From paella to Porterhouse: Waldorf restaurant owner plans move to K Street with Claudia’s Steakhouse

Claudia Rivas feels like her entire life has been leading up to Claudia’s Steakhouse. A fourth-generation cook, the Salvadoran immigrant plans to open the Latin-tinged restaurant at 1501 K St. NW in the spring of 2015.

Her culinary roots are deep and varied. She remembers her great-grandmother cooking tamales for coffee farmers in El Salvador when she was growing up, and later, her grandmother cooking for wealthy families in Puerto Rico.

After emigrating to the U.S. in 1990, when she was 15 and enrolled at T.C. Williams High in Alexandria, she began sampling a wider range of Latin cuisines, thanks to the growth of her family.

“My uncle married a lady from Spain, and my aunt married a guy from Peru,” said Rivas, 39. “I look at the restaurant like an extension of my family. So our food has gotten a little mixed.”

She served that Latin fusion cuisine for nearly eight years at her first restaurant, Brasas Grill in Waldorf, where paella and empanadas shared billing with steaks and caesar salad. That restaurant allowed her to cut her teeth in the business, she said.

“It was one thing to cook for family, but a different thing to do it as a business,” she said.

She’s now selling Brasas to open Claudia’s in downtown D.C. with a new business partner, Charles Adams.

“It will be more of a traditional steak house theme. We will have steaks, seafood and oysters,” Rivas said. “But we will also have ceviche … and at the bar, sangria and mojitos.” The restaurant will seat 288, including 40 at the bar and a private dining room for up to 100 people.

Rivas has some pretty stiff competition in the Latin steakhouse market.elebrity chefs Jose Garces and Richard Sandoval each opened Latin steak concepts in D.C. in the past year, and Dallas-based Texas de Brazil has plans to open in Mount Vernon Triangle in the next few months.

She plans to offer live entertainment in the bar and lounge, be it flamenco dancers or a live Latin jazz band. Between that entertainment and the design — which is being done by D.C.-based GrizForm Design Architects — Rivas hopes to shake up the typical steakhouse feel.

“My brother used to work for Morton’s, and I always felt that it was very masculine, and typical,” she said. “The vision for Claudia’s is for it to be more funky.”

More than just a figurative extension of her family, Claudia’s could also become a literal family business. Rivas has three nieces: one in pastry school, another in culinary school and a third in business school.

“It would be great if my nieces can come and work with me and do what we’ve been doing for generations,” she said. “It’s just a passion. I don’t know what else I would be doing with my life if it wasn’t a restaurant.”

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