El Quincho, an Argentina-inspired asador and Spanish tapas restaurant, has gone from pop-up to local favorite in just a few years. Marisa Pettit, co-founder and sommelier, engages her deep knowledge of wine and spirits to complement Chef Maximiliano Pettit’s food, giving visitors a full, curated experience.
On a typical evening, the open-air restaurant weaves a spell, with cicadas humming in the background and the smells from the grill giving a hint of what’s to come. Chef Maxi can be found in the screened-in kitchen cooking over a fire, while Marisa goes table to table, guiding diners towards wines or cocktails that will marry well with their food.
It’s not just the food and wine that pair well here—the two proprietors have a passion for working together.
“He came out of retirement to marry me and go to work,” Marisa says, smiling.
“I was personal chef for an actor, so this was … different work. I had a lot of free time then, to exercise, travel. Not so much now,” says Chef Maxi, “But it has been great.”
Their goal is to bring open-fire cooking to a larger audience using flavors from Spain, Argentina, and other places where Chef Maxi worked and traveled in his laudable culinary career. To this end, he and Marisa are expanding El Quincho to Adega Vinho, a family- owned winery in Stonewall.
“They’re just great people, really cool energy,” Chef Maxi says of Andy and Elena Bilger, who run the winery along with Head Winemaker Michael Bilger. “I like the energy of the space that they have out there, too, so it was kind of an honor to be asked to partner with them.”
They know that Adega Vinho’s award-winning wines pair brilliantly with El Quincho’s food. “[Michael’s] style of wines, I really love,” says Marisa, “I love Portuguese varietals. I think they do really well here.”
The new venture will be called El Quincho Al Paso, meaning “El Quincho on the go.” The first step will be using the food truck that’s already on-site to serve handheld food like empanadas and brochettes. Meanwhile, the winery will be building a restaurant and kitchen with open-fire cooking, which they hope to open in the new year. The Pettits hope to not just serve wine-country tourists there, but to create the kind of community they have in Fredericksburg. With their winning combination of fire, food, wine, passion, and partnership, they’re sure to succeed.