Some people are going to like the Grove, the hard-to-miss new Mediterranean fusion restaurant in Cabin John Village shopping center in Potomac. That includes locals who don’t want to drive to the District or Northern Virginia for dinner, people who enjoy a “Barbie” palette and fans of lots of razzle-dazzle — foams, gels and smoke — on the plate.
Other people are going to grouse about the latest restaurant from the Alexandria-based Common Plate Hospitality group. This includes locals who dream of better nearby options for a meal out, people who don’t care to eat inside what looks like a piñata filled with flowers and a critic who can’t figure out how a chef with impressive credentials is behind some of the most unfortunate food he’s eaten in several seasons.
José López-Picazo, the Madrid native in the Grove’s exhibition kitchen, has worked under some of the country’s best chefs: José Andrés and Fabio Trabocchi at Jaleo and Del Mar in Washington, respectively, and Julian Serrano at Picasso in the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas. The starry résumé is one reason the managing partner of Common Plate recruited the chef. “He’s always been the man behind the man,” says Chad Sparrow, whose restaurants include Augie’s Mussel House, Mason Social and Urbano. The Grove, he says, puts López-Picazo front and center.
I’m Tom, the food critic for The Post since 2000. I review restaurants in the Washington region every week, and every month I round up my current favorites. Twice a year I curate a special dining guide: In the fall I write about dozens of top picks, and in the spring I spotlight new restaurants.
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One of the eye-grabbers on the menu is black sausage from Spain, served as four tiny towers, each one of them balanced on tomato confit on a powdery crouton crowned with a sunny, dime-size quail egg. The appetizer is hard to eat in one bite (the eggs slipped off all four pieces) and not worth the trouble: The sausage was at once earthy and gummy. Crudo is as inescapable as AI. The “Latin fusion” at the Grove features the expected raw fish (halibut, in this case), but the leche de tigre — “tiger’s milk” or marinating liquid — is so thick and fruity it masks the fish, which swims to the table with a savory tuile that distinguishes many of the dishes here. López-Picazo makes the designs with a mold and flour and egg white, plus tints to make them black (squid ink), red (beets) or green (chlorophyll).
Spain is where a lot of chefs from around the world go for inspiration, to taste the future. I count myself lucky to have sampled the novel ideas at trendsetters including Disfrutar in Barcelona. The Grove doesn’t charge the lofty prices of those master practitioners, but its output doesn’t taste close to them, either. My point is, artful and complicated approaches don’t need to get in the way of deliciousness.
Look at the pork belly. You’d think 22 hours in a sous vide cooker would beat a block of meat into submission. But the chunk I got, propped up by a support of potatoes and cheese banded with bacon — the best part of the entree — was dense and tough in parts. I counted at least five sauces on the plate, which get lost in translation, plus what looked like a miniature Ferris wheel but was in reality another tuile. Stop this ride! I’m getting dizzy!
As a well-traveled companion said of one night’s spread, “Not as good as they looked.”
The more traditional Spanish plates are better bets. Seek out the delicate crystal bread with its light application of crushed tomatoes, or the riff on the Catalan classic of grilled or roasted vegetables, escalivada. López-Picazo layers slices of charcoal-kissed red peppers, eggplant and onion and stages them as a colorful bar with a hedge of microgreens and black dots of the aforementioned charred vegetables. Veal cheeks cooked to tenderness are splayed over finely chopped red cabbage that neatly straddles sweet and tang. This being the Grove, the main course gets some chorizo-colored “air” on top, foam that’s actually orange with carrot and ginger.
The message: The simpler, the better here.
High-end hybrid food tends to be complicated and labor-intensive. Like many chefs, López-Picazo has to compete in a market where experienced workers aren’t plentiful, and the suburbs are more of a challenge than the city. One of the reasons I returned to the Grove initially was because of a main course, whole dorade, that the top chef revealed from beneath a salt crust at the table. Some chefs use egg whites to make the salt seal; López-Picazo deploys lemongrass, ginger and lime zest, which infuse the fish, already meaty and rich, with spark and which treat recipients to enticing fragrance. Throw in some aioli and fingerling potatoes and I’m a happy camper — well, sans the undercooked carrots that come along for the ride.
That’s an issue at the Grove. Too many dishes have something that throws them off — rubbery calamari on a piece of halibut or chewy thin rings of brioche and guanciale (“false ravioli,” the chef calls them) around otherwise delicious bites of braised oxtail, their richness foiled by biting peppers, arranged on buttery mashed potatoes. Sometimes, the principal ingredient is to blame. Chunks of chorizo and racy minced peppers are the best part of a main course of chicken inspired by chilindrón, a hearty Spanish stew. The breast, fenced in with potatoes and cauliflower, is ordinary eating, despite the creamy teardrops of yellow cauliflower that finish it.
There’s nothing subtle about the restaurant, whose outside entrance crawls with faux green ivy and whose interior looks like the Cherry Blossom Festival no matter what time of year it is. The walls, ceiling and banquettes are an explosion of flowers — fake, painted or fabric — along with multiple neon accents. “Let it bloom,” reads a message on a wall. Sure, but no one seems to understand the power of moderation. Sparrow says he wanted something “bright and clean” to match the chef’s cooking. The Grove is definitely … bright.
The service is all over the map, too. My first visit, a fast-talking, no-nonsense server informed us “weopenedaboutamonthago” and asked “whatareyouthinkingforwater?” The second dinner showed off his opposite: a server seemingly fueled by a gallon of Red Bull and so enthusiastic, he made Taylor Swift watching her beau play ball inert by comparison. Did I mention the sommelier disputed a bottle of corked wine without first tasting it herself? She later agreed it was bad, but the exchange made for an uncomfortable introduction. On the other hand, this messy eater appreciated servers who swooped in and erased the Jackson Pollock I created on the table, and how kind of the restaurant to lower the volume on the music when a friend asked. (Not every place does that.)
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Sparrow says locals are direct with their feedback. To the Grove’s credit, some prices were slashed when customers complained. “This isn’t downtown D.C.,” he says they let him know. (The scallops are now $10 cheaper than after the restaurant sprouted in November.)
There are moments, fleeting ones, where I could see myself coming back: for those veal cheeks, that whole fish, the desserts. Go for the slender, sugar-sprinkled churros served with intense warm chocolate sauce and the fluffy, not-too-sweet cheesecake with a dimple of apricot jam. Both desserts are straightforward and satisfying.
On my last visit, I watched a server present a smoke-filled, globe-size cloche containing lamb shank to a woman I guessed might be dining with her husband. For about the time it takes for me to type this vignette, her head was invisible in the oak-heavy fog. Her husband couldn’t stop laughing. When the smoke finally disappeared, she seemed less than amused.
I went into the Grove as I try to do at most restaurants, with optimism. I left wondering how I could sum up the place in one word.
Unforgettable?
7747 Tuckerman Lane, Potomac, Md. 240-386-8369. thegrovemd.com. Open for inside dining 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 4 p.m. to midnight Friday, 10 a.m. to midnight Saturday and 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday. Prices: Dinner appetizers $14 to $28, main courses $26 to $75 (whole fish for two). Sound check: 75 decibels/Must speak with raised voice. Accessibility: No barriers to entry; ADA-compliant restrooms.
301.263.6982
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