Alexandria is home to tons of tasty cuisine, and this year, our critics rounded up the best spots to grab a reservation. From a hearty handmade pizza to slow-cooked beef short rib, here are Alexandria’s top locations from this year’s 50 Best Restaurants.
By Alice Levitt, Dawn Klavon, and Monica Saigal
Price Key: Entrées = $ 15 and under | $$ 16–25 | $$$ 26–40 | $$$$ 41 and over | * = prix fixe only
Osteria Marzano
Alexandria | Italian | $$$
You might find yourself trotting confused through an office building in search of Osteria Marzano. But stay the course, and you will be rewarded with an optimally seared, medium-rare filet mignon.
Atop its crisped edges is a raviolo of near-identical dimensions beneath shaved black truffle. Get out your steak knife. Cut in and the al dente pasta oozes with cheesy cacio e pepe sauce. You may be accustomed to it on pasta, but it’s even better on a tender steak. On the side, Parmesan-covered fries are made eminently moreish by a side of red-wine demi-glace.
By the time you finish with a Nutella pizza that’s topped with so many buoyant mini marshmallows it feels like it will float away like a hot air balloon, you’ll be utterly won over. With its unusual creations that await in an office building, this is the definition of a hidden gem.
Eat This: Arancini, filetto al cacio e pepe, Nutella pizza
Stracci Pizza
Alexandria | Italian | $$
Really? A pizzeria on the 50 Best list? Yes, really.
Stracci is no mere pizza joint. Ingredients are hyper-local and uber-seasonal. The dough ferments for 72 hours and the stracciatella cheese — for which the restaurant is named — is pulled by hand.
What started as a food truck is now a bona fide destination where you’ll likely need to wait for a table. Once seated, you’ll be greeted by well-informed servers but order through a QR code.
The seasonal salad is a must, especially one summery mix of greens with juicy cherries, pistachios, creamy goat cheese, pickled onions, and garlicky saba vinaigrette. Special pizzas change more than once a week. Hope for the corn carbonara, which adds local sweet corn to the crunchy Roman-style dough, along with salty cured pork cheek, egg yolk, and blobs of cream-oozing stracciatella.
But even the mainstays are always fresh. The Brooklyner features pepperoni and sausage atop tomatoes and fresh basil, with a hint of Calabrian chile and honey for a spicy-sweet delight. Seasonal desserts like blackberry granita will delight, but so will the concentrated flavors of the tiramisu.
This is one pizzeria that more than earns its place on any best list.
Eat This: The Brooklyner, seasonal salads, tiramisu
The Study (Photo by Rey Lopez)
The Study
Alexandria | Mesoamerican Fusion | $$$
Set inside a jewel box of a Federalist-style townhouse, The Study glows like a scholar’s salon. Slate‑blue walls, candlelit tables, and a gauzy pendant lamp set the hushed mood, but chef Tomas Chavarria’s plates speak loudest.
Begin with cevichito, silky cubes of cured bluefin tuna crowned with cucumber, radish, and puffed amaranth, ready to scoop onto whisper-thin cassava chips. Break bread — literally — with the bread and aged butter board. Its warm, housemade bread and fresh tortillas arrive with a caramel-tinged panela butter that could double as dessert. Still, save room for chef’s magnum opus, the cured duck breast. Mole-lacquered and blushing rose, it arrives over earthy baby-beet purée with a peppery duck jus. It is proof that, here, duck can be both decadent and tender.
Linger to the tune of live piano drifting from the bar, and let the servers’ gentle pacing make the evening feel like an intimate masterclass in modern Mesoamerican comfort.
Eat This: Cevichito, bread and aged butter, cured duck breast
Thompson Italian (Photo by Rey Lopez)
Thompson Italian
Alexandria & Falls Church | Italian | $$$
You’ll admit it without hesitation or embarrassment: You made a reservation at Thompson Italian for the carbs. Before the freshly made pasta, there’s the free focaccia, so indulgently oily that it leaves a rectangular print on your plate when it’s gone.
But have you tried the salad? Chef-owners Gabe and Katherine Thompson are masters of flavor, and while many of their greatest works are noodle-based, their medium is local produce.
It stands to reason that a summer melon salad would be memorable. Balled honeydew, cantaloupe, and watermelon, along with slices of cucumber, a honey-lime vinaigrette, whipped feta, jalapeños, mint, and crumbly olive “granola” conspire to make you salivate even after it’s gone.
Fruity desserts like mixed berry tiramisu and blackberry upside down cake are Katherine’s domain, and they’re just as fresh, seasonal, and intensely flavored.
Yes, order a bowl or three of creamy, truffled mushroom mafaldine. But don’t skimp on salad — or sweets.
Eat This: Summer melon salad, mafaldine, mixed berry tiramisu
Vermilion (Photo by Rey Lopez)
Vermilion
Alexandria | Modern American | $$$$
There’s a typical ratio: The more upscale the meal is, the fussier it gets. But any mathematical equations we might use to prove it are broken at Vermilion. Here, the regional cuisine may travel swiftly from farm to fork, but the preparations are resolutely uncomplicated.
The fork-tender slow-cooked beef rib, for example, is served in a sweet-and-sour blackberry glaze. Next to it is a shaved fennel salad, bright as a cloudless day, punctuated by pistachios and red chiles. That’s it.
Amish chicken is presented with softened peppers and shell beans and a swipe of creamy saffron aioli. A dessert of dense chocolate cremeux with fresh peaches gets a nudge toward the savory with sea salt and olive oil.
In the candlelit brick interior of this historic home, you won’t need a math degree to prove that simplicity can be just as enticing as a lavishly baroque tasting menu.
Eat This: Country ham bruschetta, slow-cooked beef short rib, dark and milk chocolate cremeux
Feature photo of Vermilion by Rey Lopez
This story originally ran in our November issue. For more stories like this, subscribe to Northern Virginia Magazine.
Dining and Cooking