The neighborhoods around Jeremiah Langhorne’s Blagden Alley fine dining restaurant The Dabney are well acquainted with his work, so opening a less assuming restaurant just seven minutes away was a no-brainer for the chef and his team.
Langhorne, a James Beard Award-winning chef, has a special place in his heart for the neighborhoods now housing his two restaurants: he lived nearby for seven years before the pandemic forced a move. Plus, Petite Cerise, his new French bistro and breakfast spot on 7th Street NW, has been a long time coming — the idea was conceived in 2017, and was meant to start construction in April 2020 before everything came screeching to a halt.
Still, despite what Langhorne calls a frustrating boom of French restaurants in D.C. (Le Clou, L’Avant Garde, Ellington Park Bistro, all opened in the past few months alone), the chef is thrilled to add some balance to his life with a kitchen that focuses more on established classic techniques with less pressure for creativity.
“We accidentally make things nicer than people expect them to be but that’s purely out of love for those things,” Langhorne says. “Our goal at Petite Cerise is to make an amazing place super comfortable that executes really beautiful classic and delicious French cuisine.”
The goal is to get customers to slow down and relax for a sit-down breakfast rather than grab-and-go from a fast casual eatery, a cultural difference between the U.S. and France that Langhorne noticed on his visits to Paris. He wants guests to come in for a coffee and croissant in the mornings and sit for a while before going about their day, which is why no take-out option is offered for the breakfast menu.
Petite Cerise marries a French bistro with a cafe in a 90-seat space occupying two stories in a 130-year-old building totally repurposed for the restaurant (with a corner entrance that’s an architectural rarity, he points out). Don’t fret if you’re not as much a breakfast person: the breakfast, brunch, and lunch menus share similar dishes throughout the day.
The most important meal by Langhorne’s standards, breakfast is served from 9 to 11 a.m. Tuesday through Sundays and includes classic pastries like croissants ($5) and caneles ($6) alongside a Croque Madame ($20) and omelet “à la Petite Cerise” with chanterelles and gruyere cream ($18). The brunch menu offered on the weekends includes the same items plus an assortment of small plates and mains. Lunch starts at 11:30 a.m. and starts to switch over to more of the dinner plates with the option to still order an omelet.
While Langhorne is really pushing for people to stop in for breakfast, he also boasts a dinner menu with a potato-crusted snapper ($36), a crawfish gratin he recreated from one trip to Paris ($22), and a braised chicken doused in a morel mushroom-based sauce ($39). The cocktail list includes classics like a cherry twist on a whiskey sour ($16) — perhaps a nod to the restaurant’s name, which means “little cherry” in French — or guests can choose from an extensive wine list (from $14/glass).
The star of the menu though? The giant basket of beef fat french fries served with vinegar aioli. “What’s wrong with eating a big bowl of french fries in a beautiful restaurant?” Langhorne asks.
After a busy opening week, Langhorne is hoping to settle into a routine with regulars coming in multiple times a week, with customers of all kinds feeling comfortable in the light and airy space. He notes he’s already seen parents bring their children in strollers and one family with three generations sitting at a table for breakfast last week.
The restaurant is still in its opening rush, so you may need a reservation, especially for busier times. But guests can walk in and grab a spot at the inviting bar right by the entrance. A curtain by the door separates the bright dining room with white marble on the floors and walls, plus dark green and gold accents, from any noises from 7th Street.
Langhorne credits his wife, Jenny Mooney, for the decor, which invites people to slow down and sit for a while. A snail with a cherry-shaped shell logo seen around the eatery, including on the gold clips attached to the bills, is a nod to Langhorne’s mission to get bustling Washingtonians to relax.
As to why he chose French for his second restaurant, Langhorne credits his background learning the cuisine’s fundamental principles when he first joined the food industry, but also, he holds the same values as those prioritized by French cuisine.
“It’s primarily about seasonality, the quality of ingredients, and the beautiful history of techniques,” Langhorne says. “As a chef, I wanted to make people happy. I love giving someone something delicious and getting the same joy that I got eating it.”
Finding those fresh ingredients has proved difficult because of the well-known supply chain issues borne out of the pandemic, but one menu item became a natural addition: sourdough baguettes delivered daily from Manifest Bread. The Riverdale Park bakery opened in January after developing a devoted following in the D.C. area, among which Langhorne counts himself.
Langhorne met Rick Cook, the bakery owner, back when he worked at the wine bar inside 2Amy’s, Langhorne’s favorite restaurant, and the two have remained good friends since. Making bread in house was never an option, Langhorne says, pointing to French restaurants that get their bread from a boulangerie down the street. So when the chef needed to add quality bread to the menu, he immediately thought of Cook and his attention to detail and quality.
Next, Langhorne hopes to nail down the dessert menu, which for now, consists of three regulars not yet printed on a permanent menu: a banana napoleon ($14), mango tart, or floating island dessert. But Langhorne hopes to find a pastry chef soon to grow the menu to six desserts with a cheese selection.
In the meantime, Langhorne hopes his contribution to the D.C. breakfast scene will remind the city he loves to “sit down, have a fresh squeezed glass of OJ, a fresh croissant, and a perfectly made omelet, and relax in a beautiful environment.”
