Date Night: Junction Bakery & Bistro, Del Ray VA
Happy Monday, all! Today we are introducing another fabulous writer to the mix on DC Minute: Jessica (whom for years I lovingly referred to her by her Twitter handle, LolaRoaming) and her husband who will be taking over Date Nights in Alexandria where they currently reside with their gorgeous little girl. Jessica spends an absurdly inordinate amount of time thinking about food, eating food, and making food for the people she loves, and can be seen loitering around farmers markets every weekend with a large cup of coffee in hand while trying to keep her “Tiny Human” from stealing produce. Welcome, Jessica! Read what she has to say about her recent trip for dinner to Junction Bakery in Del Ray….
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Its rare to find a place that can offer up a delicious breakfast in a relaxed setting and a cute bistro style dinner. Junction Bakery & Bistro is doing both and making it look easy.
The history nerd in me has to tell you that it is built in a 1940’s Safeway and named after when the trolley line when down Mount Vernon connecting Northern VIrginia and allowing the railroad families who lived in the area post World War II to get around.
In the morning you can pop in, or camp out at a table for a while, and nosh on an Everything Bagel, a flakey junction (see what I did there!) between sweet and savory. If you need more then that the breakfast sandwiches are fresh and delicious, and are enough to share a bite or two with the person who just got pastry and is now drooling. They are jumping on the nitro coffee bandwagon and are sourcing it from the fine folks at Commonwealth Joe’s, if only they would add nitro lattes I might never leave.
Their dinner menu is only a few weeks old and has enough range to work for a dinner with the whole family, tiny humans included, to a date night, to a solo outing to sip wine and people watch out the massive front windows.
I was super excited to start dinner with a glass of Chenin Blanc from Stellenbosch Vineyards in South Africa, which I don’t often find in the US and once got me through a very long conference in Johannesburg.
My, and the hubby’s, preference for date night dinners usually involves a lot of small plates, that way you can taste lots of things. We kicked off with the fried olives, which were BANANAS. I don’t like olives, it’s a texture thing rather than a taste thing but I generally avoid them. These were the perfect snack (so long as you watched out for pits) when dipped in the spiced aioli. Following those with the lobster rolls, think Asian style buns filled with spicy lobster, and ricotta dumplings with pork ragu, and toasted pinoles was a delicious little trip for the mouth. Those plus the panzanilla salad was the perfect dinner. Light and summery and left plenty of room to pop up the road for a bourbon slushie at Front Porch (if you haven’t had one yet cancel whatever your plans are tonight and go get one, you won’t be sorry.
Light and summery and left plenty of room to pop up the road for a bourbon slushie at Front Porch (if you haven’t had one yet cancel whatever your plans are tonight and go get one, you won’t be sorry.
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Thanks again Jessica! We look forward to scoping out Junction Bakery the next time we are in town! Cheers!
