A shock newcomer tucked on the second ground of late-night favourite Mayflower Membership will begin serving up Central and South American classics, like Peruvian rooster and continent-spanning ceviches, and playful takes on internationally beloved dishes, like patatas bravas made with crispy bites of yuca, on Friday, July 18. Selva, the Spanish phrase for “jungle,” has the identical verdant inexperienced inside of its namesake and is influenced by the tropical jungles present in government chef Giovanni Orellana’s birthplace of El Salvador (1223 Connecticut Avenue NW).
Mayflower Membership proprietor Antonis Karagounis is behind the brand new restaurant, which is his first sit-down spot since opening Rewind Diner in 2018. The prolific restaurateur and membership proprietor behind A long time and Ultrabar met Orellana again when he was working at Lima Restaurant and Lounge, the place the chef fondly remembers beginning as “a salad boy” and dealing his means as much as government chef for six years. The 2 have collaborated on loads of ideas over the previous 20 years, together with Barcode, Mexican taco spot Taqueria Native, and subsequent door’s Rewind. There have been additionally gaps the place Orellana labored with cooks like San Lorenzo’s chef and proprietor Massimo Fabbri and chef Matteo Venini, who helmed many Italian eating places round D.C. earlier than opening the wildly profitable space chain Stellina Pizzeria.
Karagounis pushed Orellana to develop Selva after doing tastings for Rewind that constantly blew him away. In any case these years of watching him adapt to new cuisines and develop menus for all the things from sit-down spots that served lunch, dinner, and glad hour to ghost kitchens they experimented with through the pandemic, Karagounis was glad to present over the reigns to Orellana and calls Selva “his undertaking, principally.”
“The cooking is unquestionably his reminiscences from Lima and the recipes from there,” says Karagounis. “But in addition it’s his, I assume, culinary journey since that point, as a result of Lima opened in 2006 and closed in 2013 and he’s executed varied locations since then, many with me.”
Only a look over the appetizers showcases that journey, with Spanish and Italian influences showing in spicy lamb meatballs, tequila-steamed mussels with spicy chorizo, crispy rooster croquetas, and gazpacho that’s poured in a calming martini glass full of wealthy Maryland crab. Orellana jokes that Spanish diners would possibly disavow the spicy tackle gazpacho or bacalao fritters served with a zesty tartar sauce, however they’ll’t say they aren’t scrumptious.
He provides one thing further to extra traditional-leaning Latin American dishes too, like potato empanadas made with a melt-in-your mouth corn dough and filled with extra crab meat. He’s excited to to prepare dinner up “all of the Central American delicacies that’s not properly represented but within the space” in high-end eating places, influenced by Peruvian, Central American, and his birthplace of El Salvador, the place he grew up on a farm. Orellana’s relations in El Salvador now function fish farms, the place his love for contemporary seafood grew from. “I’m obsessive about ceviches … there’s nothing higher the following day when you have got a hangover and that utterly brings you again to life,” he says.
The 5 ceviches on the menu doc that obsession. The ceviche del chef consists of shrimp and clams, plus the long-lasting Salvadoran additions of loads of sliced radish and a touch of umami-filled Worchestshire sauce. The ceviches play with loads of taste profiles, from the ginger and tobiko within the Japanese-influenced tuna nikkei or the standard Peruvian candy potato and choclo (a kind of enormous corn) within the ceviche de mariscos.
The Lima affect is actually seen within the bigger plates, the place arroz chaufa and Peruvian rooster hit the mark with nostalgic flavors and sauces like ají amarillo and rocoto that ship pepper-filled spice. One of many dishes Orellana is most pleased with is his wagyu steak, a super-rare flat iron that comes with chimichurri sauce and cilantro rice.
The intensive cocktail menu from bartender Dennis Garcia, additionally from Rewind Diner, performs with Latin American flavors, from a passionfruit and mezcal bitter to a coconut spritz that he makes use of his personal coconut water focus in. His signature Coco Loco is a straightforward contemporary coconut that comes with a shot of alcohol or your selecting.
For a extremely enjoyable dinner expertise, he can lead diners in tastings of flights of tequila and liquors distilled throughout the Americas, like a Colombian aguardiente, Peruvian pisco, and, his specialty, Central American rum. He labored at Zacapa Rum in Guatemala for 3 years, below the tutelage of well-known grasp blender Lorena Vasquez, and loves to inform diners extra concerning the bottles they’re tasting. Sooner or later he hopes to have late-night, “low-key bottle service” at Selva, the place buddies can break up a bottle of tequila and chat above the booming music under in Mayflower Membership.
The meals and drinks really feel pure within the intimate restaurant, stuffed with lush inexperienced hanging vegetation and jewel-toned couches that diners can chill out into earlier than tucking right into a satisfying meal. Naii Vegas of Inventive Buildr was in control of the design, making the area distinctly totally different from the membership under.
Opening up a sit-down restaurant that spans a number of cuisines and even serves intensive cheese and charcuterie on the second ground of a bumping Dupont Circle membership might seem to be an odd selection, however Karagounis says he’s seen an actual change in D.C.‘s membership scene over the previous few years. Extra individuals simply wish to “seize a chunk to eat and hang around” and find yourself leaving early, whereas the hardcore clubbers are exhibiting up after midnight to its DJ-driven sibling spot Zebbie’s Backyard up high. He hopes the wedding of getting Selva and Mayflower Membership in a single constructing will appease each nightlife crowds.
