DC’s First “Cause Casual” Opens

By AJ Dronkers, photography by Irena Stein | From our Winter 2019 Issue

Hot on the heels of being named the number one restaurant in DC by the Washington Post Fall Food Guide, Chef Enrique Limardo of Seven Reasons opened Immigrant Food in November. The team behind the restaurant—located near the White House—hope to showcase food of America’s immigrants through fusion dishes and also provide space for immigrant service organizations. So far, partnerships have been formed with five local nongovernmental organizations to host English classes, hold workshops and legal clinics, and provide job search services to immigrants.

Interested in checking it out after work? Immigrant Food launched an expanded Happy Hour, Monday - Friday from 4:30PM - 7:00PM. Guests can enjoy appetizer offerings like the Taj Mahal Chicken sliders with street to pair with beverages from around the world, including Enrique's homemade, fresh sangria. 

I stopped by soon after the opening and to ask the co-founders some questions. 

Co-founders Peter Schechter, Enrique Limardo and Ezequiel Vázquez-Ger.

This is your first fast-casual restaurant. What inspired it? 

About a year and a half ago, our country experienced the beginnings of a shocking surge of negative rhetoric against immigrants. That’s when an idea began to form, and we felt we needed to strongly align our brand, even as a small business, to certain important values. Big brands do it, and we felt even a small business could do the same. So, we’re proud to launch Immigrant Food, a “cause casual” restaurant that fuses food and immigration advocacy. At Immigrant Food, we celebrate America’s story, which is really the story of immigrants and their hugely positive impact on our country’s economy, culture and, of course, food.

What does “cause casual” mean? How does it manifest in the restaurant? Is there a charity component? 

Immigrant Food “marries” food and immigration advocacy. As much as we are divided, we want to create easy paths for all of us to help immigrant communities in need. In the restaurant, our “engagement menu” is right there next to our food menu; we’ve got concrete suggestions about the ways our customers can contribute and volunteer to help immigrant organizations. It’s “gastroadvocacy.” Our NGO partners need more volunteers than ever before. Immigrant service organizations are stretched to the limits serving immigrants from Central America, Mexico, China, India and Africa and so many other NGOs and nonprofits need legal, language, housing and job search assistance.

Does the menu also draw inspiration from Latin America, like Seven Reasons? 

While Seven Reasons’ culinary inspirations are drawn from Latin America, Immigrant Food’s menu is a fusion of many of America’s immigrant groups. Over centuries, immigrants brought their recipes and traditions to this country and reshaped what and how we eat. It’s this special mix of peoples, cultures and foods that has made America great, again and again.

Chef Enrique’s inspirations are culinary representations of that immigrant diversity. His bowls are fusions and mixes; they’re fun, healthy, diverse. One dish combines Vietnam’s spicy rice noodles with pickled bananas, an ode to both Central America’s favorite fruit and to German-style pickling. Another salutes Washington’s most diverse neighborhood and the city’s two largest immigrant groups: the Columbia Road, named after the main road in DC’s Adams Morgan neighborhood, fuses together Ethiopia’s delicious, berbere-spiced small lentils with vegetables that include loroco flowers from El Salvador.

What do you hope patrons will walk away with by visiting Immigrant Food?

We hope that people walk in, have a delicious bowl inspired by this country’s many immigrants, take a selfie and point to their heritage on our beautifully wood-carved world map, and perhaps find a way to donate their time or money to one of five important local immigrant-service NGOs.

Immigrant Food

1701 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20006

www.immigrantfood.com