When I invited a friend to join me for dinner during Graffiato‘s opening weekend, she talked about why you shouldn’t go to a restaurant when it first opens. You’ve got to wait for it to settle in and work out its kinks, or something like that. I think she was just sad she was busy. And I, for one, did not want to miss out on what is arguably the District’s hottest opening of the year. And I’m glad that I didn’t wait: Mike Isabella’s Italian-inspired eatery is already firing on all cylinders.
Graffiato is centered around small plates — “not tapas,” as I overheard from a server correcting a neighboring table. It’s a concept Isabella mastered from his time at the helm of Zaytinya and showcased in two seasons of Top Chef. Here in the heart of Chinatown, he’s largely traded in the Moroccan, Turkish and Greek parts of his Mediterranean spice rack for the boot of Italy, spiked with his Jersey roots.
Meals begin with a bowl of chili-spiced, in-shell pistachio nuts that rival the cashews at Ray’s the Steaks. Complementary glasses of filtered still or sparkling water are dutifully refilled. After dealing with drinks, our server, in his uniform of the restaurant’s t-shirt and a pair of jeans, goes over the menu to tell us what’s not to be missed. He zealously lists just about everything.
Looking through the menu, it’s easy to see why. First of all, the menu is small and easily navigable: six vegetable starters, three salads (two of those with pork parts), six wood oven dishes (that’s where you’ll find the pepperoni sauce), five pastas, six pizzas, a smattering of local hams and cheeses and a handful of specials. Most wood oven dishes and pastas are in the $9-$12 range; a few bucks less for the veggies and salads; a little more for the pizzas. Or the kitchen will put a $45 tasting together if you don’t feel like choosing on your own.
Secondly, each bite is better than the last. The place is a real winner.
Blistered sweet peppers are a wonderfully bright and fresh start to a meal, a yellow and red swirl of color and flavor mixed with capers, smoked paprika and plenty of olive oil. You’ll want to save the traces of oil remaining on the plate for sopping up with your pizza crust. Wood-roasted mushrooms with cherry peppers brings chunks of shitakes roasted that morning atop a light, mustardy sauce. It’s hard not to start with the fresh-baked polenta bread/foccacia/flatbread basket though charging for it evokes the feel of a Euro-style dining cover charge. Five bucks for bread? You know they ain’t doin’ it like that up in Hackensack.
Inventive pizza combinations with names like Jersey Shore, White House and Pork and Beans file in and out of the oven perched in the middle of the downstairs bar. On the Countryman, black truffles complement, but don’t overwhelm the fontina cheese and duck egg — yolk broken and swirled tableside — it’s served with. The thin pies have a crispy, airy crust with a nice amount of chewiness. There’s no build-your-own option, but the menu welcomes you to let the pizzaiolo come up with something for you, and if you want to mix and match a few toppings, the accommodating staff don’t seem like the type that’s going to say no.
Also coming out of the oven are a worthwhile series of wood-fired small plates. If there’s one dish that no Top Chef-whore will do without upon a visit to Graffiato, it’s the chicken thighs with pepperoni sauce. Judge Gail Simmons raved orgasmically during the Top Chef-All Stars finale about Isabella’s creation and the erotic connotations that come with it. (Think: “Oh Mike, I want more of your pepperoni sauce.”) Paired with braised pork on the show, Isabella has decided that chicken actually works best with his pepperoni sauce. Unfortunately, the meat isn’t so much sauced as it is sitting on top of the sauce and doesn’t hold the sauce well. So it’s hard to truly get them together in one forkful, and you’ll be left with sauce on the plate. If you’re out of bread, you can shoo away the bussers trying to grab your empty plates and finish the rest with your finger like I did. The intense flavor, truly the essence of pepperoni, is worth its hype.
The other big crowd-pleaser from Top Chef, roasted potato gnocchi, is served exactly how it was on the show — with braised pork shank and burrata. The dumplings hide between a layer of whipped cheese and meltingly tender ragu. This is the dish that won Isabella praise and brought him to tears in last season’s ancestry-themed elimination challenge on Ellis Island. Talking about his grandmother, his inspiration for cooking, Isabella said “I didn’t cook [Italian food] for pretty much my whole career, even at home, because I didn’t want to remind me of that.” The emotionally charged dish is his foray back into red-sauce Italian cooking, a backbone of the flavors he’s opened his first restaurant around.
The place boasts local ingredients. It doesn’t clutter the menu with descriptions of the farm each egg was laid at or where each lettuce leaf was grown. But they do note the makers of several cheeses and hams that come largely from Maryland and Virginia, which can be ordered either at your table or a low seat at the upstairs ham bar.
The wine list is nearly all domestic, save for a few North Italian reds thrown in. It’s California heavy, but notable for a few quirky selections from Maryland and Virginia as well as New York, Oregon and even Idaho. The house table wine is a 1-liter bottle of Nebbiolo from Purcellville, Virginia. There are a few choices for under $30 a bottle, and each wine can be ordered by the glass as well. That means servers are happy to pour a taste of most anything before committing you to a full bottle.
Isabella hasn’t totally abandoned his Zaytinya roots. You’ll mostly find them in the wood oven section where coriander yogurt is paired with a fairly generous serving of four pork ribs that fall right off the bone, or a charred but tender octopus with chickpeas and artichoke.
But ultimately it’s the Italian flavors that shine the most bright, and sometimes the simplest dishes can be the most rewarding. Don’t skip the hand cut spaghetti just because you ate more boxes of Barilla growing up than you care to remember. Made in house, I’m expecting a thick, bucatini like noodle, but these are light and thinner than a standard spaghetti strand, almost like angel hair. Tossed with olive oil-poached cherry tomatoes and fresh basil, the taste lingers long after the meal. Along with the signature gnocchi and spaghetti, the waiter said not to miss the sweet corn agnolotti or the polenta with spicy pork meatballs and soft egg. That’s four pastas that are must-orders — there are only five on the menu! But after a first look at a new gem in Washington’s dining scene, I’ve got no reason to doubt him.
Graffiato
707 6th Street NW
(202)-289-3600
Metro: Gallery Place/Chinatown
