Los Cuates

Los Cuates at 1564 Wisconsin Avenue NW is a Mexican restaurant on the upper Wisconsin commercial block, in the section between the boutique cluster and the Delhi Belly restaurant at 1560. The Mexican restaurant format at this address serves the residential Georgetown and Glover Park communities that use the upper Wisconsin Avenue for their neighborhood dining, providing the casual Mexican food that the neighborhood’s populations have long established demand for.

The Mexican restaurant menu at Los Cuates covers the preparations that the Mexican-American restaurant tradition has made standard in American casual dining: the tacos, both in the flour tortilla and the corn tortilla format; the enchiladas, which wrap corn tortillas around a filling and bake them in the chile sauce; the burritos, in the full-size flour tortilla format; and the combination plates that allow the customer to compose a varied meal from several preparations. The rice and beans that accompany the entrees in the Mexican restaurant tradition are not afterthoughts but integral components whose quality reflects the kitchen’s care with the entire plate.

The margarita program at a Wisconsin Avenue Mexican restaurant serves the neighborhood dining culture’s appetite for the cocktail that the Mexican restaurant format has established as the most natural beverage accompaniment. The classic lime margarita, the strawberry margarita, and the frozen margarita serve the different preferences within the customer base that the upper Wisconsin neighborhood generates.

Upper Wisconsin Avenue has a residential character that the tourist-facing lower Wisconsin commercial blocks do not have, which means the customers at Los Cuates are primarily Georgetown residents and the students from Georgetown University who live in the surrounding off-campus blocks rather than the tourist population of the main commercial zone.

Hours run from 11am most days and noon on Sunday. The upper Wisconsin Avenue Mexican restaurant market is sustained by the neighborhood’s residential density and the consistent demand for casual Mexican food that the Georgetown and Glover Park communities maintain year-round. The margarita program is the social lubricant that converts the casual Mexican dinner into the destination dining occasion: the pitcher of margaritas shared at the table makes the dinner more social than the individual entree consumption alone, and the mid-week margarita dinner is a Georgetown residential tradition that the upper Wisconsin Avenue restaurants have served for decades. Los Cuates at 1564 Wisconsin serves this tradition with the menu and the format that the neighborhood expects: the combination plates that give the customer two or three preparations at once, the freshly made tortilla chips with salsa that arrive before the food, and the unhurried dinner service that the residential Georgetown customer uses for the weeknight dinner out. The name Los Cuates is Mexican slang for the twins or the pair, suggesting a partnership origin story. The restaurant’s upper Wisconsin position makes it an informal local Mexican option for the Glover Park and upper Georgetown communities. Hours run from 11am most days and noon Sunday.