About DC Restaurant Openings
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Croix. 69 Q St., SW
Southwest DC may not immediately call to mind a Caribbean island. But Malika King, Keem Hughley, and Sonat Ozkaynak, who just took over the rooftop space of the Cambria Hotel near Audi Field, are hoping to re-create the ambiance of one island in particular there: St. Croix.
Croix, their polished rooftop restaurant, opens on Friday, August 14. It’s got a wide-ranging Caribbean menu, a long tropical cocktail list, and commanding views of downtown.
Hughley, the former chef of Bronze, has family from St. Croix. He has also highlighted lesser-known island cuisines before; Last year, he opened Realm, another rooftop restaurant serving dishes from Seychelles.
Crucian cuisine (the demonym for St. Croix, one of the US Virgin Islands) centers on some signature local dishes like fungi (a cornmeal dumpling) and callaloo soup. Hughley and King make their own version of callaloo with leafy greens and a cornmeal “fungi” ball with pimento-soaked coconut oil. (edited)
But the menu also departs from St. Croix to span flavors from around the Caribbean, often creatively repurposed. Expect dishes like breadfruit gnocchi, saltfish mille-feuille with cod brandade, sea bass escovitch, and casabes (thin, crunchy discs of yuca) topped with proteins like goat pepperpot or jerk chicken. There’s even a pizza topped with roasted calabaza and pepper jelly.
“This gives us an opportunity to highlight a little region that’s not as well known as Jamaica or Trinidad,” Hughley says. “We’re going to do about 20 percent authentic Crucian dishes, and then the other 80 percent we consider more like modern Caribbean, more like a blend, a mashup.”
King, the chef de cuisine, is from Brooklyn and has Jamaican and Trinidadian heritage. They’re especially proud of Croix’s grilled jerk wings with house made barbecue sauce.
“It’s straight from what my grandmom and my aunts used to make, and then we took it and made it 10 times better,” King says.
The rooftop has both an indoor and outdoor space, the latter of which, Croix Veranda, has multiple outdoor bars and will host regular live DJs. Bartenders will mix drinks infused with Caribbean botanicals such as sorrel, soursop leaf, pimento leaf, fever grass, moringa, and tonka bean. The rum selection is especially robust, but the bar will also stock Mutiny Island Vodka, a distillation of breadfruit made on the island of St. Croix.
The whole space is decked out in deep green and warm wood. “When you come to the space, you feel like you’re on one of those islands,” Ozkaynak says. “It’s like you’re escaping from the city.”
Ike Allen covers politics, food, culture, and transportation in DC and writes the monthly Hidden Eats column for the magazine. He grew up in DC.
