A Tiny Pizza Bar Rises in an Alley Off H Street

All Souls, Shaw’s corner industry hangout for alcohol (but no food) since 2013 switches things up at its cozy new Atlas District sibling with the addition of sourdough-based pies.

The Little Grand opens on Thursday, July 7, with a familiar list of local beers, eclectic wines, and classic cocktails like a Manhattan, daiquiri, Negroni, and martini (808 7th Street NE). All Souls’s first-ever offshoot, in the works since 2018, hides in the back of the mixed-use Apollo Building where vegan-centric Fancy Radish, high-end apartments, and Whole Foods also reside.

For All Souls’s first go at food, partners David Batista, Soung Wiser, and Joanna Brady enlisted a big name in the competitive NYC pizza world to help: friend and vet pizzaiolo Bobby Hellen. There’s seven types of “New York-ish”-style round pizzas to start, some of which translate to square “Sicilian-ish” form.

The Little Grand

The Little Grand

The Little Grand

Each 12-inch pizza base is constructed with local flours milled by Migrash Farms blended with Italy’s Le Stagioni 00. Toppings include “all kinds of onions,” crushed potatoes, and seasonal veggies, with add-on ingredients like vegan Italian sausage, meatballs, and pepperoncini. Pies run $16 to $30.

East Coast farms and creameries help build a list of starters ($12 to $13) starring ricotta (Caputo Brothers), grass-fed beef meatballs (Back Creek Bend), a purple snow pea salad (Lancaster Farms) and chicories and herbs (Fireside). Dessert brings pours of Ivy City’s Capitoline vermouth to the table, along with a locally-made vegan chocolate bar comprised of Peruvian cacao and sun-dried maple sap from Vermont.

The Little Grand’s hours are 5 p.m. to midnight (closed Tuesday and Wednesday), with food available until as late as 10 p.m. There’s a few reservations available each night, but limited four-top booth and bar seating is mostly up for grabs. In lieu of doing delivery, an adorable carryout window illuminated with a neon “Pizza Pickup” sign sends out to-go orders.

The H Street NE corridor recently welcomed another postage stamp-sized spot with the opening of Taqueria Al Lado II.