Michelin-starred Chef Matt Baker Brings Boutique Café to Georgetown
By October 19, 2023 0 2069
•Baker’s Daughter, Michelin-starred chef Matt Baker’s boutique café below M Street at 1065 Wisconsin Ave, NW, offers Baker’s elevated comfort fare in an eat-in/take-out format.
A brightly lit service bar is the focal point of its mirrored, dark blue and hardwood-accented dining space. An array of tempting goodies from the pastry team at Baker’s fine-dining venues (Gravitas and Michele’s) line the counter.
This concept’s breakfast all-day, sandwich and salad menu reflect Baker’s Houston, Texas roots as well as skills honed in Singapore and at Minibar and Brasserie Beck in Washington, D.C. The best-selling menu item is a flour tortilla wrap loaded with egg, cheese and either bacon, chorizo or roasted potato and caramelized onion. It comes with a roasted tomato salsa and is inspired by the burritos at a favorite late-night haunt in Houston. Baker and his teenage buddies would head there after “hanging out” house parties held “when the parents weren’t there.”
Other curated, all-day breakfast choices include bowls brimming with a southern-inspired mix of braised beef, polenta, greens and a baked egg – or vegetarian-friendly shakshuka as well as a vegetable-focused baked egg bowl. Breakfast sandwiches are assembled on sourdough, English muffins, biscuits or brioche. And, of course, there is an elevated avocado toast.
Thoughtfully composed sandwiches range from grilled cheese with white cheddar and gruyere to fried chicken with pimento cheese, braised short rib with cheddar and red onion marmalade, a classic Cubano, smoked salmon and a chicken club. They come with a choice of a kale pasta salad, a chickpea and tomato salad or chips.
House-made juices reflect the brand’s creative, health-oriented kitchen. Fresh-pressed oranges, pineapples and lemons make up the fancifully named “Orange You Glad.” “Sweet Victory” is a green juice with an intriguing mix of spinach and celery along with pineapple, apple and lemons. While “Pick Me Up” combines beets, lemons, apples, carrots, ginger, turmeric, pineapple and sea buckthorn.
A refrigerated showcase is filled with those house-bottled juices, take-out sandwiches, salads and curated breakfast and salad meals like a smoked salmon breakfast bowl, a roasted salmon hummus bowl brimming with crisp vegetables, the staple chickpea and baby tomato salad and a prosciutto-filled baguette. Baker points proudly to these prepared salads and other “elevated” choices that are designed to enable “healthy, flavorful eating at home.”