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Chef Jennifer Carroll is bound for D.C.

She is opening a French-Mediterranean restaurant with fellow "Top Chef" castmate Mike Isabella. But first, she and her boyfriend will test the concept outside the Beltway.

    by Michael Klein
    Published 

Jennifer Carroll, the sassy, Northeast Philly-bred Top Chef regular, is moving her base to the Washington, D.C.-northern Virginia area.

Her Top Chef castmate Mike Isabella, on an expansion streak, has signed Carroll as chef for his forthcoming French-Mediterranean restaurant Requin, which is to open in mid-2017 at The Wharf, part of the Southwest Waterfront redevelopment in Washington.

In the interim, Carroll will run a Requin pop-up restaurant, to open this October a half-hour away in northern Virginia, at the Mosaic District in Merrifield.

Requin - which means "shark" - seems like a natural idea for Carroll, who spent years in New York working for Eric Ripert at Le Bernardin before she moved home to become chef at 10 Arts at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. After leaving 10 Arts nearly four years ago, Carroll spent time catering, making appearances, and trying to open a restaurant in New York City.

Requin, for which she will run the kitchen day to day, is "not a purely seafood restaurant," Carroll said, "It's coastal [French] food - a mix of everything." Menu will include grilled or a la plancha whole fish, wood-fired shellfish and seafood roasts, dry aged, bone-in ribeye, and a classic cheese cart.

After the pop-up wraps, perhaps in late December, the space will be converted to a location of Isabella's homestyle Greek restaurant, Kapnos Kouzina.
And Isabella is getting a two-fer: Billy Riddle, Carroll's boyfriend and the outgoing sous chef at Townsend, will become the Virginia location's chef de cuisine. (Isabella's first Kapnos Kouzina will open this fall in Bethesda, Md., and a third is due in early 2017 in College Park, Md.)
When her pop-up ends, Carroll said, she will begin refining Requin's concept and working with Isabella on his empire.

Carroll said Isabella has been after her to move to Washington, "but it's never been the right project or the right time. When the Wharf became available and he came to me with the idea of doing a French-Mediterranean restaurant along the water, it seemed like everything was falling into place."

She says the Requin pop-up will be "convivial - more of a fun, casual, neighborhood place," open for dinner only Tuesday to Saturday with a full bar, "not fine dining, but with high-end service."

At the pop-up, she said, Riddle will be her chef de cuisine. After that, they will work separately. "We don't want to jeopardize our relationship," she said.

"It's bittersweet leaving Philadelphia and all my family and friends, but I love D.C., too," she said. "At the end of the day, you know I'll always be a Philly girl."

    MK
    Michael Klein