About Restaurant Openings Around DC
A guide to the newest places to eat and drink.
Red Hound Pizza. 7050 Carroll Avenue, Takoma Park.
The care that the bakers at Seylou Bakery put into their deeply burnished loaves and many-layered croissants might not be obvious at first glance. But it’s revealed by a few bites of a fermented loaf made with fresh-milled local einkorn or a savory croissant filled with high-quality, seasonal vegetables.
Now, Seylou’s former head pastry chef Charbel Abrache is bringing that same attention to detail to pizza in Takoma Park. Along with his wife Andrea Alvarez—another Seylou alum—the Venezuelan-born chef debuted Red Hound Pizza on Wednesday in a diminutive Carroll Avenue space that formerly housed a boba tea counter.
The pizzeria is casual—you can borrow a picnic blanket to eat in the park across the street—but quietly serious. Abrache devised Red Hound’s signature square pies through substantial research on regional styles of pizza, including a trip to Italy.
“It’s really hard to describe it as a single style,” Abrache says. “We proof it and shape it as Roman, but then we bake it as Grandma-style.”
Like Roman pizza al taglio, Red Hound’s pies are fluffy, light, and focaccia-like, topped with seasonal ingredients. But like Sicilian or “Grandma” pies, they’re crisped up in olive oil-slicked rectangular sheet pans.
The whole wheat flour is sourced from local millers—Grapewood Farms and Purple Mountain Grown—and vegetables come from small local farms. This month, Abrache is serving a margherita pie, a pepperoni pie, a vegetable pie with eggplant and zucchini, and a pie with roasted shishito peppers, corn, and pancetta. Seasonal ingredients will also make their way into a range of salads and focaccia sandwiches Red Hound will introduce soon.
“Our menu will rotate as much as possible, trying to utilize what the farm brings to the city,” Abrache says.
That seasonality also extends to Red Hound’s limited dessert offerings, like vanilla soft serve topped with roasted peaches and lemon verbena.
Abrache trained at Argentina’s Instituto Superior Mariano Moreno, became a pastry instructor in his native Venezuela, then moved to the US to train at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in upstate New York. Alvarez, trained as a pharmacist, has always worked closely with Abrache on his projects. In 2017, the two helped baker Jonathan Bethony get Seylou, the minimalist Shaw bakery, off the ground.
Red Hound’s 450-square-foot space is spartan: the rustic, well-browned pizzas sit on cooling racks at the counter, ready to grab by the slice with tongs. Beer and wine are coming soon, along with cafe tables out front. But for now, there’s a small rear patio, a bench out front, the park across the street—and those blankets to take with you.
