What is an “elevated diner?” Since 2017, DC’s Unconventional Diner has answered that question with Peking duck confit and Lebanese fried rice. But it turns out that’s not the only solution. In November 2023, Seven Reasons Group, known for its eponymous restaurant, but also Michelin-starred Imperfecto and The Saga, as well as several other DC destinations, threw its hat into that very specific ring.
And Seven Reasons co-founders, chef Enrique Limardo and Ezequiel Vázquez-Ger, dropped the new restaurant in National Landing, close to Amazon’s HQ2 campus. The first NoVA restaurant for the group profits from a young, moneyed neighborhood ready to splurge on breakfast, lunch, brunch, or dinner. And the prices at Surreal reflect that. Diners will find that a hot dog retails for $22 and dinner entrées start at $34. Are those prices worth it? Sometimes.
The experience at Surreal begins with a hard sell on drinks. As diners are seated, they are given the cocktail and wine menu, but not the food one. Each time I dined, I had to specifically ask to see the latter. When I told the host that I wouldn’t be drinking, I was guided to the $13 zero-proof cocktails and nonalcoholic beers.
In that case, I would rather sample one of the creative tropical sippers from beverage director Carlos Boada. The $18 Time Traveler’s Tipple, for example, blends Legent Bourbon with corn flakes, oats, dried fruit, caraway, and aromatic bitters. It’s the type of drink one must try just to see if it works.
Executive chef Daniel Lozano told me in a phone interview that one of the most popular starters is the Crispy Pillow Tuna Poke, and I saw lots of it fly out of the kitchen. The plate is named for its presentation that includes a fried, rice-based orb nesting atop the lightly sauced fish. It’s a fun gimmick, and the poke itself is well-flavored, plentiful, and worth ordering.
However, my group’s favorite among the small plates wasn’t so diminutive at all. Poutine Our Way turned out to be an unexpected steal. For $14, a dining companion and I shared a gravy-laden stack of potato wedges, blanketed in melty cheese and crispy chicken fingers. It was enough to feed two, with leftovers. My only complaint is that the gravy was so thin that it was difficult to discern from the oil melting off the cheese.
That $22 hot dog turned out to be another winner. Limardo hails from Venezuela, a country known for its over-the-top street dogs. At Surreal, it’s a foot-long beef sausage wrapped in bacon and buried in cabbage relish. The meaty lily is gilded with Oaxacan quesillo, crispy garlic, and a blend of ketchup and mayo. The tube steak is served with fries, which are ingeniously presented in a glass cup filled with garlicky dipping sauce. That way, every fry gets a bit of the flavorful dip. If the thinly sliced potatoes had been crispier, I would have been even happier.
Other large plates paled in comparison. The $38 Hokkaido scallops and corn feature four of the chunky bivalves sunken into a bland sweet corn cream. Chunks of raw cauliflower and serrano chiles crunch in an unwelcome manner. I think the lemon vinaigrette listed on the menu may have been omitted from my plate — all I tasted was the sweet smoke of the apple-bacon jam.
The Halloween Gnocchi is objectively a pretty plate of food thanks to its vivid colors of purple sweet potato dumplings, green pesto, and orange cubes of butternut squash. But the dish is appetizer-sized for $29. Its inexplicably medicinal flavor, overcooked pasta, and excessively al dente squash ensured that I still didn’t finish it.
Dessert, however, is another story. Corporate pastry chef Genesis Flores and pastry chef Barbara Whettell are turning out some of the most memorable plates at the restaurant.
Chief among these is the Chocolate Lava Cake Service. Service? Indeed, the interactive dish arrives at the table alongside a cup of lightly salted dulce de leche, which a server pours over the top, adding to the creamy, sticky ecstasy of the already brilliantly balanced molten chocolate cake. It’s a shareable sweet on its own, but the cake is accompanied by a towering swirl of housemade vanilla soft serve. It looks like too much for even two people to finish, but trust me, you will.
The Upside Down Impossible Pineapple-flan cake is also well worth ordering. The fluffy pound cake looks like flan but the flavors focus on every part of the pineapple, not caramel. The fruit is used in dehydrated slices and chunks lolling in zippy passionfruit cream, but also as ash dusted atop coconut ice cream.
There’s a whimsy to some of the cuisine at Surreal, but on the whole, I felt like the fun Lozano described to me didn’t always make it onto plates. “It’s a global inspiration of food — crazy items you’re not going to find anywhere else,” the chef told me.
But as much as I appreciate a great hot dog or an excessively indulgent dessert, I never really saw a dish that made me think, “Now that’s surreal.” Perhaps the ambitious name sets the restaurant up to rise below expectations. With the exception of the gnocchi, the cooking itself is solid. But my mind was never tickled along with my palate the way I hoped it would be.
Surreal is not a bad restaurant. Diner basics like a double cheeseburger even punch above their weight class. With a little more fun laced into the dishes, the restaurant could one day be a knockout.
Surreal
Rating: ★★★
See This: Step into an indoor tropical forest, complete with lights shaped like clouds that illuminate the live plants at the center of the restaurant.
Eat This: Poutine Our Way, Footlong Boomdog, Chocolate Lava Cake Service
Appetizers: $12–$39
Entrées: $19–$67
Dessert: $13–$16
Open daily for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Brunch is served on Saturday and Sunday.
2117 Crystal Dr., Arlington
Feature image by Michael Butcher
This story originally ran in our May issue. For more stories like this, subscribe to Northern Virginia Magazine.
