New year, new dining concepts aplenty. Here’s a look at some of the latest pop ups and ghost kitchens cooked up by chefs and bartenders around town, whether you’re hoping to dine on a heated patio or at home.
Note: Indoor dining resumes at 25% capacity in the District on Friday.
This month, local fast-casual Little Sesame began a shawarma pop up at Sugar Fox, the Chevy Chase bakery and ice cream shop. The winter pop up, slated to run until March 14, is familiar territory for co-owner Nick Wiseman — it’s is down the block from where the Wilson High alum grew up. “It’s good to be back home,” he says.
The menu offers a la carte and family meal options featuring its signature roasted mains, chicken and cauliflower. Both are brined overnight and seasoned with a 13-spice blend, Wiseman says, before taking a spin on a brand-new rotisserie oven. “The rotisserie is that blast of heat that creates a lot of caramelization, and you get the rich crust of the spices and the juiciness of the brine,” Wiseman says.
Little Sesame fans will find a number of familiar sides, like the red bliss rotisserie potatoes ($5) cooked in chicken drippings. “They just absorb all the good juice,” he says. And, Little Sesame’s mainstay hummus ($7.50 for a pint) is there, too. “For me, hummus is at the center of the table,” Wiseman says. “It’s always a meal built around hummus.”
Where: 5027 Connecticut Ave NW
When: 5 p.m.-9 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday
The Imperial co-owner Steve King drew the inspiration for his slider-centric ghost kitchen from a previous happy hour incarnation at a Glover Park restaurant of his years ago. And it didn’t hurt that King is a self-proclaimed “sandwich guy.”
“Sandwiches are fun,” King says. “They’re always rooted in our comfort zone.”
The mini-sandwich concept launched mid-December, bringing twelve types of sliders from all over the country. “We tried to take it home for everybody,” says chef Chris Reynolds. “We wanted to go back to those childhood favorites for everyone and try to elevate them.” Think chicken and waffles with chili-maple syrup, Connecticut-style lobster rolls, filet-o-fish bites, and a buffalo-ed cauliflower po’boy, to name a few.
For Reynolds, that nostalgic sandwich is the Jalapeno Cheddarwurst, with house-made sausage, mornay sauce, and banana pickles. “In the summertime, weekends we were always throwing some sausage on the grill,” he says. Sliders can be purchased in sets of three, six, or 12, for takeout or delivery only. And sliders aren’t the only itty bitty things on the menu: Reynolds also developed a few flavors of pie bites for dessert, too.
Where: 2001 18th Street NW
When: 4 p.m.-10 p.m., Wednesday-Friday; 1 p.m.-10 p.m. Saturday-Sunday
Athlete and bartender Laurel Oldershaw launched her cocktail concept this fall with big plans: She wants to open a brick-and-mortar women’s sports bar in D.C. “It really kind of started from this idea, I can deliver cocktails to my friends who are athletes, attached to a lifetime of being told you’re not enough — as a woman and an athlete,” Oldershaw says.
For now, the pop up operates out of EatsPlace, where she sells cocktails and light snacks for pickup and delivery. Oldershaw, who launched her bartending career at Founding Farmers on Pennsylvania Avenue, tapped her roots in developing the menu. “I’m from Berkeley, so organic gardening is really in my blood,” she says.
The lineup features rotating cocktails with plenty of herbal notes coming from such additions as sage syrup, rosemary bitters, and the namesake, bay leaf bitters. (Why? Oldershaw is named after the bay laurel tree.) Cocktails arrive in mason jars that serve 2-3, and options include house bloody Marys, featuring No. 1 and Sons giardiniera ($15) and the clementine whiskey sour, with bourbon, clementine simple syrup, lemon juice, and citrus bitters ($21).
Zero-proof cocktails and drink boxes are also available, as are home bar fixings, like the cold brew bitters made with Harpeth Swill coffee or whiskey pickles ($8). For the adventurous, Oldershaw offers what she’s dubbed “Dealer’s Choice”: Provide an adjective and a liquor, and she’ll take that as inspiration for a custom cocktail ($22 for one, $29 for a triple). “‘Spunky rye’ was fun,” she says. “A lot of people give me stuff with tequila.”
She’s also planning virtual events, like a scotch tasting and women’s sports discussion. “We’re really creating intentional space to have conversations around women’s sports,” she says.
Where: 3607 Georgia Ave. NW
When: 6 p.m.-10 p.m. Thursday-Saturday
Shaw restaurant Nina May is channeling the wintry wonderland of maple syrup country by converting its patio into Sap House. “Less people are dining outside now that it’s 30 degrees at nights,” says Chef Colin McClimans. “We wanted to do something that made the ambience and experience enjoyable and exciting.”
The idea stemmed from McClimans’ memories with his family in Canada, visiting the so-called sap houses where maple syrup is made and meals are shared around big tables. “You go sleigh riding, you bring the kids — that’s what I really missed,” he says. “Obviously you don’t go and sit at a communal table any more, but we tried to recreate that.” To do so, they built a cabin setup for their outdoor bar using logs from McClimans’ parents property, and set up a tent with firepits and heaters.
The pop up has expanded Nina May’s hours into midday territory with Tuesday-Friday lunch hours, but don’t expect the maple-heavy menu to have a brunch vibe. “I didn’t want to do pancakes and waffles, but something savory and fun and still true to us,” McClimans says. That means maple-glazed smoked salmon gravlox and candied bacon (some of the offerings from their six-course Sunday dinner menu for two, $70), as well as salted maple pie, with crispy sage and gingerbread crumble ($12).
The cocktail menu is available all day, with winter warmers, like mulled wine ($9) and hot toddies ($12). And some Sap House creations might become regulars at Nina May, McClimans says. “Maple-glazed salmon might be how we do that moving forward because its so good,” he says. “We’ve never really done it quite like this.”
Where: 1337 11th St. NW
When: 11 a.m.-2 p.m., Tuesday-Friday; 5 p.m.-9 p.m. Sunday
Suspecting that indoor dining was going to go away this winter, Reverie chef Johnny Spero had started having fun with pizzas on the weekends well before before his Lonely Hunter concept took over the restaurant this month. “We thought of it as an opportunity to continue to do something that we really enjoy, which is making pizza, so we decided to lean into it really hard,” Spero says.
To pull it off, they needed more pizza oven capacity, and a rep from Marra Forni reached out and worked out a deal for a loaner deck oven. The dough needs a three-day fermentation process, and results in blistered pies with toppings like chopped clams, cream sauce, and fresh herbs. “Shellfish pizza is one of my favorite things,” the chef says. Combinations rotate, but Spero plans to offer a meat pizza, a shellfish pizza, and a vegetarian pizza. “We’re not trying to break too many boundaries on what pizza can be: a lot of the flavors that we really enjoy,” he adds. There are other small plates available—think a smashburger with American cheese and dill pickles ($14) and burrata with pickled green tomatoes and sunchoke tamari ($10).
Spero expects to run Lonely Hunter through the end of the month, for patio dining as well as takeout and delivery. “It’s definitely not an easier thing to do,” Spero says of the pop up, compared to running Reverie. “It’s flexing a different muscle, but it’s enjoyable. It’s not tweezering garnish onto eight courses, it’s pizza.”
Where: 3201 Cherry Hill Lane NW
When: noon-8 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday
