By Stefanie Gans
Duck breast in a chili-plum sauce over polenta. Dirty chicken bites. Salmon with succotash and celery puree.
This is what Wesleigh Lin and his fiance ordered at Malones of Manassas. Lin, 27, had heard the restaurant was looking for a new chef and wanted to check out the place, the food, the scene.
“I remember sitting down and looking around. It was a busy Friday night, and it looked like a good place to work,” says Lin. Because Lin used to live in Manassas and had worked at multiple restaurants in town—City Square Cafe, Java Roo (closed), Center Street Grille (closed) and Panino (closed)—he says, “I knew a lot of the staff already.”
Lin told a few people he was interested in the job, so the owner, Kevin Malone, dropped by his table.
A month later Lin was hired as executive chef. The last Saturday of January was his first day in the kitchen.
The late night menu, which is served in the newly opened upstairs bar area, and the dessert menu are the first targets of Lin’s changes. A new slew of small plates include pulled pork on masa chips, or “individual nachos,” explains Lin; lollipop wings in a jalapeno-sweet chili emulsion; and housemade mini-burrata (about an inch-long) with a salad of capicola, cherry tomatoes and arugula.
New sweets include an apple tart, vanilla panna cotta, citrus cheesecake and a brioche bread pudding. Lin picked up pastry duties while working at Charlie Palmer, his most recent gig, and enjoys dessert-making unlike many chefs.
Later this month, Lin will release the rest of his new menu, which he describes as “progressive, contemporary American.” Or rather, to quote one of his mentors, “simple food but really, really fucking nice.” An item he’s thinking about is an oxtail fettuccine with housemade noodles. Says Lin, “I didn’t learn to make pasta in Manassas [at Panino] so I could come back and buy it.”
Leaning on his time at Charlie Palmer, Lin is looking for a few cuts of steak, including a flat iron, and hopes to bring in aged steaks as well. A deboned, skin-on Cornish game hen with wild rice, celery root puree and a rosemary jus is also being considered.
Lin leads a team of seven, and with a renewed emphasis on Malones’ catering service and an eventual restaurant expansion, he hopes to bring in a butcher and a pasta-maker/baker. His goal is to get “more flavors out of the same plate” for something “more romantic.” / Malones of Manassas, 9329 Main St., Manassas
