Sagrada, 1901 14th St., NW (second floor)
Knead Hospitality co-founder Michael Reginbogin—whose restaurants include Mi Vida, Succotash, Gatsby, and others—has always considered himself a straight-laced kind of guy. He was always a good student, didn’t party or drink to excess, and never touched drugs.
So when a neighbor friend suggested over dinner a couple years ago that he try psychedelic mushrooms, he at first dismissed it. But as she shared her experiences and encouraged him to try something where he didn’t know the outcome for a change, he decided why not?
“I’ve never really truly been able to live in the moment,” Reginbogin says. “I’m one of those people that will go on vacation, and I’m already planning on what I need to do when I get back home.”
Reginbogin ended up shelling out $4,000 for a facilitator to guide him through his first mushroom experience at a therapy-driven overnight retreat in the scenic hills of Bedford, New York. The “sacred medicine,” as he calls it, led him to a forest clearing with ferns and trees around him and into the center of a dark, silent, calm ocean. He could touch sound.
“For the very first time in my entire life, I felt what it feels like truly to be at complete serenity,” he says.
That journey—Reginbogin doesn’t like the word “trip”—and others since are the inspiration for Knead’s newest restaurant, Sagrada, which opened March 5. Located in the upstairs dining room of Mi Vida on 14th Street, the eight-course meal aims to evoke the experience of psychedelic mushrooms—but without the magic mushrooms, which can’t be legally bought and sold in DC (though possession has been decriminalized).
“It’s more about the storytelling,” Reginbogin explains. “Every tasting menu that I know has some sort of a storyline or a narrative attached to it. This is no different.”
The $111 seasonal menu, rooted in Mexican cuisine, will have plant-based and “flexitarian” options, with alcoholic and non-alcoholic pairings available. The immersive experience unfolds in various “chapters” that reflect the ceremony and stages of a psychedelic journey. Reginbogin is holding back some details—he wants diners to experience it for themselves—but expect a “cleansing of space” with a traditional sage smudging ceremony as well as a “heart opening ceremony.”
And then there’s ingestion of the “sacred medicine,” which in this case means shiitake, huitlacoche, and lion’s mane mushrooms transformed into a trio of canapés. One is a sweet corn sope topped with mushroom “caviar” made from spherified mushroom stock.
Reginbogin says the menu involves shifts in temperature, representing what you might experience “as the medicine starts to move through your body and your temperature aligns.” There’s also a course called “sacred geometry,” based on an experience where he saw everything in geometry. “I would recognize you. I would recognize that chair and everything. But it was all in fractals,” he explains, noting how the hexagon shape is found all over nature in everything from snowflakes to beehives.
Reginbogin says that he’s not promoting that others try psilocybin, the psychedelic compound in mushrooms. But he is trying to “shift the narrative” away from the idea of college kids tripping on shrooms to something more mainstream with legitimate healthcare potential. A portion of the proceeds will go to Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, which is doing research on psilocybin’s effects on addictions, Alzheimer’s, anxiety, PTSD, and more.
“It’s in the media. It’s in the news. It’s in popular shows. It’s having a renaissance. It’s there. And I think it’s going to be interesting to experience this from a culinary standpoint,” Reginbogin says.
Sagrada is the first step in a larger goal for Knead Hospitality to enter the wellness market. Reginbogin says his psilocybin experience led him to other kind of alternative therapies, which he never would have dreamed of being interested in before.
Now, he and partner Jason Berry are looking to open some kind of day spa or retreat offering highly customized treatments and therapies, whether it’s massages, sound baths, Reiki energy healing, ecstatic dance therapy, or something else. Reginbogin envisions a retreat center and hotel in the Virginia countryside that might also offer horseback riding and various food and beverage concepts on the property. He says they’re going to start looking for properties this year.
Again, no psychedelics would be involved.
“We’re taking our cues from maybe the psychedelic space or the journey space in terms of how we facilitate or how we add ceremonial elements to things, but it has nothing to do with psychedelics,” Reginbogin says. “It’s immersing yourself in a true wellness space.”
Jessica Sidman covers the people and trends behind D.C.’s food and drink scene. Before joining Washingtonian in July 2016, she was Food Editor and Young & Hungry columnist at Washington City Paper. She is a Colorado native and University of Pennsylvania grad.
