity chef Jose Andresā€™ blockbuster new restaurant The Bazaar.

In NoVa, there are also a few first-timers, including Ingle Korean Steakhouse, Sabores, and Makers Union; first-time Maryland participants include Charley Prime Foods in Gaithersburg and several Milk and Honey locations.

RAMW is highlighting the H Street, N.E., neighborhood (which this author noted is struggling in his 2023 D.C. Dining Year in Review) through the participation of an overflowing handful of new (Ethiopic, Granville Moore’s, Irregardless, Paste & Rind, Pow Pow, The Queen Vic, Sospeso, and Sticky Rice) and returning (Mozzeria, Maketto, Stable, and Sticky Fingers Diner) spots. In fact, H Street is home to the only two vegan restaurants participating, Sticky Fingers and Pow Pow.

To support LGBTQ-run restaurants, diners could visit Hank’s Oyster Bar (Dupont Circle and on the Wharf), owned by Jamie Leeds. Gay-owned KNEAD Hospitality + Design is involving its restaurants in the promotion. The groupā€™s restaurants include Gatsby, Mi Vida, The Grill, and more.

The ā€œRW-To-Go dinner meals,ā€ a program popular during the pandemic, has ended. As Restaurant Week was originally created for people to dine-in, ā€œwe would love for people to get out and enjoy meals in restaurants,ā€ said an RAMW representative.

Some spots are offering additional deals, extended timelines, and other options. For example, Buena Vida Gastrolounge and Ambar are extending promotions through Jan. 28.

Winter Restaurant Week is also offering a Diner Rewards Program. Participants are entered into prizes for each Washington Restaurant Week cycle, including gift cards, cookbooks, and event tickets.

ā€œRestaurant week is important because it brings people together, boosts the economy, and puts a spotlight on all of the wonderful restaurants in the region,ā€ says Townsend.

The Washington Blade held a short interview with two restaurateurs: one returning, and one new (responses have been edited for space and clarity).

Returning restaurant: Trummerā€™s. Responses by Stefan Trummer, owner.

 BLADE: Why is your restaurant participating in Winter Restaurant Week?

TRUMMER: We are excited to offer our guests a fun menu to encourage diners to try both our lunch and dinner experience. We havenā€™t participated in RW since before COVID and it feels right to get back on track with this promotion. 

BLADE: What do you like about the promotion?

TRUMMER: Restaurant Week often attracts new guests to the restaurant. It gives us a chance to meet some new diners and offer our menus to a wider audience.

BLADE: Tell us something unique and specific about your restaurant

TRUMMER: Trummerā€™s is a modern bistro in a beautiful historic building and town. Each room of the restaurant offers different experiences from the bar with specialty cocktails and a massive whiskey list to the Winter Garden with bright airy dining or the Wine Room with a large picture window looking into our expansive wine cellar.

New restaurant: Fireclay. Responses by Frank Gray, executive chef at the Hotel Washington.

BLADE: Why is your restaurant participating in Winter Restaurant Week?

GRAY: Fireclay at Hotel Washington is a newcomer to the downtown D.C. gastronomy. It is joining the rooftop bar, Vue at the Hotel Washington. (Formerly POV at W Hotel). This is Fireclayā€™s inaugural Restaurant Week and we want to showcase all it has to offer.

BLADE: What do you like about the promotion?

GRAY: It gives newcomers such as Fireclay extra exposure in the D.C. market alongside some of the best restaurants in D.C.

BLADE: Tell us something unique and specific about your restaurant?

GRAY: It is a ā€œkissed by fireā€ food and beverage concept. All dishes and drinks have a component of smokiness and the majority of dishes are finished in wood burning Argentine-style ovens.

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