WASHINGTON — Editor's note: The above video is from April 2021.
In the years since Seven Reasons arrived on D.C.'s food scene, chef-owner Enrique Limardo's restaurant has gathered accolades, being named one of the region's best restaurants by the likes of the Washington Post and Esquire.
Limardo's restaurant has survived the pandemic year, and the chef has opened a number of other restaurants in the meantime, including Imperfecto and Immigrant Food. He's got a fast casual eatery called Chicken & Whiskey, and he's in the planning stages of opening another spot called Surreal around Amazon's HQ2 in Arlington.
After making a splash upon its arrival in 2019, Seven Reasons is now turning three. To mark its third anniversary, a special collaboration dinner is planned over three nights with Chef Mario Castrellon from Maito in Panama City, Panama.
Castrellon's restaurant has consistently been named one of Latin America's best restaurants by World's 50 Best.
For the dinner, Castrellon says the diner will experience Latin flavors from Venezuela and Panama. There will be a pre-fixe menu and a tasting menu. Castrellon says he's done collaboration dinners in the past in Latin America and Europe, but the team-up with Limardo will be the first collaboration dinner in the United States.
"Very excited about it," Castrellon said via email. "My approach usually is to consider recipes that I think that would adapt to the profile of the country where I'm cooking so it will bring familiar but different flavor to our guest."
For those unfamiliar with Panamanian cooking, Castrellon describes it as a melting pot.
"I like describing Panamanian food as a very flavorful food because of all the influences of cultures that we adopted with the construction of the Panama Canal. So we mix lots of Caribbean, Cantonese, Indian, and Arabic to create this unique Creole profile."
Reservations for the dinner are available online for April 15, 16, and 17.