There can be joy in heading home, which is what the Seven Reasons crew appears to be doing with their latest restaurant, Joy, an ode to Venezuelan food and greater Latinx culture and opened in Chevy Chase last month.

Joy marks further growth for the team, which opened Seven Reasons in 2019 along D.C.’s U Street corridor to have it named the country’s best new restaurant by Esquire. The group then debuted a fine dining restaurant in the West End called Imperfecto that clinched a Michelin star. With Joy, they expand outside the city for the first time and into one of the wealthiest communities in the region — and the U.S.

But its owners want the new restaurant to be more casual than Seven Reasons, with its $90 per person prix-fixe menu, according to Joy general manager Rafael Dolande. The 150-seat restaurant, located at The Collection outdoor shopping center on Wisconsin Avenue, opened for dinner in late October and more recently added brunch. There are plans to add happy hour specials, but they may not need them to draw in the after-work crowd: people in work attire were already crowding the bar and chatting with colleagues at the end of a recent weekday.

The restaurant has a vibrant color palette — the bar is bright red, as are some of the midcentury-modern wood chairs, and a multicolored yarn installation covers part of the ceiling. Greenery and light fixtures in a range of organic shapes soften the look. Energetic Spanish-language music is intended to make the dining room feel inviting for everyone, says Dolande. There is no dress code. People can come for business, on a date, or even after the gym, he adds.

“Joy’s going to be a little more fun and little more sexy, a little more casual,” Dolande says, “Joy gives you a lot of options.” They also want it to be family friendly, with a kids menu that offers simple fare like a cheeseburger ($23) or “fancy chicken fingers” ($19).

For adults, the restaurant offers modern Latin flavors via shareable plates. Starters include tequeños, Venezuelan snacks that resemble cheese sticks ($23) and the lighter ceviche limeño, a Peruvian seafood dish, for the same price. There are also several veggie-centric options, including a take on a classic caesar salad made with watercress ($19) and the hearty tomate a caballo, a roasted tomato stuffed with green rice and shishito pepper puree, and topped with a fried egg ($21).

The mains and “XL” sections of the menu feature larger portions that range in price from $28 to $130. One of the house favorites is the short rib sandwich ($65). The meat cooks for 20 hours, and is inspired by a traditional Venezuelan dish, asado negro, which translates to dark roast beef. Joy’s short rib rests on ciabatta bread and is paired with smoked cheddar and fried shallots. If you’ve got room for dessert, options include soft serve ice cream in flavors like almond vanilla and ube, as well as coconut flan.

The dishes come from the mind of Enrique Limardo, who was born in Caracas, Venezuela and is known for offering diverse flavors and culinary traditions from South America. He tells Eater he wanted to embrace “more traditional dishes from South America” at Joy compared to his other restaurants. A majority of Joy’s staff are Venezuelan like Limardo (and Dolande), a server, Francisco, tells DCist during our visit. He too was born in Caracas but has lived in D.C. for over a decade. He believes people were drawn to the restaurant because of Limardo’s influence.

Several of Joy’s staff members expressed great pride in showcasing their home country’s food. It’s not lost on some of them that people might associate their country with turmoil. Venezuela has garnered national attention in recent months because of the influx of migrants who have come to the U.S., including to the D.C. region, due to the country’s economic and political instability. But the D.C. region was a top destination for Venezuelans before that, people from there represented 1% of the local population between 2014 and 2018.

“Venezuelans help each other to survive,” explains Francisco, who declined to give his last name for privacy reasons. “We really trust each other,” he adds.

Even the drinks give a nod to the country. Beverage Director Carlos Boada says his cocktail menu has three different types of Venezuelan rums. The Seven Reasons Old Fashioned, for example, uses Santa Teresa 1796, which is Venezuelan rum. But he categorizes Joy as Latin American fusion and hopes patrons get curious as to where each ingredient derives from.

“I didn’t want to focus only on Venezuela,” he says of his cocktail menu. “I wanted to focus on all of South America. So I have a ingredients from Peru, ingredients from Bolivia, from Colombia. I wanted to do a little bit of everything.”

Boada, who’s worked in the restaurant industry for over a decade, says he looks to complement his drinks with Limardo’s dishes. “He’s a guy that puts 40 ingredients into a dish and makes it delicious. I want to put 12, 15, 20 ingredients into a glass,” Boada says. He suggests pair the Passion Over Perfection, a Mexican tequila-based cocktail that’s citrusy and smoky, with tomate a caballo or little chicken con esquites, which translates to “with corn.”

“We’re proud of who we are,” says Boada, who’s also Venezuelan. “We just bring something approachable to everyone, but at the same time being true to our self, bringing our own flavors, our own visions.”

Joy is located at 5471 Wisconsin Ave. in Chevy Chase. It is open Monday through Thursday, 5-9 p.m., Friday, 5 p.m. – 10 p.m.;  on Saturday, 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. for brunch and 5 p.m. – 1o p.m. for dinner; and on Sunday, 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. for brunch and 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. for dinner.