Muchas Gracias, Chevy Chase, Washington, DC

I tried Muchas Gracias a couple of times a while back, not long after they’d opened, and posted this report. I think my attitude then was best summed up as unenthusiastic but hopeful. Since then, having heard mixed reviews, I decided to see how their fare fairs these days.

I strolled on down to 5029 Connecticut to their place next to Comet Ping Pong.

It’s in the Politics and Prose strip that contains some very good places to eat, notably Rosemary Bistro, as well as others I’ve also reviewed. It was a cold damp day, so after looking over the menu, I decided a soup would be just the thing, and ordered the Pozole Rojo ($17). I passed on adding pork or chicken to the soup (only $3 more), and went with what the menu described as “Guajillo chile Broth, white Hominy, radish, avocado, oregano, blue corn tostadas.”

Muchas Gracias has a pretty interior, with soft colors, stylish lines, and flowers on each table,

and a full bar with a handful of stools. It’s a very pleasant setting.

Water arrived in an attractive jug, and the server filled my curiously squat but stylish glass, and after a short time as I settled in, my pozole rojo arrived.

For those new to the dish, traditional pozole rojo is made by browning fatty pork, often on the bone, and then adding a broth of guajillo or other slightly spicy dried peppers. Hominy comes next, and when the soup is ready, it’s served with vegetables and corn chips on the side. You add everything together and enjoy it. As you can see, the avocado arrived already in the soup for a nice presentation.

I first tried a tiny bit of each element by itself, and the final product, once I’d added everything, was greater than the sum of the parts. The broth was thin, as happens a vegetable broth, and the individual flavors of the other elements were muted. Instead of cabbage there was green leaf lettuce, and those large, pretty purple radish slices lacked the bite of the “normal” smaller red radishes. The thinly sliced onions were mild, and the blue corn tostada was unseasoned. The hominy, which rested at the bottom of the bowl,added texture but little flavor. On the other hand, the time wedge was generous and juicy.

The sum total of small flavors resulted in a better texture and a bit more flavor, including especially some brightens from the lime juice, but not much. The broth really missed the fond from the caramelized bits of pork or chicken and, of course, the permeating richness pork gives during long cooking (very different from adding it at the end), and the collagen from a bone. Of course, it was a vegetarian dish as ordered, but vegetarian broths can be bursting with flavor. This dish was not. (Hint: a cheese rind adds depth of flavor.) I think the replacement of cabbage with green leaf lettuce was a particularly bad choice, and where was the garlic? Why no cilantro? It has a soapy taste for some unfortunate people, but they can leave the cilantro on the plate.

The dish wasn’t bad-tasting so much as non-tasting. The choice of ingredients was puzzling. To their credit, Muchas Gracias adheres to a mission of providing jobs and support to recent immigrants, for which they deserve credit. And I note that this is just one dish, and others on the menu may well be much better. I’ll try to get back down there, but I can’t say it will be a priority.

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