Nicole Jones is an iconic figure in the Alexandria food scene. In 2017, she put her best foot forward with Stomping Ground and its comforting biscuits. She’s a partial owner of Bagel Uprising and opened Mae’s Market, named for her culinarily influential great-grandmother, in August 2021. Filled with Jones’ favorite things, from olive oils and salts to wines and ice cream sandwiches, in October 2022, it expanded to become home to Virginia’s Darling, her wine bar and bistro.
It’s a neighborhood joint that doesn’t look like one. White flowers festoon the ceiling, and purple neon blares the name of the restaurant along one wall, a jab at a too-cutesy article that, years ago, dubbed Jones with the title. But Virginia’s Darling is anything but quaint. The restaurant is Jones’ chance to show off the fact that she has serious French chops, honed at Maryland’s now-shuttered L’Academie de Cuisine and the likes of DC’s Blue Duck Tavern. “I left and they got a Michelin star, of course,” she jokes.
The menu changes not just with seasons, but by what the restaurant’s small, local purveyors are offering each week. On a recent bill of fare, that meant grilled housemade bread with salty cultured butter, classic steak tartare served winkingly with a side of Lay’s potato chips, and a rustic pork-and-rabbit terrine with yuzu marmalade. And that’s just to start.
Wines are uniformly from companies that are either woman-owned or woman-run. Jones’ current favorite bottle is called “What Will the Women Drink?,” a bold blend from Purcellville’s Walsh Family Wine that refutes the concept that females prefer sweeter, lighter flavors. “It’s an embodiment of what we’re trying to do. It flies in the face of the idea that women eat a particular way or cook a particular way or drink in a particular way,” says Jones.
With a largely female team and an increasingly female roster of suppliers, Jones says she’s delighted to be creating an old-school neighborhood feeling at her newest restaurant. “Coming off the heels of
COVID and all that lack of connection, this feels like a love affair again. It feels really good.” 277 S. Washington St., Alexandria
This story originally ran in our February issue. For more stories like this, subscribe to Northern Virginia Magazine.
