Photo courtesy of Alexandria Restaurant Partners
Mia's
Mia's, an Italian eatery, will serve up rustic pizza at its King Street location coming soon to Old Town.
Pizza-and-wine night will have its own corner on King Street with the opening of Mia’s Italian Restaurant this winter. The casual Italian eatery comes from the Alexandria Restaurant Partners and will be a stone’s throw from two of its other Old Town concepts: Virtue Feed & Grain and the seafood-focused Vola’s Dockside Grill & Hi-Tide Lounge, which opened on the boardwalk about a year ago. The team also runs The Majestic on King Street.
“This concept’s kind of been on our mind for a long time,” says Dave Nicholas, a partner in the restaurant group. “We did a variation of it at Lena’s (Wood-Fired Pizza & Tap on Braddock Road), but Lena’s is a Neapolitan style pizza.”
Mia’s pies will be rectangular in shape, with a rustic, semi-charred crust, and for sale by the slice.
The concept is the seventh from the restaurant group, including Palette 22 in Shirlington and an eatery in Orlando.
The team couldn’t resist the spacious, 180-seat location at 100 King St., at the corner of King and North Union streets, even though the last restaurant there, another Italian eatery called Carluccio’s, suddenly shuttered last summer.
Why will Italian work this time?
“I think people love Italian," Nicholas says. "I think it’s casual, and it has a wide reach.”
Nicholas also has a personal connection to the cuisine, he explains, a wide grin spreading across his face as he reminisces about his great grandmother’s Italian cooking and spending summers with her in New York as a child.
“I’m passionate about Italian,” he adds. “There’s a lot of great Italian restaurants that are more fine-dining feel. This is going to be a great from-scratch Italian kitchen that is casual.”
The location at a high-traffic corner of King Street means Mia’s will be primed to welcome walk-ins and tourists, but Nicholas envisions the restaurant as a go-to for locals and carry out as well.
The restaurant’s main kitchen will be on the second floor, where a casual “sofa lounge” will feature craft cocktails and an extensive by-the-glass wine list. A pizza kitchen and wine bar will be the centerpiece of a downstairs dining room, but the menu will also offer a wide range of rustic, Sicilian-style dishes, such as veal saltimbocca.
Lunch entrees will range from $12 to $16 and dinner from $14 to $28, giving diners in that corner of Old Town a handful of options from the same restaurant group once it opens in February or March.
“I want Mia’s to be comfortable enough for people to walk in,” Nicholas says, “but I want it to be a serious dining destination.”
