Laughter rings through the brick-and-cork upper level of Vermilion. It’s a jovial night at a restaurant that, for a time, lacked that excitement.
Amid the pandemic, the Alexandria locavore staple closed along with its peers, and it remained shuttered until the summer of 2022. At the time, I gave the restaurant a below-average two-and-a-half stars, noting its “unreliable service and small, expensive portions of uninspiring dishes.”
Two years later, Neighborhood Restaurant Group reinstalled chef-partner Tony Chittum, who called the Old Town kitchen home 11 years ago. “Vermilion was a great point in my career, a great memory for me,” he says. He still runs the kitchen at Iron Gate in DC, too, but the Mount Vernon resident says that he’s excited to try new things and build on his connections with local farmers and vendors.
He returned with a pair of menus: one for the more formal upstairs and one for the gastropub downstairs. “At points along the way, we were pushed to being a little more refined. I want Vermilion to be a place I want to stop in for a drink and a snack and not have a white tablecloth experience, but we also want to offer that,” Chittum says.
One thing that diners will find both upstairs and downstairs is Bettie’s Buns, yeast rolls based on a family recipe from Chittum’s wife’s grandmother. The liberally salted trio of buns is presented in cast iron with whipped sorghum butter topped with pickled chiles.
The rest of the offerings change regularly. Downstairs, expect to find the Chef’s Butter Burger beneath a layer of melted cave-aged cheddar. Upstairs, we’re already hoping for a return of the butter-based scallops, served over a rich shell-bean stew with balls of fried scrapple and spicy braised kale. For now, it’s gone from the menu, as other seasonal eats, like rabbit, take over. But wherever you sit and whatever you order, the ingredients will be regional and the meal will be filled with joy.
1120 King St., Alexandria
Feature image by Jeff Heeney
This story originally ran in our August issue. For more stories like this, subscribe to Northern Virginia Magazine.
