Editor’s Note: Today Water & Wall announces its next pop-up: noodles. This story first appears in Northern Virginia Magazine’s Noodle cover story; the January issue will be on newsstands December 28.
By Carten Cordell
It’s Thursday: a gray, overcast sliver of November. Chef Tim Ma has a menu to craft by January, and, seemingly, the world to fit on his plate.
The owner and executive chef of Water & Wall (and Maple Ave Restaurant) has gathered his team—a culinary cabal of chefs, managers and others—to develop the restaurant’s next big idea, a lunchtime pop-up menu built for the globe’s universal food, the noodle.
“We tend to like to meld a lot of influences into cuisines,” says Ma. For the noodle pop-up “[we decided] instead of doing all ramen everywhere, which may turn some people off, let’s start to incorporate different styles of noodles.”
This presents a tall order, as almost every continent has a recognized dish built around the stringy, carb-centric staple. So Ma has gathered Water & Wall’s chef de cuisine Mike Johnson, sous chefs Adam Musselman and Juste Zidelyte, assistant general manager Margaret Perry, publicist Kyle Schmitz and director of operations (and Ma’s wife) Joey Hernandez to brainstorm a palette of creative and ambitious dishes.
Huddled around a grouping of tables just off Water & Wall’s dark veneered bar, with light rock playing through the sound system, the group riffs off each other, delving deep into different genres of pasta and possible concoctions. Ideas start flying like bullets in a Tarantino finale.
There’s talk of pho and ramen; Eastern European staples like spätzle and pierogies; balances between a litany of Asian and Italian amalgamations; and Cincinnati chili.
“I want some Ohio on the menu,” says Musselman.
“Can we call it ‘The LeBron Noodles,’” jokes Hernandez.
Johnson pitches the Spaghetti Pie, a dense take on the classic Italian dish, served by the slice.
“You actually put the noodles in a pie dish and put Bolognese on top and cheese,” he says. “When you bake it, you actually slice it, like a pie.
The table buzzes with intrigue. There’s also talk of a Reuben pasta built around a pumpernickel spätzle with Russian dressing.
“We definitely have to do something Italian,” Johnson says.
Zidelyte offers a beef stroganoff with Swedish meatballs, “Ikea-style,” the table jokes.
Then there’s talk of couscous, pan-fried pierogies in sage brown butter and the baked pasta dish dubbed Johnny Marzetti, named for the Italian restaurant in Ohio.
“It’s simple, it’s filling, it’s satisfying food,” says Musselman, making a pitch for the hearty, winter staple.
When the discussions turn into a mosh pit of creativity, Ma keeps the train on the tracks, guiding the enthusiasm without constraining it.
“We started to stretch the definition of noodle,” Ma says. “A perfect noodle could be anything with any dough; that’s how we got into pierogi and baked mac.”
Alongside this fusillade of culinary concoctions, Water & Wall will also invite guest chefs to design a dish on the noodle menu, starting with Jonah Kim, who will open Yona, a Japanese noodle bar in Ballston this spring.
“I like the idea of collaborations,” Ma says. “For one, your staff gets to learn from a different chef. Most of my process of learning is through the cooks I get to bring to the kitchen.”
But the challenge, Ma admits, is funneling the expounding creativity of the staff into a cohesive menu, balancing the noodles the public expects with the originality it has grown to love.
“For me, sometimes, I have the chef hat, which is super fun. I have the other hat, too, where I am the owner. That’s why we involve the front of the house in all of the menu development meetings. Front of the house will tell you what sells.”
The group eventually tapers its tentative list for testing, before moving ahead with the Silk Road Noodle Pop-Up’s final menu: perogies in sage brown butter; linguine with clams, pork belly and white kimchi; cavatelli mac and cheese; beet raviolini; Vietnamese Bolognese with rice noodles; plus Kim’s soba with sous vide mushroom broth./ The noodle pop-up is from January 5th through March; Water & Wall, 3811 N. Fairfax Drive, Arlington
(January 2015)
