We’re a month in, and there’s already a few recurring themes gaining traction this year: coffee-to-cocktail cafes, local chainlets and the Amazon-induced Crystal City restaurant boom.
Announced this week: The Freshman, from Spider Kelly’s Nick Freshman, will open in 2020 as an all-day cafe in Crystal City in the former Noodles & Company location. “When Amazon announced that they were coming to town, I knew that the opportunity to be part of this story was just too good to pass up,” Freshman said in a statement. Also coming to Crystal City: Santa Rosa Taqueria (there’s one in DC) and a to-be-named fried chicken shop (there will also be one in DC) from Top Chef Spike Mendelsohn.
The all-day cafe idea isn’t new of course, Northside Social has been the base of operations for wine drinkers typing on laptops for years, and duplicated the brand for Falls Church last summer. Though not the 18-hour concept, Inca Social, open for a mere two weeks, is already planning for two more locations. The far reaches of Loudoun County is in on the trend too: Petite Loulou (which has a second location in DC) fills crepes during the day and sears steak frites at night.
Junction Bakery & Bistro has played with its format since it opened in the summer of 2016. It’s always served avocado-slathered toasts and everything-seed croissants. It once served a full-service, sit-down dinner. Then it stopped. Then it served counter-service dinner. Then it stopped.
Dinner is now back, and will play to the Del Ray scene: family-style meals (dine-in or to-go) of roasted chicken and fingerling potatoes or pot roast and roasted vegetables. Those dishes are available as individual portions, as well. The lunch menu will now go through dinner, and at dinner, there’s a handful of new items, like a Thai coconut red curry soup with vermicelli noodles. Drinks include craft beers on draft, Italian wines and featured cocktails.
The relaunching of dinner by chef James Duke (formerly of The Salt Line, 1789 and Neighborhood Restaurant Group), debuting Feb. 7, is also a test run for the two new Junctions set to open this fall.
“Customers were asking when we’re going to open for dinner,” says owner Noe Landini (of Landini Brothers, Fish Market and Pop’s Old Fashioned Ice Cream), about the Alexandria location, but it was also about wanting the original location to “run in tandem with other Junctions.”
One is set for Capitol Hill in September (238 Massachusetts Ave., NE,) and another in Chevy Chase, Maryland in The Collection shopping strip (5471 Wisconsin Ave., Chevy Chase) in November. The Junctions will mostly be replicates, except the two new locations will have a full bar where guests can sit for full service. Or as Landini puts it, “if you want to go lone wolf” you can sit at the bar, eat eggs and “do email.”
News, events, etc.
Like everyone else in the Eastern and Midwestern United States shivering from that damn polar vortex, the team behind De Clieu Coffee is done with winter, and thus, presented its spring menu in January. [Facebook]
Eater launched a newsletter, Add to Cart, dedicated to shopping for kitchen tools and restaurant-approved gear and it’s pretty great. [Add to Cart]
Go vegan. Get Beyonce tickets. [Reuters]
Mississippi-based, national restaurant chain Newk’s Eatery lands in Sterling. [The Burn]
Instagram-worthy is now a listicle category for pizza, and Arlington’s Pupatella makes the cut. [Virginia is for Lovers]
#MeToo: A chef in the city’s restaurant scene continued to cook in high-profile kitchens after a conviction of sexual assaults the judge deemed “dramatic gratuitous violence.” He left a trail of traumatized women, many of them coworkers. [Washington Post]
