Inside Maialino Mare, Navy Yard’s Incoming Roman Seafood Spot From Danny Meyer

One of New York City’s most revered restaurant groups will officially plant its flag in D.C. next week with the opening of a seafood-focused, Roman-style trattoria in Navy Yard. Maialino Mare will serve its first dinner atop white and blue checkered tablecloths on the ground level of the new Thompson hotel Wednesday, January 8, marking the arrival of the first full-service restaurant in the city from Danny Meyer and Union Square Hospitality Group.

The anticipated Italian venue (221 Tingey Street SE) is an outgrowth of Maialino, the decade-old New York City restaurant based in the Gramercy Park Hotel. Meyer says bringing Maialino to D.C. allows his company to replicate a model that already works while tweaking it to add new pieces. Seafood pastas — like a simple lemon-butter fettuccine made with meat, oil, and stock extracted from Argentine red shrimp — and whole fish will be points of emphasis.

Notable dishes coming over from New York include a Maialino suckling pig, spigola (salt-baked branzino for two), and pastas that executive chef Rose Noel says make up the Roman canon: tonnarelli cacio e pepe, bucatini all’Amatriciana, and bombolotti in pesto.

“I think restaurants have proven for ages that they can transport recipes,” Meyer says. “I want to make sure we can transport how it feels to dine at one of our restaurants, how it feels to work at one or our restaurants.”

Like Meyer’s other restaurants, a “hospitality included” policy means that servers and bartenders won’t accept tips, and prices will be adjusted accordingly.

Maialino Mare is opening for dinner first but will eventually roll out breakfast, lunch, and brunch. Meyer says coming up with breakfast dishes is an entertaining challenge because it’s not a big meal in Rome, where locals are likely to start their day with a cappuccino and a cornetto. He expects lemon ricotta pancakes and soft-scrambled eggs with smoked bottarga (cured fish roe) to be popular.

Meyer, who founded the Shake Shack chain along with legendary NYC spots like Union Square Cafe and Gramercy Tavern, says Maialino Mare is a big deal for the company because it represents its first big move outside of its home city. D.C. was attractive to the company because of its proximity to New York — Meyer is already a frequent visitor who cops to catching a night train rather than staying overnight. His personal history in D.C. includes a summer stint as an elevator boy in the Senate when he was 18. The CEO says visitors from D.C. often ask him why he hadn’t brought them anything fancier than Shake Shack.

“I guess I got kind of tired of not having a good answer,” he says.

Last year, USHG backed out of a deal to open a second Union Square Cafe in the Capitol Crossing development. Meyer says he was already familiar with Navy Yard through his Shake Shack deal with the Nationals, and he trusts Thompson’s track record of picking successful locations.

“At their best restaurants can be great community placemakers,” Meyer says. “You try to catch a rising star. This neighborhood, every time I go there it seems like there’s a new crane.”

In the kitchen, Noel, 33, has gotten a promotion after former jobs as a cook at Maialino and an executive sous chef at Manhatta. The native New Yorker with Haitian heritage has been based in D.C. for the last four months. She says the restaurant is a perfect fit for her, because 10-hour pasta-making shifts made her fall in love with Italian food, and she was a pescatarian for years before attending culinary school.

“I swear my great grandmother must have been Italian in some part,” she says, “because my pasta love is, like, unmatched.”

Noel’s current projects include developing a lobster pasta in which she steams the shellfish just long enough to pry it out of its shell. There will also be a spaghettini with Maryland crab as a nod to the restaurant’s new digs. She’s also working on a play on saltimbocca that uses sweet sea scallops wrapped in prosciutto and sage leaves.

Meyer expects to open an accompanying rooftop bar, Anchovy Social, by the end of the winter. Chef Jorge Chicas will lead the kitchen at Anchovy Social and a lobby bar separate from the one inside Maialino Mare.

• Official website [USHG]
• Restaurant Magnate Danny Meyer Is Bringing a Roman Seafood Spot to D.C. [EDC]
• NYC Hitmaker Danny Meyer Is Bringing Navy Yard a Rooftop Bar With Year-Round Spritzes [EDC]
• The 16 Most Anticipated Restaurants in D.C., Winter 2019 [EDC]
• New York’s Union Square Cafe Cancels Its Planned D.C. Location [EDC]
• Danny Meyer Is Eliminating Tipping at all of His Restaurants [ENY]
• Danny Meyer Triumphant in Suit Claiming He’s a No-Tipping Conspiracy Ringleader [ENY]