location_onSagrada, 1901 14th St., NW (second floor)
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My friend and I arrive at the Mexican restaurant Mi Vida on 14th Street, but we’re not here for tacos and margs. Rather, a host gives us each a chakra bracelet to “align your body’s energy centers” and cleanses us with sage. From there, we head to a low-lit upstairs lounge where the black-clad staff ladles cups of cinnamon-and-cardamom-infused cacao to “open your hearts.” We’re encouraged to set our intentions for the journey ahead. Finally seated at a table, we’re served the “sacred medicine.” Our “facilitator” tells us it has “the power to unlock the past, present, future, and so much more.”
The sacred medicine, however, is actually just a trio of canapés: sweet-corn sopes with mushroom “caviar,” shiitake-shaped tartlets, and huitlacoche empanadas. And this “journey” is a tasting menu at a new DC restaurant within a restaurant called Sagrada, which aims to evoke the experience of psychedelic mushrooms—minus any actual psychedelics.
The concept is the brainchild of Knead Hospitality cofounder Michael Reginbogin, whose restaurants include Succotash, Gatsby, and others. The restaurateur has always considered himself a pretty straight-laced guy who never touched drugs. But after hearing about a friend’s experiences a couple years ago, he ended up shelling out $4,000 for a facilitator to guide him through his first psychedelic-mushroom experience at a therapy-driven overnight retreat in the scenic hills of Bedford, New York. In his mind, he was transported 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 inspired Sagrada. The $111 eight-course Mexican menu, which offers plant-based or “flexitarian” options, unfolds in various “chapters” that aim to reflect the ceremony and stages of a psychedelic journey. One course dubbed “sacred geometry”—an avocado-and-smoked-beet tartare topped with a hexagonal charcoal tuile—is based on an experience in which Reginbogin saw everything in geometry: “I would recognize you. I would recognize that chair and everything. But it was all in fractals.”
Yes, the whole thing is a bit gimmicky, like a shroom-themed Disney ride or interactive theater, but the food itself is strongest when it leans into the experimental. I could have done without the plate containing five types of (non-psychedelic) mushrooms.
As for whether it actually evokes a real-life psilocybin experience? “No. Literally not at all,” says my friend, who has tried the real deal. There’s only so much mind expansion and consciousness awakening you can do in a restaurant. At the end of the meal, our server hands us a “request for exchange”—the check—then seems to struggle with how to stay in character. “Gratuity is included,” she adds.
This article appears in the May 2025 issue of Washingtonian.
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.
