How Qui Qui Celebrates Puerto Rican Traditions, in Six Dishes
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When you find out there are people who drive all the way from New York to Washington, D.C. just to have lunch at a certain restaurant, you know something special must be happening. And then you have a meal at Qui Qui DC, and suddenly that pilgrimage makes perfect sense.
While D.C. is home to many different cuisines, Puerto Rican restaurants are few and far between. Qui Qui brings not only traditional Puerto Rican fare to the city, but also exudes the warm, inviting embrace of Puerto Rico’s culture which islanders often refer to as “boricua.” For owner Ismael Mendez, the journey to opening this restaurant was long, but well worth it as he seeks to fill the gap of Puerto Rican fare in D.C.’s dining landscape.
“Much of my life, I worked in IT, as a programmer,” Mendez explains. “I needed stability and a reliable income to provide for my son. But cooking was always in my heart — my grandmother was an extraordinary cook, and I was the kid who used to make my parents French toast for breakfast when I was 5 or 6 years old. Even at my IT job, I was the guy who was always cooking for everyone.” And so, in 2016 he decided to take the leap, follow his dreams, and go to culinary school. “My mom encouraged me — she knew cooking was my passion,” Mendez says, adding that “and my colleagues said it was about time I shared my skills with the world.”
After culinary school, Mendez worked under several chefs at D.C.’s Masseria and A Rake’s Progress, with Frank Ruta as an early mentor. In 2018 he started a food truck, and from there, held pop-ups around the city. His experience led him to explore more of his own culinary identity: the Puerto Rican cuisine he grew up eating and cooking with his family. In 2021, he opened Qui Qui with his former A Rake’s Progress colleague, Andre Gaspar.
The original Qui Qui was located above a bar; a small restaurant with eight and then eventually 14 tables. Despite the small size and selling mostly takeout, the cooking brought to life Mendez’s vision: food from his roots, representing dishes ranging from street food snacks to homestyle dishes cooked by his mom, aunts, and cousins for the whole family. Although Qui Qui brought Mendez’s love of Boricua food to D.C. diners, he notes, “We couldn’t really meet the demand from diners or expand our menu because of the space’s size.” Mendez knew he had to find a new spot to really be able to showcase the full range of dishes he wanted to share.
It took some time, but on Sept.18, 2025 the new Qui Qui opened its doors on Georgia Avenue to D.C. residents, with plenty of room to serve the food, drinks and the ambiance that Mendez had always envisioned. The restaurant has become a neighborhood mainstay, with some diners coming in multiple times a month. It pays homage to Puerto Rico through its green-and-blue color palette and plant-filled décor, its Latin tunes (hello, Bad Bunny), selection of Puerto Rican books, and of course, through the cuisine, which Mendez describes as “a homey style of cooking that is also refined and tweaked to accommodate a diverse dining clientele.”
“Chef Andre and I work side by side to bring in the flavors of Puerto Rico, while using techniques we developed in culinary school to elevate some of the dishes,” he adds. “We use ingredients that come from within 100 miles to ensure freshness, and we work arduously to make sure our food and restaurant is fun, festive, and inclusive — just like Puerto Rico. I want to embrace all that my culture has offer and share with the D.C. community.”
In the spirit of sharing — until you are able to go and get a taste for yourself — here are several of Qui Qui’s most popular food and drink items — and these are just the beginning.
Sorullitos
“This dish represents the street food in Puerto Rico,” explains Mendez, “something you grab and eat on the go. These crispy cornmeal fritters are usually bigger than the ones at we make by hand at Qui Qui; we wanted them to be a small bite. They’re typically also made with cheese, but we wanted ours to be inclusive — both vegan and vegetarian friendly — so everyone can try it.” It’s a great bar snack: finger food that’s salty and sweet and crunchy and soft, all at once. It is also the perfect complement to Qui Qui’s dynamic cocktail menu, but diners shouldn’t sleep on any of the snacks on the menu, either; the tostones, empanadas, and cod fritters all offer big flavors in small(-ish) packages.
Arroz con Pollo
This is a classic. “A dish we eat right fresh off the stove when it’s made at home,” Mendez notes. “Andre and I went to Puerto Rico and we ate it over and over again as a part of our research and development.” The chicken-and-rice dish is the chef’s own favorite of the current menu, and for good reason: “We make ours entirely to order, so 25 minutes each time from raw rice to plated, fresh per order,” he explains, and everything on the plate is indeed bursting with flavor. The rice gets infused with the chicken and the chicken gets infused with sofrito, garlic, saffron, and paprika. The rice is chewy and savory, with lightly fried grains of rice that are juicy from the chicken fat and fresh vegetables.
Jackfruit Pernil
“Although this dish is usually made with pork, we wanted to create a vegetarian dish,” Mendez notes. “So we use jackfruit instead, which is ubiquitous in Puerto Rico. The dish is wildly popular; it has been on the menu since we opened Qui Qui, and when I try and rotate it off the menu we get too many complaints.”
The dish is made with the aromatic base of peppers, herbs, and garlic that is Puerto Rico’s version of sofrito. Mendez learned to make sofrito from his mother, who is Mexican, but learned how to make Puerto Rican dishes long ago “for my Puerto Rican dad.”
“The dish is made by breaking the jackfruit apart and massaging it so it takes on the texture of pork, and then we let it sit for 24 hours with the sofrito. We serve it with rice and stewed pink beans, which is also a recipe of my mom’s that we tailored a bit by adding pumpkin for sweetness and creaminess.” Warm and earthy, the dish will bring back memories from childhood for those who grew up eating the slow-roasted delicacy on special occasions.
Asapao
“This dish is classic Puerto Rican but also draws upon my experience working in Italian restaurants,” Mendez says. The asapao gets deliciously creamy thanks to the rice that gets slow-cooked in a housemade seafood broth, to the point where the rice has soaked up almost all the liquid and the rest is emulsified into a rich sauce that coats each kernel, as well as plump shrimp. However, the foundation of this dish is unmistakably from Latin and Caribbean flavors: the sofrito base, the cumin and adobo, and even the shrimp that is seared quickly and only added at the very end.
Mofongo De Gandules
Mofongo is at the heart of Puerto Rican cuisine. While it’s typically made by mashing fried green plantains with butter and chicharron, Mendez wanted to be able to accommodate more diners, as well as feature the flavor of plantains more prominently. As such, Qui Qui’s is a vegan version with loads of garlic and adobe. Diners can satisfy their dietary preferences by pairing the mofongo with different toppings, including gandules made with pigeon peas, pumpkin, and spices, if you want to keep it vegan.
Puñeta Cocktail
The restaurant’s signature cocktail is a blend of ingredients that Puerto Rico is famous for: rum, guava and fresh lime. It also features a guava piña pitorro that was developed especially for Qui Qui. “Pitorro is a sugarcane Puerto Rican moonshine,” Mendez explains. “We collaborated with a rum distilling company in Maryland called Puerto Rico Distillery. This is the third year collaborated with them and we just love the product.” The cheerful pink-hued beverage is fresh, fruity and boozy — a perfect complement to any dish.
Qui Qui is open Thursdays and Fridays starting at 5 p.m. and Saturday and Sundays at 12 noon.
