For more than two years, Demetri Mechelis has been carefully tending his starter. While cooking at Tail Up Goat and Ellē, the chef nurtured his natural leavener until it was the “perfect amount of sour.” Now it’s the foundation for the pizzas he’s making at Martha Dear, the subterranean pizzeria underneath Mt. Desert Island Ice Cream in Mount Pleasant.
Mechelis and his wife and co-owner, Tara Smith, unveiled the restaurant on December 11. “We don’t have actual kids yet, but we feel like we just gave birth to a baby,” she says.
It takes two days to prep the dough Mechelis crafts with Greek semolina and a mixture of spelt, whole grain, and refined grain flours from Migrash Farm outside Randallstown, Maryland. After bulk fermenting for 24 hours, it’s ready to be shaped and slid into the gas-fired Marra Forni oven sitting behind a black granite counter in the restaurant’s main room. Follow a corridor to the rear of the space to find a well-lit back dining room ringed with windows and presided over by a skylight. The couple installed a 1960s Magnavox record player, which will have vinyl on hand for guests to spin.
No one has DJed yet. The restaurant is only open for scheduled pickups; the couple is staffing the operation by themselves. “We’re waiting until diners are ready for it,” says Smith, “and it’s safe and a smart decision overall to open.” (Restaurants in D.C. are temporarily barred from offering indoor dining following a spike in COVID-19 cases.)
The debut menu is lean, offering several classics along with ever-changing specialty rounds. Constants include straightforward cheese pizza with tomato, mozzarella, basil, and olive oil, and a marinara with tomato, Greek oregano, olive oil, and garlic. The third standard is Mechelis’ play on the sausage and pepper pizzas he loved eating as a kid. His version swaps in spicy ‘nduja for Italian ground sausage, complementing it with the usual peppers and onions.
Specialty pizzas vary, based on the seasonal availability of ingredients and the chef’s whims. Recent offerings nodded to the chef’s Greek roots. One featured halloumi cheese, scamorza cheese (a relative of mozzarella), mushrooms, spinach, and lemon; another came with Kalamata olives and melted white onions.
There are a limited number of pizzas available every night, fluctuating based on the amount of dough Mechelis makes and the ingredients they get from their farm partners. (Owners declined to offer a ballpark range for the number of pies they make each night.) To ramp up production, the couple ordered a new mixer to double their output. The demand has been high: They sold out of pizzas on their first night in 20 minutes, and have sold out every night since.
To fill out the menu, there are a couple of small Greek bites – spanakopita, baklava, citrus- and oregano-marinated Kalamata olives, and a salad gussied up with crispy chickpeas and kefalograviera cheese – and Mechelis will add further items in the coming weeks.
Likewise, the beverage program is still its infancy. Options are currently limited to gin martinis, half a dozen wines, a couple of beers, Greek sodas, and sparkling water. Smith is choosing the varietals with care. “It matters to me who’s making our wine and how they’re making our wine,” she says, aiming to highlight Black and female winemakers, and wineries using very low intervention production methods.
The couple’s social consciousness is woven into the fabric of the business. Their website includes a mission statement outlining their solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.
“It was quite important to us, that if we were building a business in our community that we cared about, that we exemplified what we wanted in that community,” Smith says. “It’s not about checking boxes or paying certain wages. There’s a lot of work to do. It’s a difficult line to walk as a White-owned business and it’s really important to not be performative, but we felt it was important to take a very visible and open stance.”
As the couple keeps their ideals in mind as they continue to refine their operation, Mechelis is staying focused on his starter. It requires two feedings a day, usually around 11 a.m. and 9 p.m., so it’s strong and active when he makes the dough the following morning. But a starter’s needs can change and its schedule can shift without warning. “I’ve had to get off the couch a few times in the middle of the night to feed it or fold my dough,” he says. “That’s just how it goes.”
Martha Dear is located at 3110 Mount Pleasant St. NW. Open Wednesday through Sunday for takeout only. Same-day orders begin at 12 p.m. for pickup between 5:30 p.m.-9 p.m.
