Part-enoteca, part-osteria, part-panetteria (that’s wine bar-café-bakery), Piccolina is three-time James Beard Foundation Award-finalist chef Amy Brandwein’s sophisticated response to fast-casual mania. Balancing a relaxed coffee shop environment with prompt service, this Italian eatery dishes open-to-close breakfast, to-go bites, and sweets—and lots and lots of bread.
Translating to “little one” in Italian, Piccolina opened on July 29 as the energetic and experimental younger sister to Brandwein’s urbane Italian jewel, Centrolina. The two are located across from each other in CityCenter.
At this 20-seat all-day café, but for few dishes, everything on the menu—like all that bread—is baked in a roaring imported wood-fired oven.
Piccolina is located in the former home of the bakery Rare Sweets. “For as long as I can remember, I’ve dreamed about debuting a bread program,” she says. “When the space across from Centrolina became available, everything just clicked.”
Though she insists Piccolina isn’t a bread shop, Brandwein has been working for most of her career in Italian wood-fired and baking tutelage, including with James Beard Award-winning DC chef Roberto Donna. She’s traveled extensively across Italy, and cooks with a substantial wood-burning oven at Centrolina.
To further prepare for the opening of the café, Brandwein set out on a hands-on tour through southern Italy and enrolled in a course at the San Francisco Baking Institute
Of Piccolina’s menu, she said that with her “strong understand of authentic Italian food and culture, I can innovate while respecting the inherent qualities of what the food is supposed to be.”
Working spatula-to-spatula with executive pastry chef Caitlin Dysart, Brandwein is in Piccolina each day crafting specialties like scacce, straight from the Sicilian hillsides: paper-thin sheets of dough rolled tight around lamb sausage, broccoli rabe, and a provolone-ish cheese called cacio cavallo.
In Sicily, scacce is served as street food to take on walks with nonna. At Piccolina, Brandwein pops the entire savory pastry in the oven, lets the intense flames lick the dough for just long enough, and pulls it out “hot and gooey.” Customers can wrap in paper to window shop along CityCenter’s cobblestone streets.
Other items include breadsticks, ciabatta with a crunchy exterior and fluffy interior to envelop meat and veggies, and an earthy baguette made partially with whole wheat flour.
Brandwein and her staff have borrowed some recipes from Centrolina across the way. The eatery’s famed eggplant Parm has made the jump, as have other hearty dishes like spinach lasagna (yes, both cooked in the wood-fired oven to crisp up the cheesy top).
“I saw the need for breakfast, lunch, and coffee in a casual space,” Brandwein says. “The area has offices and luxury shops, but lots of locals too. Piccolina met our needs on how to expand and improve operations.”
As Piccolina opens, Centrolina’s to-go market will close for construction, and that part will move entirely to Piccolina. There are plans to open an online retail store that’ll allow customer to order and then pick up items like salami and imported oils and spices.
Brandwein admits that the quick-service style is not her wheelhouse. “I’m aware of inherent challenges of fast casual,” she says. “It’s not how I cook generally, so I looked for ways to do what I like and do it well so that it’s consistent with my cooking for food that will cook fast and taste good.”
Brandwein is especially fond of pies, which hold a sweet spot in her heart. (“It was one of the first things I ever made from scratch, right from picking the raspberries with my family in the Michigan woods as a kid in the summer,” she says.) Among several dessert pastries, Piccolina serves seasonal crostatas (free-form fruit tarts) straight from the oven. “How many times do you have a fruit pie baked in a wood fire?” Brandwein muses.
Beyond nostalgia-flecked pies, Piccolina also offers huge bomboloni (fried cream-stuffed doughnuts), traditional Italian pistachio cookies, and other sweets.
The oven produces less carb-bomb options, too. Brandwein and team slice zucchinis razor thin and blister them in the oven. Even grapefruits, halved, get a fiery oven kick on the breakfast menu.
The tight beverage program allows Brandwein to focus on the foodcraft, but the drinks (there’s a full alcohol license) are still curated. The wine menu highlights four Italian varietals (rosso, bianco, rosato, and frizzante—that’s red, white, rosé, and sparkling) and rotates over the course of the year to best suit the flavors and ingredients of the season. And yes, the Aperol spritz features large on the cocktail menu.
The space’s bright, welcoming atmosphere complements the quickly moving food. Though the bread hails from Sicily, the design would be more at home in Milan. Inspired by Brandwein’s use of colorful ingredients, bright splashes of dandelion, fuchsia, and turquoise give the banquettes and two-tops vibrancy. Even the uniforms are purposeful: D.C.-based Living Threads Co. created handmade cotton bandanas, and a woman’s artisan cooperative in Guatemala weaves uniform accents on foot looms.
Brandwein says the current carb offerings are just a starter, and that the bread program will only continue to rise.
Piccolina is “meant to be happy place at all hours, 8:00 a.m. or 8:00 p.m., to try to improve everyone’s world a little bit more.”
Piccolina is located at 963 Palmer Alley NW. Open Mon-Sun 7:30 a.m.-9:30 p.m.
