701 chef started with Jamaican chicken 

When Alexander Powell was growing up in Jamaica with his three brothers and three
sisters, he was always in the kitchen, watching his mother cook. “She makes the best
chicken!” says the now-executive chef at 701. “But she absolutely didn’t eat meat — she never liked chicken! She’s almost a vegetarian.” Powell sounds amazed.

These days, he’s also a fervent fan of his wife dna’s cooking. “I love my wife’s cooking. She will urprise me with all these Jamaican dishes.” He auses and considers a favorite. “I love her curried oat.” He lengthens the vowel on the verb in pleasure t the memory of its taste.

So what does Powell, who arrived in Washington rom New York City this year, cook for his patrons at 701?

He sits erect and alert in an upholstered chair at a risp linen-clothed table in the calm and elegant traw-yellow dining room, empty after lunchtime ervice. This is a space for thoughtful eaters, not oisy celebrants unaware of what they have speared t the end of their well-designed forks.

I try to represent American global cuisine. I like o keep it uncomplicated, let the ingredients shine hrough. My dishes don’t use a lot of cream. They re very light and simple.”

His training, he reveals, “was basically a lot of rench-Asian influence.” He acquired the bones and tructure of it under the guidance of New York luminary ean-Georges Vongerichten.

Powell arrived in the Big Apple from Jamaica in 991 to study restaurant management at the New ork Restaurant School (now the Art Institute of ew York City).

“The school places you [in internships],” Powell xplains. And he was sent, he remembers with astonishment, o JoJo, Vongerichten’s renowned New York istro. “I was so lucky. There were 22 students, but nly one JoJo.”

It was the beginning of a long association with ongerichten, and a crucial element in his culinary ducation. “School taught me the basics. But all the training was in the restaurants ... .”

At that time, Vongerichten was running back and forth between JoJo and Vong, the French-Asian restaurant he had opened next. “But we saw him every morning. He was absolutely watching; he tasted everything you did.” Powell’s eyebrows rise and he
shakes his head. “There was a lot of tension in the kitchen — it all had to be perfect.”

After his internship, Powell left to work at Picholine on the Upper West Side, under Terrance Brennan. But two years later, Vongerichten, who was then opening Jean Georges, his four-star restaurant in the Trump Tower, called him to come back to JoJo’s
kitchen. In 1997, Powell was promoted to sous chef, then, two years later, to chef de cuisine.

When business in the restaurant sector dropped following the horror of Sept. 11, 2001, Powell was sent, “for a year or so,” to the Bahamas to run Dune Restaurant, managed by Vongerichten, at the One & Only Ocean Club in Nassau. He stayed five years.

“The Bahamas are so laid back and beautiful,” he says with a grin. But by early 2007 he was looking for a new direction, and he came back to New York with his wife and sons, 8 and 22. Not surprisingly, perhaps, after the calm of the Caribbean, “I couldn’t deal with it. There are a lot of opportunities in New York, but I decided I wanted to change.”

An ad in the paper offered an opening at 701, so Powell and his wife packed the boys into the car and drove down to the capital.

And they stayed. They live on Connecticut Avenue, close to the restaurant.

“It’s perfect, I don’t drive!” Powell says with glee. “I love that!”

That he can walk there is a plus, given that he says he spends as much time as possible every day in his kitchen. He’s saving up a thorough exploration of other capital restaurants for when he is truly settled. But he has already determined from the few opportunities he’s had, “It’s a very great city in terms of food.”

When he isn’t at 701, he’s playing or watching basketball with his younger son. “It’s my passion — similar to cricket,” he says. As a good son of cricket-crazy Jamaica, he has hopes of discovering a cricket game in the District. “I used to find cricket in New York.”

Once or twice a year he goes back to Jamaica with Edna to take part in fundraising dinners for Healthcare International. “They provide medical services and donate used computers to school. We go on at least one two-week trip to lend a hand” — and, in his free moments there, to get back to feasts of jerk chicken and curried goat cooked islandstyle.

701 Restaurant & Bar (202-93-0701; http://www.701restaurant.com) is located at 701 Pennsylvania Ave NW. Main courses cost $15 to $33.

This article by Julia Watson first appeared in the NorthWest Current. 

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