Restaurant Review: Surreal

A rice-paper bubble the size of a melon makes its way through the dining room to our table, appearing to float above a bowl of poke. Following our server’s instructions, I smash the pillow with a fork to reveal a swath of nori tucked inside. The idea is to use the seaweed and pieces of crispy rice paper as crackers for scooping up the poke—a colorful mélange of sushi-grade tuna, jalapeno, avocado and mango dressed with tamarind, soy sauce, sesame oil and togarashi. 

I happily oblige while sipping on a drink called Parallel Universe Passion, a pisco sour enhanced with brandy, rosemary and allspice and topped with frothy egg white.

I’m at Surreal, the playful homage to diner fare that chef Enrique Limardo opened in December in National Landing. Limardo, 48, hails from Caracas, Venezuela. After garnering a reputation for culinary whimsy as executive chef of Baltimore’s Alma Cocina Latina, he decamped to Washington, D.C., and joined forces with business partner Ezequiel Vázquez-Ger to open Seven Reasons, which Esquire magazine in 2019 named the “Best New Restaurant in America.”

Today, their Seven Reasons Group (7RG) operates six restaurants in the DMV (the goal is to end up with seven). Among them is Imperfecto, which earned a Michelin star in 2022. Limardo was a James Beard Award Best Chef Mid-Atlantic semifinalist last year. 

When developer JBG Smith approached Limardo in 2021 about anchoring the 1-acre park in front of its office complex along Crystal Drive with a restaurant, the chef already had a name and concept in mind.

“Surreal is a super-powerful name,” he says. “I wanted to transform the American dining experience into something globally inspired but elevated and more creative.” 

For this ambitious undertaking, Limardo rethinks popular American fare—such as burgers, pizza, salads, pasta, sandwiches, barbecue, hot dogs and, yes, Hawaiian poke—using his Latin frame of reference. Daniel Lozano, formerly of Lincoln Restaurant in D.C., serves as Surreal’s head chef. 

Limardo has a snazzy space in which to bring his fanciful vision to life. Valentina Story, 7RG’s creative director, and OOAK Architects have turned the interiors into an urban oasis. The prime real estate in the center of the dining room is a magical mini jungle of soaring greenery with pendant lights shaped like trapezes, mod furniture and speckled terrazzo floors. Bubbly white chandeliers near the large open kitchen resemble clouds.

Natural light from floor-to-ceiling glass doors floods the 5,500-square-foot space (which seats 90, plus another 20 at an enormous stone bar and 22 in a private dining room). In good weather, those doors can be opened up to create a seamless connection to an adjoining 2,500-square-foot outdoor plaza, which includes a small park and a 100-seat patio. 

The setting makes a dazzling first impression, but there are some mixed messages at Surreal. Most of the food items hover around $20 and are meant to be playful and diner-like. By contrast, the least expensive bottle of wine is $50, and many of the wine selections are priced well over $100. That doesn’t jibe with the diner concept. (I do welcome the valet parking, though, as there is little street parking in the area.) 

Surreal’s menu has 25 items, including seven pizzas, but it doesn’t use headings to differentiate between appetizers and entrées. A good way to start, especially for a table of three or four, is to order a pizza as an appetizer. 

I opted for the Mortadella Lover’s because I am one. Topped with mortadella, porchetta, cherry tomatoes, anchovies, kalamata olives and mozzarella cheese, it’s a delightful amalgam of saltiness and richness. Limardo says the 12-inch pies, made with dough fermented for 24 hours and baked in deck ovens, are a combination of Neapolitan and New York styles. The dough—and therefore the pizza—is good but not amazing; it needs more delicacy and less chewiness. 

Limardo’s interpretation of Caesar salad is a stunner. It’s a whole head of hydroponic Salanova lettuce, spread out like a flower and topped with fried capers and creamy anchovy dressing. Chunks of brined, baked and dehydrated rice noodles coated with Parmesan cheese stand in for croutons. 

Another snap-worthy offering is the swordfish carpaccio, a kaleidoscopic display of thinly sliced, cured fish loin topped with guacamole mayonnaise, radishes, black olives and capers, and garnished with a fiery red ring of crushed, spicy totopos (think Flamin’ Hot Doritos, clearly a reference point). The drawback: There’s so much going on, visually and flavor-wise, that the swordfish literally disappears. 

Many of the dishes at Surreal, though tasty, could stand to lose an accessory or two, as Coco Chanel so famously advised. Perfectly cooked Hokkaido scallops seared in brown butter rest on an overabundance of sweet corn cream and are topped with an overly salty apple bacon jam. What is billed as a Nashville brisket sandwich—featuring house-made corned beef, rather than the barbecued beef brisket I was expecting—comes stuffed with a broccoli salad with dried cranberries that should have been a side dish. (I, for one, do not want broccoli on a sandwich.) 

However, one item that shines in its extra-ness is the bacon-wrapped foot-long Boomdog, a thick beef sausage, ample enough for two to share. 

“In Venezuela, we are crazy about hot dogs. They’re like a bomb with 10 sauces and 20 garnishes,” explains Limardo. In that case, Surreal’s version, tucked into a potato roll with fried garlic, “crazy” sauce laced with hot peppers, Napa cabbage slaw and melted Oaxaca cheese, is a deliciously messy exercise in restraint. 

Curiously, the dishes I’m drawn to the most at Surreal are the simplest: bucatini with ultra-tender meatballs and an excellent marinara sauce; a double cheddar cheeseburger; and steak frites with a compound butter of tarragon, rosemary, Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco. 

On the sweet side, corporate pastry chef Genesis Flores and Surreal’s pastry chef, Barbara Whettell, have assembled an intriguing dessert list. An upside-down cake with rum- and vanilla-soaked pound cake on the bottom and flan on the top is served with coconut ice cream, passion fruit coulis and dried pineapple crackers. It tastes like a luxurious stay in a tropical resort.

The chocolate lava cake with almond crumble and toffee is as dreamy as it sounds, and it becomes even better when spooned onto the soft-serve vanilla ice cream that accompanies it. The effect is like a hot fudge sundae. You could almost call it surreal.

What to Drink 

Beverage director Carlos Boada’s drinks menu features 18 craft cocktails, 15 of which are booze-based ($13 to $17) while the other three are zero-proof ($10 to $12). The Café Bombon, made with rum, Licor 43, espresso and Dalgona coffee, is an interpretation of an espresso martini that does double duty as a liquid dessert. 

Boada’s extensive wine list of nearly 50 bottles favors European and American selections, but also includes offerings from South America, Oceania and the Middle East. Bottles range from $50 for a rosé to $310 for a Catena Zapata Malbec Argentino 2021. Fourteen wines are available by the glass ($11 to $18). Most of the nine beer offerings are $7.

Surreal

2117 Crystal Drive, Arlington (National Landing)
703-249-9618

Hours
Sunday to Thursday 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Friday and Saturday 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Parking
Valet parking available for $8.

Prices
Salads, sandwiches and pasta dishes: $16 to $24
Pizzas: $16 to $22
Entrée-type dishes: $27 to $31
Desserts: $13 to $16