100 Very Best 2017Slideshow: Inside Vin 909 Winecafé
Vin 909 bills itself as a wine bar—or, in its brand of
restaurant speak, a “winecafé.” This label simultaneously raises
expectations of a night spent in lingering exploration of rare varietals
while lowering expectations of the food.
Which is ironic, because the best thing about Vin 909 isn’t its
wine list—fine if unexciting—but its cooking. Specifically its pizzas,
which largely account for the hourlong waits at this charmingly restored
bungalow in Annapolis’s Eastport neighborhood.
Chef and co-owner Justin Moore works magic with stretched
dough. The first thing you notice is that there’s no flopping—you could
set a carpenter’s balance atop it. So many pockets of air have been
kneaded into the crusts that density is never an issue. At the same time,
Moore imbues them with the proper chew.
One of the things about having a great crust is that a chef can
take risks with toppings. Last summer, Moore did a pie with cheddar,
fontina, baked beans, and coleslaw, which sounds like a disaster. It
wasn’t, for much the same reason that a sandwich made with perfect crusty
bread is nearly always good, regardless of its fillings.
He can do simple, too. A pie with wild-boar meatballs and
soppresatta manages to be rich without being heavy, and his take
on a Margherita—a pumped-up version of the spare Neapolitan ideal, with
more sweet, lightly acidic sauce and more house-made mozzarella—is a
smartly tweaked one.
Moore isn’t just a slinger of dough. I couldn’t resist ordering
his play on lobster rolls—a creamy, chive-flecked crab salad piled onto
buttered, griddled bread and awaiting a dip in a pinch bowl of seafood
bisque—every time I was in. Through the fall, he was serving a terrific
crab gumbo, since replaced with a clam-and-pumpkin curry, nearly as
good.
The menu makes room for cheese plates and olive assortments,
but aside from pizzas, there aren’t, strictly speaking, any entrées. This
design plays to Moore’s strengths, forcing him to distill the essence of
the compositions in his lineup of small plates (including poached shrimp
with fennel rémoulade and grilled skirt steak with a dusky, Moroccan-style
spice-and-nut sauce). His house-made burrata cheese is a ball of
salted lusciousness that hardly needs its tasty garnishes.
While Moore commands the kitchen, co-owner Alex Manfredonia
works the crowds like a seasoned host, offering samples of wines to tempt
newcomers. His mostly young, friendly staff reinforces this feeling of a
dinner party gone public, and you can sense their excitement at working in
a place where lots of people want to be.
Manfredonia is an Annapolitan who met Moore while they were
both working in San Francisco, and he persuaded the chef to head east.
It’s a big get for Annapolis to have this talent and experience under one
tiny roof. Now if only Manfredonia could be persuaded to rechristen the
restaurant a pizzacafé.
This article appears in the March 2013 issue of The Washingtonian.
