Seven Reasons, 14th Street’s pan-Latin eatery, snagged the top spot on Esquire’s 2019 list of best new restaurants in the country.

Co-owner and executive chef Enrique Limardo opened Seven Reasons in April, blending his experience as a traveling private chef with his Venezuelan heritage. The restaurant, which The Washington Post named D.C.’s best restaurant of 2019, features a tri-level dining room with greenery draping down the building’s exposed brick walls. Offering an extensive mix of Spanish, Mediterranean, and Latin American fare, the menu offers several portion sizes, ranging from “snacks” like the cheese arepitas to larger dishes, like a 24-ounce local pork chop. 

Esquire food critic Jeffrey Gordinier opens his review by introducing Seven Reasons as a restaurant “ten minutes north of the White House and its sour, divisive rhetoric.” (Grumbling, we turned to our fact checker, Google Maps, to find that a drive from the White House to Seven Reasons on 14th and W would take 9-20 minutes, depending on the time of day.)

Gordinier describes the restaurant as turning out “a riot of flavors” when he gave Seven Reasons its first-place ranking. “More-is-more extravagance is what makes Seven Reasons a fiesta you never want to stop,” he writes.

Two other D.C. establishments made Gordinier’s annual list: Kith and Kin, The Wharf’s Afro-Caribbean restaurant came in at No. 9. Because Kwame Onwuachi’s restaurant opened in 2017, it’s a bit of a stretch for a best new restaurant list, but Gordinier writes it would be “a travesty not to raise a toast to the audacity and originality of his cooking down by the Wharf. Nowhere else in America are you going to find a menu that so confidently and autobiographically nods to Nigeria, New Orleans, and the Caribbean.”

Green Almond Pantry, a small, new-age cafe and market on 9th Street, rounded out the list at No. 21. Chef Cagla Onal, Gordinier writes, treats “each salad and dip and Mediterranean sandwich and roasted vegetable with the sort of loving care you’d expect from l’Arpège in Paris.”

This isn’t the first time D.C. has received a nod from Esquire. Del Mar, a Spanish restaurant also at The Wharf, made the cut on the magazine’s 2018 list of best new restaurants, and in 2016, Esquire named Bloomingdale dive Showtime Lounge one of the best bars in the country.

Other publications have had their eyes on D.C. this year as well, but mostly on eternally popular bagelry Call Your Mother, which was named one of the country’s best new restaurants this summer by Eater and Bon Appetit.