Russel Cunningham - chef of Dupont Grille

After years abroad, a life in Dupont 

You have to wonder what the staff at Dupont Grille thinks about chef Russel Cunningham’s living arrangement. The tall Texan with a blond buzz cut lives directly across the street from the restaurant, where he is executive chef.

In fact, standing in one kitchen, he can stare directly into the other. So if a member of the wait staff made a gaffe or a crisis erupted at a table, he could be there in seconds.

Most of the time, though, he’s behind the scenes in the Dupont Grille kitchen supervising the cooking, not hanging out at home with his two housemates. He’s seldom free, in warmer weather, to fill the dumbwaiter that goes all the way up to the house’s roof with food and beer, or, in the chilly seasons, to unwind in the Jacuzzi or sauna. The house, which used to belong to George Stephanopoulos, is pretty cool for a group of single guys.

Even though Cunningham cooks for up to 16 hours a day, he likes to cook for his housemates, too. He admits he’s made the mistake of picking dishes to impress them — it doesn’t pay off. “They’re intimidated to cook for me. I get that a lot,” he said. “I would enjoy whatever it was, having someone cook for me.”

But the food setup in the house seems pretty relaxed. He and his housemates all eat a little bit of everything, he said, including junk food. They also don’t depend on him to make the meals. “We all cook and clean after ourselves.”

His mom would be proud of him, domestically and professionally. She’s had some skill with food herself, having taught cooking when the family lived in Australia.

“That’s where I first got into food,” Cunningham said. “My mom taught cooking to battered and abused women at a mission run by Catholic priests. She came from a big family where they all had to learn how to cook at a young age.”

Cunningham’s own blended family (his father already had children when he married his
mother) was large as well, with six children. “We had to tag along to the mission. We sat in on some of her classes.”

When his parents divorced, he moved back to Texas, where he was born, with his mother. (His father had been in the military, leading to the stint in Australia. Before that they lived in Okinawa, Japan.) He went to high school in Abilene, Texas, and then to the University of Texas at Austin. “I did two years engineering, but I didn’t really like it. I didn’t really want the desk job it was going to end up being. So I found a school in Austin, the Texas Culinary Academy, and did a two-yearcourse there. And I’ve worked my way up since.”

The working up has come primarily through hotels and largescale banqueting services. Now he’s running the entire culinary side of Jurys Washington Hotel on Dupont Circle, of which Dupont Grille is the street-level restaurant, open to an outside patio in the summer. He was working at convention centers in Miami Beach and Ocean City when the powers-that-be needed a chef at the Washington Convention Center.

When he left the convention center to move to the Dupont Grille, he didn’t want to cook a fine-dining menu. The dining room is a laid-back, no-pretensions kind of space. But if what he serves is relaxed food, there nevertheless is serious thought behind it.

Ask Cunningham about his Braised Beef Shortrib, on the menu as a starter, his
Natural Angus Burger, the Braised Lamb Shank or any of the choices “From the Grille,” and he’ll talk about buying meat that has been raised humanely. “And we get all wild-caught fish where possible,” he said. The smoked duck and wild smoked salmon he smokes himself. Game excites him. There’s a venison chop on the menu, and he wants to add antelope, ostrich and venison cooked slowly to turn it into comfort food.

He is alert to seasonal changes in fresh produce, keeping an eye on local small farmers and “who is bringing in what at the time.” His own response to winter is “more stews and chilies” and the slow-braised dishes now strong on the menu. And he has paired his smoked duck with cranberries in a salad with goat cheese.

Meanwhile, when he’s not cooking or trying to gauge what’s happening across the street from his kitchen window, he’s sampling some of Washington’s ethnic restaurants. He opened a tapas restaurant once in Houston, hiring and training the staff and building the menu from the ground up. So a particular favorite is the Penn Quarter Spanish tapas restaurant Jaleo. He has tried some area Indian and Italian restaurants with enthusiasm. “And I still want to try African or Ethiopian,” he said. One day, maybe his housemates will cook him a meal, too.

Dupont Grille (202-939-9596,dupontgrille.com) is located in the Jurys Hotel, 1500 New
Hampshire Ave. NW. Main courses cost $13 to $28.

The article by Julia Watson first appeared in the NorthWest Current newspaper. Photo Bill Petros/The Current

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