About Restaurant Openings Around DC
A guide to the newest places to eat and drink.
Chef Thomas Harvey may have worked in some of DC’s most upscale kitchens. But when it comes to opening his own place, the chef says he’s going for a casual mashup: “Cheers meets a general store.”
“We really went for a cozy, friend’s house feel,” he says of Harvey’s, an all-day restaurant and market opening today in Falls Church. The 60-seat dining room and bar—with room for another 60 on a seasonal terrace—serves breakfast, lunch, dinner, and weekend brunch in the former Plaka Grill space. Both the restaurant and marketplace emphasize seasonal, homemade, and local items.
Harvey spent nearly the past two decades in restaurant kitchens, making pastas at Fabio Trabocchi’s Casa Luca, and preparing meat-heavy dishes at Red Apron/Partisan in Penn Quarter. Most recently he left a four-year post as executive chef of Virginia’s Tuskie’s Restaurant Group (Magnolia’s on the Mill, Fire Works Pizza) to open Harvey’s. Diners will find influences from his kitchen experience—as well as the Virginia native’s family recipes—on the menu.
Mornings start with egg sandwiches on a choice of croissants, biscuits, or English muffins with toppings like thick-cut bacon, American cheese, and caramelized onion mayo. The all-day lunch and dinner menu leans heavily on homemade pastas like carbonara and bolognese; hearty sandwiches such as beer-cheesesteaks; and items from a wood-burning hearth like cedar-plank salmon or skillet-roasted chicken dinner with Brussels sprouts and shells-and-cheese. For dessert: more comforts such as a banana split.
There’s plenty of crossover between the restaurant and market. Dishes such as porter-braised short ribs use Seven Hills beef—a lauded purveyor in Lynchburg, Virginia—and customers can also buy cuts for home. Ditto for Epicuring bacon and charcuterie out of DC, and produce from Virginia’s Sylvanaqua Farms. Harvey will also stock plenty of take-and-bake dishes, fresh pastas, and homemade pastries. There’s also a curated selection of restaurant-quality wines ($25 to $80) and local beers, which shoppers can take to-go or enjoy in the dining room (there’s a small corkage fee for retail wines). Look for a monthly wine club, which will feature two bottles for $45, to start soon.
Harvey’s. 513 W. Broad St., in Falls Church
Anna Spiegel covers the dining and drinking scene in her native DC. Prior to joining Washingtonian in 2010, she attended the French Culinary Institute and Columbia University’s MFA program in New York, and held various cooking and writing positions in NYC and in St. John, US Virgin Islands.
