Pascual
Restaurant · Capitol Hill
732 Maryland Ave NE, Washington, DC 20002
Highlights
Hearth-focused Mexican cuisine with creative cocktails & margs
Hearth-focused Mexican cuisine with creative cocktails & margs
"Culinary couple Isabel Coss and Matt Conroy opened Pascual last year in Capitol Hill with the Popal Group and have been picking up accolades for the inventive Mexican spot ever since, including being named one of Eater’s Best New Restaurants in America in 2024. The hearth-focused menu honors Coss’s native Mexico City and the chefs’ combined experience working at top-tier Mexican restaurants. Smoked chicken and whole grilled fish shine on the seasonal menu, but vegetables are also given special treatment whether they’re roasted whole or fill the rotating selection of tamales. Oaxacan flavors are also present throughout the menu, with tlayudas topped with in-season vegetables and classic mole sauces in many dishes. Coss flexes her pastry muscles with must-try desserts, like the colossal cinnamon-dusted buñuelos that never leave the menu. The Popal Group is also behind , French Georgetown gem Lutèce, Adams Morgan’s Afghan hit Lapis, the neighborhood’s forthcoming Maison Bar a Vin. Must-try dish: Whichever seasonal tamal is currently on the menu" - Tierney Plumb
"An award-winning Capitol Hill Mexican spot that uses its matchbook to carry cultural text: the matchbook contains an inscription inside quoting an excerpt from the poem "Piedra Solar" by Nobel Prize-winning Mexican poet Octavio Paz." - Hannah Yasharoff
"Pascual is one of the buzziest new restaurants in D.C. (and America) from the same restaurant group that includes Lapis and Lutèce. Almost every dish is cooked over the wood-fired grill, giving everything from charred eggplant tamal to lamb neck barbacoa a smoky flavor. The hearth-focused menu honors chef Isabel Coss’s native Mexico City, and her combined experience working at top-tier Mexican restaurants, including Michelin-starred Pujol. Don’t miss out on her bunuelos for dessert, a beautiful fried dough pastry served with chocolate sauce and caramel made of goat’s milk." - Tierney Plumb
"Popal Group chefs Matt Conroy and Isabel Coss, the husband-wife culinary duo behind Georgetown’s acclaimed French neo-bistro Lutèce, opened a contemporary Mexican restaurant on Capitol Hill in early 2024. Named one of Eater’s Best New Restaurants in America, Pascual gets its name from San Pasqual — the patron saint of cooks and kitchens. The hearth-focused menu honors Coss’s Mexico City roots and the chefs’ combined experience working at top-tier Mexican restaurants. Before joining the Popal Group in 2020, Conroy was the chef de cuisine at Michelin-starred Oxomoco in Brooklyn. Coss, a former pastry chef at NYC’s famed Empellón and Cosme, flexes her dessert skills with colossal cinnamon-dusted buñuelos and flourless Mexican chocolate cake. Pascual will soon add a daytime panaderia and coffee shop called Volcán with pickup from a to-go window." - Tierney Plumb
"Imagine an office filled with people wearing variations on the classic DC work uniform of suits and power dresses. Then, imagine a new employee who just moved to town from a place without a Tuckernuck or J.Crew. That’s Pascual, the resident cool kid of the Hill. The Mexican restaurant from the team behind Lutèce is so cool, with its minimalist interior and limited-seat bar, that it looks a little out of place on the otherwise drab Maryland Ave. The space is about as large as a studio apartment, so you’ll have to battle what feels like the whole city for a spot, but it’s worth it for their mezcal-focused cocktail menu and smoky moles." - madeline weinfield
