In the March/April issue of the magazine, I wrote about the upcoming Rockville outpost of matchbox Vintage Pizza Bistro, the hip pizza restaurant with locations in Washington’s Chinatown and Capitol Hill (plus Palm Springs, Cali.). Anyway, things are proceeding nicely with the construction, and the picture above shows how it’ll all look when it’s done.
“It’s going to be very, very dramatic,” says matchbox partner Perry Smith, about the new building adjacent to Rockville Pike’s Congressional Plaza—the site of a parade of other eateries, most recently PGA Tour Grill. The restaurant, slated to open in late fall, will have an eight-foot diameter fire pit in front, an outdoor patio on the second floor, hearty palm trees around the perimeter of the building, and “tons of reclaimed material” in the interior, including wood from a 100-year-old barn, according to Smith.
As word has spread about the new location, people keep asking “how are you going to dumb down the menu for the suburbs?” Smith said. “You have to be kidding. We’re not taking anything off the menu,” he said.
I ate at the Chinatown matchbox this past week, and despite what city slickers may think, we suburbanites understand terrific wood-fired pizza just fine.
