Beauty Between the Bread

There is a vitality and subtle whimsy at the heart of Tim Ma’s restaurants that make any experience at one of his tables a gratifying experience.

As a chef, Ma is a tinkerer, and the food he prepares is fresh, bold and always a little playful. His menus traverse between culinary traditions of East and West, classic and contemporary, finding a refreshing balance of flavor and style in unlikely places. As a chef, Ma is a tinkerer, and the food he prepares is fresh, bold and always a little playful.

The first of his dishes I ever ate was a salad of rosemary-­smoked watermelon at Water & Wall, his Ballston location, served over a green tomato puree, dotted with roquefort and microgreens and splashed with honey vinegar. It was a new sensation of flavor. It was also simple and perfect, and so it felt immediately familiar.

I have since eaten a lot of Ma’s food, and I always walk away with a hazy, full­-bellied reverie.

Right now all eyes are on Kyirisan, his first restaurant in the District, slated to open in Shaw early next year, which he is currently developing with his wife and business partner Joey Hernandez. However, just this month, he quietly opened the doors of his newest venture in his own neighborhood of Vienna, Virginia.

Chase the Submarine is a cozy sandwich shop, café and boutique market, which is serving some of the best sandwiches anywhere that Metro can reach.

Tucked in among a row of storefronts off the main drag of Vienna’s downtown, just blocks away from his flagship restaurant Maple Ave (of which he has relinquished creative control to pursue other projects), Chase the Submarine looks from the outside like a standard suburban lunch spot. But all comparisons with the ordinary stop as soon as you walk through the door.

A ceiling-­high pantry displays local beer, wine and assortments of oils and vinegars, mustards and jams, local coffee beans and other odds and ends. Over the counter, the fridge display is stacked with potato salads, coleslaws, and a spread of housemade pickled treats, from cauliflower and cukes, to kimchi and even blueberries (and they are great).

But the sandwiches steal the show at Chase. For his starting lineup of subs, Ma exercised the same tireless grit that you would expect him to exert over a full restaurant menu. Have you ever seen a deli counter with a full kitchen, an industrial gas range and six cooks on staff?

“We started with restaurants, and now we have a sandwich shop,” Ma says. “We’re sort of working backwards in that sense. And we’re bringing all those resources and practices, everything from our restaurant’s kitchen, and cramming it into this totally different environment.”

Chase has the standards: an Italian sub, a pastrami, a chicken salad, a Cubano (sort of) and a stacked vegetarian portobello. But Ma has remastered these classics in his own unique way and brought them back to life for 21st-century foodies. I don’t even like steak and cheese (sorry, Philly), but with thin-sliced rib eye finished perfectly on the grill, this sandwich was crazy good.

The Pork and Pickle is a sort of updated multicultural Cubano, with pineapple-braised pork shoulder, Dijon mustard and gooey Gruyère, topped with pickled apples, dill pickles and (get ready for this) lychee. It is about the most ingenious and tasty combination of flavors you can imagine, and I could eat one every day for the rest of my life.
And the pastrami is something you will wake up thinking about. To make it, Ma house-smokes Wagyu beef brisket, primes the bread with a blend of crème fraîche and mustard and tops it with carrot sauerkraut and pickled shallots. “We have to start curing the brisket about a week ahead,” Ma says. “Then we smoke it, chill it, slice it and touch it on the grill before serving. So you could say it takes seven days to make this sandwich.”

The menu also lets loose with outstanding Asian-inspired numbers, like a Vietnamese bánh mì made with braised pork belly, local ham, pickled daikon and jalapeño oil, and a Korean bulgogi sub with rib eye marinated in Asian pears, topped with kimchi puree and roasted scallions. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the fried veal sweetbreads, served on a long bun with Korean chili paste, pickles and cabbage, is out of this world.

The average price of a sub at Chase is about $9.50. If he wanted to, Ma could remove the bread from most of these sandwiches, stack the ingredients on a plate and serve them as entrees at his restaurant for more than double the price. He probably knows this, but he obviously doesn’t care. Chase the Submarine is a reflection of where he is in his life, who he cares about and how he thinks.

“You can get a little sick of the pretentiousness of fine dining,” he says. “I have three kids now, and Joey and I can’t really take them to any of my other restaurants. Chase is a family-oriented place, a place for parents to come after work and get a bite to eat and beer, and their kids can run around and get something to eat from the kids menu. It’s for everyone, but it’s also just sort of a neighborhood thing.”

The magic of this place is that Ma so effortlessly blends obvious greatness with a “nothing special” modesty. He seems hardly aware of the ambition with which he has already fueled his little sub shop. Already there are off-menu items on a regular basis, showcasing his endless culinary experimentation. “I’m always making something back there,” he laughs. “Just ask.”

He has plans to sell rare ingredients from the back: “Things I use in the kitchen that are hard to get at the grocery store — homemade stocks, unusual cuts of meat, that sort of thing.”

Come spring, he plans to run a CSA out of Chase with weekly proteins and vegetables. There is a butcher’s-block tasting table toward the back of the bar, where he will soon debut a twice-weekly five-course tasting menu for groups of six, with wine pairings and food “inspired by the deli.” I guess we will have to find out what that means, but I’m sure it will be a hell of an adventure.

But even forgoing all of that, Chase the Submarine is something special. It’s the sort of cozy, tasty spot you hope with a guilty conscience never gets too popular, lest it gets lost in the inevitable swarm of foodie fanfare.

Forget about pop­up restaurants, gastropubs and food trucks. Chef Tim Ma has done something truly out of the ordinary and downright awesome, and it’s everything you could want it to be.

Chase the Submarine (132 Church St. NW, Vienna, Virginia) is open from 10:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily. For more information visit www.ChaseTheSubmarine.com.