There’s no playbook for how to open a restaurant in a pandemic. But Mercy Me, the hyped all-day café and bar from the dough masterminds behind Call Your Mother and Timber Pizza and former Doi Moi chef Johanna Hellrigl, seems to have figured out a workable solution in the era of social distancing: unveiling itself little by little.

The “sorta South American” restaurant, as its tagline goes, officially opened in June in the West End’s revamped hotel Yours Truly (formerly The Wink hotel) after delaying for months. The team started with a trial run of around-the-clock breakfast offerings for takeout, serving Brazilian and Argentinian pastries, brisket and egg tacos, Call Your Mother bagels, caffeine from Ceremony Coffee Roasters, and grilled pan pizzas for lunch at the walk-in cafe. Over the past two months, they’ve rolled out in-person brunch via reservation on the weekends, added cocktails by beverage director Micah Wilder, and begun to serve an extended café menu with appetizers, pies, and summer salads until 9 p.m. every night of the week — or as co-owner Andrew Dana calls it, “the new 2 a.m. in COVID times.”

It’s a feat that requires spaced-out seating, temperature checks for staff, timed cleaning protocols, limits of six diners or fewer per reservation, and other protocols for safety. Location is one aiding factor — Mercy Me is an expansive industrial space outfitted with front and back patios, artfully sectioned sofa arrangements, a centralized bar, and a wall of windows that opens to the street. The hotel’s vinyl booth lets a DJ spin records live behind glass.

The decision to debut this summer — after being days away from sit-down dinner in March — was a chance to rethink not only Mercy Me’s menu and operations, but what the restaurant could do for a city in quarantine.

“What happened is us being like, okay, what do people need? What do people want right now?” says Hellrigl. “What’s going to make them feel safe and comfortable, but still gives something new if they’ve just been at home cooking or baking sourdough? It’s giving us a chance to see how people are feeling about going out to eat and giving people a chance to see how open and accessible this space is in a COVID world. We want to feel all of that out before going into a full-fledged restaurant.”

The seed for Mercy Me dates back to last fall, when the Yours Truly hotel approached Timber partners Andrew Dana and chef Daniela Moreira (the pair is also engaged) about filling the ground floor with good food. Once Hellrigl and Wilder, who are also a couple, were on board, they took a trip to South America — where they’ve all traveled or lived in the past — to solidify the menu.

What they settled on was “sort of” South American—not all Argentinian or Colombian, but a menu culled from their individual experiences that translates authentic recipes into takes with the co-owners’ flair.

“Our styles complement each other really well,” says Dana. “[Hellrigl and Wilder] are a little more composed and thoughtful. We’re very scrappy and eat out of a paper bag.”

Wilder based some of his cocktails, for example, on what Moreira, who is from Argentina, has enjoyed in Buenos Aires bars: bitter fernet mixed into a boozy cola slushy, or a rum colada with caramelized pineapple and coconut chunks. Wilder, who is co-owner of Chaplin’s, also makes use of food waste from the kitchen, taking the leftover whey from Buffalo mozzarella to make a creamier rum scotch with banana and passion fruit.

Hellrigl grew up in New Jersey and couldn’t pass up the chance to put what comforts her — a buffalo chicken pizza — in the pie lineup. But the chef has mostly drawn from her years working in South America at an international organization and consulted Moreira and pastry chef Camila Arango, who is Colombian, on the South American-inspired dishes. She worked with two of the kitchen’s cooks, who are international students trained in Brazil, to come up with bar snacks like black bean and pork croquettes, normally served as a Brazilian stew, and tapioca cheese bites doused in pepper jelly.

Several dishes are boosted by a housemade habanero hot sauce, including a ground chorizo pizza that uses a honeyed version. Hellrigl also collaborates with Latin American food distributor Culinary Culture Connections to source ingredients for brunch dishes like an Amazonian tartare with hearts of palm and Brazilian fruits.

Speaking of brunch, the lineup alludes to the kinds of full-fledged dishes diners might expect from a more extensive dinner service, which is still on hold. Staff butcher Matt Levere signed on to do a butchery program with whole steer from APD Farm. In the meantime, he cuts meat for steak and eggs with hot fries. There’s also buttermilk-brined Cornish hen on savory green onion and corn pancakes; bodega-style pork rolls topped with eggs and cheese; and banana sourdough pancakes drizzled in dulce de leche maple syrup.

For dessert, Arango, the owner of Pluma by Bluebird, makes Colombian ice cream floats that remind her of childhood summers, with strawberry guava soft serve, fizzy soda, and tropical fruit. An Argentinian alfajores recipe from the Mar de Plata region is a two-day process to coat filled cookies in chocolate or dried meringue. Brazilian donuts are coated in cinnamon sugar and finished with chocolate sauce.

“Though we don’t really claim to have all these super traditional Latin American dishes, we like to take elements or techniques and rope those in,” says Arango. “Even if a pastry isn’t exactly as you find it in South America, I would say to people to keep an open mind and get a little bit uncomfortable.”

For now, the team is content to keep taking operations slow—bringing “some of the oompf we were going for originally,” says Hellrigl, but with a dose of patience.

“This space is meant to have a lot of people in it, and it’s meant to be full of energy with live music and drinks flowing,” says Dana. “But we’re running a marathon, not a sprint. We’re doing cool stuff now. And we have lots yet to come.”

Mercy Me is located at 1143 New Hampshire Avenue NW. Café and dinner hours are 8 a.m.-10 p.m. daily (food served until 9 p.m.). Pickup and delivery orders are available from 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Brunch is served Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m., with drinks available until 4 p.m. Make reservations on Resy.