Andy’s Pizza Opens Its Next Location for New York-Style Slices in NoMa Next Week

Popular D.C. slice shop Andy’s Pizza will open its latest location in the back of a Streets market in NoMa next week, owner Andy Brown tells Eater.

The homegrown brand’s third location in D.C. proper (51 M Street NE) will start off with limited takeout and counter service on Thursday, May 6. Full restaurant and bar service will join the mix the following Thursday, with 30 beers on draft.

A robust happy hour will include $25 bottles of wine, $4 beers, and $8 cocktails including an Old Fashioned, blood orange margaritas, and Aperol spritzes sold by the pitcher.

The shop’s pizza dough undergoes a 72-hour cold ferment, producing a crisp crust and a slightly sour flavor on stone deck ovens. While best known for its pepperoni pies, another popular order is a white pizza with mushroom and onion, built with roasted garlic-flavored olive oil, mozzarella, provolone, roasted cremini mushrooms, and caramelized onions. Drizzling Mike’s Hot Honey on top is recommended.

“We are just trying to make the best pizza we can, served on the humble paper plate,” Brown says. “Crispy from edge to edge, soft and chewy on the inside, with that perfect ratio of dough, sauce, and cheese.”

Streets’s existing bar will scratch its largely Asian-leaning menu of dumplings, edamame, sushi, and stir fry to make way for $4 slices, crispy wings, fries, and salads dressed with seasonal and local produce. Hours will be 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily and expand once COVID-19 restrictions ease.

The two-year-old restaurant and bar is part of the 7,000-square-foot Streets grocer inside the Ava NoMa apartment building that features a sizable patio overlooking its courtyard. To enter the bar, patrons walk through the grocer off M Street and head to the back, while residents can key fob their way into Streets from the lobby.

Andy’s Pizza/official photo

As part of the two-story bar’s rebrand into Andy’s, a new mural will be splashed across a huge cement wall. The upper perch overlooking the bar will largely be reserved for private events.

Andy’s grew out of local frozen pizza brand, Eat Pizza, opening its first counter as part of the lineup in the A Taste of Urbanspace food hall in Tysons Galleria in 2019. The first outpost earned early praise from Washington Post food writer Tim Carman. Just this month, Post food critic Tom Sietsema called out Andy’s as one of his two pizza favorites in D.C. right now (Mt. Pleasant’s Martha Dear was the other).

The fast-growing pizzeria moved into D.C. at the start of 2020 to supply pies to the Hilton brothers’ Echo Park bar in Shaw, and expanded to pizzeria-flooded Navy Yard a few months later at Atlas Brew Works’s Half Street Brewery & Tap Room.

Andy’s will have NoMa competition from Menomale’s months-old location at the foot of another millennial-heavy apartment building nearby.

A New Shop for Late-Night NY Pizza Opens Off U Street Right After New Year’s [Updated] [EDC]

• A Huge Bar Is About to Open Inside a NoMa Apartment Building [EDC]
• Andy’s Pizza Will Sell New York-Style Slices at a Brewery Right Outside Nationals Park [EDC]
• The mouthwatering Taste of Urbanspace will help you forget Mike Isabella’s shuttered food court [WaPo]
• Menomale Brings Its Acclaimed Neapolitan Pizza — and Lots More — to a New Outpost in NoMa [EDC]