According to restaurateur Matt Sloan, his late great-grandfather Anton “Tony” Schabas made a mean rye bread. It was so good, in fact, that he says John F. Kennedy requested it at his inauguration. Matt and Tony’s All Day Kitchen + Bar ties the stories of the Austrian-bred baker with his great-grandson, a restaurant veteran who has opened or managed restaurants for Alexandria Restaurant Partners, Daikaya, and Matchbox Food Group. “It’s been a longtime dream to open a restaurant with great food and even better hospitality,” Sloan said in a press release, noting that Tony, too, was known for his warm welcomes.
But back to house-baked goodness. Small plates on the opening menu include a bread basket filled with scallion-cheddar biscuits and breakfast bread (currently orange-cranberry-pecan, but Sloan says selections will “switch up”), along with honey butter and jam. At lunchtime, the patty melt is served on marble rye in a nod to Tony–the Caesar salad even has rye croutons. But the pastry chef was as famous for his desserts as his breads. The Sacher torte on the menu is named for Tony, and heeds tradition with its chocolate cake base augmented with apricot jam.
Tony’s opens at 8 a.m. each day (except for the restaurant’s day off, Monday) and remains open until 9 p.m. most days, but doesn’t close until 10 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. That’s a lot of time to cover, but Sloan’s chef, Todd Miller, has created a menu that takes diners from morning to night with handcrafted comfort fare, ““like Grandma or Mom used to make,” he says. The all-day breakfast options range from Scotch eggs made with chicken chorizo and chimichurri mayo, to cornflake-crusted French toast, to shrimp over white cheddar grits.
In the evening, breakfast options compress to make room for big plates like country fried chicken, fisherman’s stew, and balsamic-drizzled turkey meatloaf. And as for Tony’s famous rye, while Sloan says the team hasn’t yet perfected the recipe, it will definitely be baked in-house in the future.
1501 Mt. Vernon Ave., Alexandria
Feature image courtesy Matt & Tony’s
For more stories like this, subscribe to our Food newsletter.
