How Just one of D.C.’s Coziest Italian Dining places Thrives Without Letting Persons Inside

On a Zoom connect with, Mike Friedman seems each bit a chef with his brief-sleeved whites, black beanie, and a neatly trimmed beard that frames a recurrent smile. But just about a year into the novel coronavirus crisis, the driving pressure guiding the Crimson Hen appears much more like the artistic director at an advertisement agency when he explains how the Bloomingdale community fixture recognised for its heat services, wooden-burning grill, and abundant Italian smaller plates has managed to chug alongside despite maintaining its dining area shut for the past 10 months.

© The Pink Hen [official]
Chef Mike Friedman amplifies soulful Italian cooking with electronic advertising savvy at the Crimson Hen

“My job type of morphed into much more of this: society, content material, and creative,” Friedman states. “I get in touch with it the 3 Cs.”

Despite the fact that D.C. allowed indoor eating at a limited potential from late June till a late December pause — a ban that will stay via at the very least January 21 — Friedman states he and his associates at the Pink Hen and two All-Goal pizzerias hardly ever felt at ease bringing visitors back inside. Apart from AP’s riverfront spot in Navy Property, none of his dining establishments could accommodate outside eating. By the time Pink Hen had an chance to incorporate a streetside patio, the restaurant experienced set up plenty of of a takeout and delivery business enterprise that Friedman suggests it produced superior monetary sense to comply with the new organization design than devote in amenities like heaters, tents, and wind boundaries.

Although the Pink Hen exerted small hard work on takeout just before the pandemic, Friedman claims he’s held his neighborhood regulars coming again by working by a sequence of pop-ups themed about different areas of Italy. Just about every time there is a new menu, the Pink Hen has new dishes to splash throughout its social media webpages and flag to customers on its email distribution list.

© The Purple Hen [official]
Garganelli pasta in a duck ragu entire of red wine, prosciutto, rosemary, and bread crumbs from the Pink Hen’s Tuscan pop-up.

An “Island Summer” that includes fregola pasta, anchovies, and lots of citrus to symbolize Sicily and Sardinia led to a “Friuli Regatta” in the fall, when focusing on the northeastern Friuli-Venezia Giulia area that borders Slovenia pushed the restaurant to bring on far more skin-contact wines. A winter Après ski menu crafted all-around northern alpine regions of Piedmont, Lombardy, Alto Adige and the Valle d’Aosta has occur and absent. Setting up Thursday, January 14, the Pink Hen will start off promoting foods and wine with an “Under the Tuscan Sun” topic.

“Let’s retain providing them new and exciting factors,” Friedman says, pointing to the achievement of a latest rooster Parm rollout at All-Objective.

“I really do not have restaurants anymore I have web sites.”

Throughout each pop-up, the cafe maintains a menu of “Red Hen” classics like whipped ricotta crostini, rigatoni with fennel sausage ragu, and a cacio e pepe bucatini that utilized to be an off-menu exclusive.

For each individual new slate of pop-up dishes, Friedman acknowledges he has to make some concessions for takeout and shipping and delivery. For instance, he would have loved to offer Bistecca alla Fiorentina, a hulking Tuscan T-bone, but he was anxious about how it would journey and how a lot he would have to charge. In its place, Crimson Hen is promoting a braised and grilled shorter rib ($28) that delivers the same flavors with a garlic-rosemary butter and fried fingerling potatoes tossed in lemon and Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Other highlights of the Tuscan menu include things like a cylindrical garganelli pasta in a duck ragu entire of pink wine, prosciutto, rosemary, and bread crumbs. Tuscan rooster liver mousse with fig conserva is a riff on a Pink Hen staple. By incorporating a caramelized scallop dish with polenta, toasted pine nuts, and salsa verde, Friedman is supporting a single of his favorite purveyors, Nancy Wynne of Morningstar Seafood off the islands of Maine. For dessert, Purple Hen has continued to participate in with different flavors of gelato, most recently incorporating a mint chip to the mix.

© The Pink Hen [official]
A braised and grilled short rib with fried fingerling potatoes is section of a new Tuscan pop-up at the Crimson Hen.

Friedman, who formerly concentrated on Lebanese and Mediterranean cuisines for José Andrés at Zaytinya, says he’s also toying with a departure from Italian pop-ups completely. A “Red Hen Bon Voyage” collection could present a takeout journey by France, Lebanon, Greece, or Spain. Even though his cooking is total of soul, mixing his Jewish upbringing with the Southern Italian foods he enjoyed as a kid in New York and New Jersey, he’s constantly tinkering with new strategies driven by the potential to draw digital “likes.”

“I really don’t have places to eat anymore I have sites,” he states. “I will need to build traction on those people internet websites, so I create content.”