D.C.’s Call Your Mother Deli Is One of Eater’s Best New Restaurants in America

Eater’s national site dropped its list of the 16 best new restaurants in America today, and it includes a humble little wood-fired bagel shop in Park View that’s become a sensation around D.C. The nod to Call Your Mother represents the fifth time in the past five years that the District has made the list, adding to honors for Maydan last year, Himitsu in 2017, Pineapple & Pearls in 2016, and Maketto in 2015.

Since opening in October, Call Your Mother tweaked its menu to meet a rabid demand, experimented with a supper club making pastrami-filled pasta, partnered up with Dolcezza’s coffee and gelato shops, and signed a deal to plant a second location in Georgetown.

Here’s the full blurb from the national package describing why Call Your Mother made the list:

What: The self-described “Jew-ish” deli that ended D.C.’s much-kvetched-about bagel drought.

Why: Call Your Mother isn’t the first D.C. restaurant to try to translate old-world deli culture, but based on the fanatical response and nearly hour-long weekend waits, it’s done it better than any before. With Eater Young Gun Daniela Moreira (’17) leading the kitchen and her partner, Andrew Dana, running the on-point branding, Call Your Mother nails the basics, then takes them a step further.

There’s a za’atar-dusted bagel bursting with candied salmon schmear and piled with cucumbers, crispy shallots, and peppery greens sourced from local farmers. (It’s winkingly named the Amar’e, as in Amar’e Stoudemire, the fashionable former NBA star who’s taken to studying Torah.) There’s the city’s best latke, a bronzed disc of crunchy and creamy potato, that comes with a vinegary apple jam instead of Mott’s slop. Moreira, an ace baker from Argentina, makes black-and-white alfajorescookies and babka that appears as both a muffin and a mini loaf. Offbeat menu items, like challah “cheesesteaks,” each filled with pastrami and brisket, sometimes threaten to outshine the bagels, but even amid the tongue-in-cheek dishes and the Saved by the Bell color scheme, Dana and Moreira’s serious commitment to appetizing-store culture is unmistakable. | CallYourMotherDeli.com

— Gabe Hiatt, Eater DC editor

• Call Your Mother Opens With Breakfast Carbs From the Timber Team [EDC]
• Call Your Mother Tweaks Menu After Getting Slammed on Its First Weekend [EDC]
• Call Your Mother’s Chef Will Start Serving Her Grandma’s Lasagna for Supper [EDC]
• Every Dolcezza Gelato Shop Will Start Selling Call Your Mother’s Crazy Popular Bagels on Friday [EDC]
• Call Your Mother’s Cult Bagels Find a Perfectly Pink-Hued Home In Georgetown [EDC]