FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM
presents
FO O D &D I NI NG
SEPTEMBER 12 – 18, 2019 | PAGE 13
Fall 2019 Food & Dining Special
since our daughter was two at the time, but Katherine had always been obsessed with food and all she wanted was a way to cook when she was 13. After college she moved to Seattle and tried the whole dotcom thing, then decided she wanted to go to culinary school. She went to the Culinary Institute of America where — even though she’s embarrassed to admit it — she graduated top of her class, which was a goal of hers inspired by Alfred Portale, who did the same. She moved to NYC, got a job at Per Se as a food runner, worked at Del Posto for a while, couple of wine stores and cooked food for events. We met after a few years from that, she helped get me the job at Dell’anima’s because she knew the guys opening it.
THOMPSON ITALIAN CHEF Gabe Thompson sat down with the News-Press to talk about his new venture, his history in the food industry and why he and his team chose the Little City as the location for their new restaurant. (Courtesy photo)
Gabe Thompson Dishes on His New F.C. Restaurant & Why It’s Not Exactly Italian by Matt Delaney
Falls Church News-Press
The opening of Thompson Italian last month has left Falls Church buzzing about the new modern eatery. While the restaurant’s new take on Italian food, in owner and executive chef Gabe Thompson’s own admission, remains a sore spot to some that long for the rustic vibes of 124 N. Washington Streets old inhabitant, Argia’s, you couldn’t tell once inside. A steady stream of patrons make their way to the dining room or rear patio with the cacophony of kitchen sounds never quieting down during business hours. Not bad for a chef who cut his teeth in Texas, Oregon and New York before returning to his wife Katherine’s home in the
Washington D.C. area in 2016. Falls Church can count itself as fortunate that the busy (and expensive) New York City lifestyle caused the family to move down south. Thompson brings with him some tricks of the trade he learned about upscale dining in Manhattan to an accessible, neighborhood level in the D.C. suburbs. He’s managed to do just that — though don’t assume you’ll only get Italian dishes at this restaurant (we’ll let Thompson explain). Thompson shared some time with the News-Press to elaborate on what people can expect with the menu, his impressions of Falls Church so far and what challenges the restaurant is still overcoming. Can you give me your and Katherine’s respective culinary backgrounds?
Baddpizza Coming to F.C.
Tired of this area’s pizza-and-wing selection, a Buffalo, New York native is bringing his hometown’s specialties to the Little City this November.
Page 18
I started out in a bunch of restaurants in Austin, Texas until I finally moved to Portland, Oregon. One of my more powerful experiences in Portland was working at a place called Clarklewis — it changed the way I cooked, how I approached food and how I tasted it. It serves Italian food, but in an American-y, Italian fashion. I then moved to New York City in 2003, worked, at various Italian restaurants before opening up Dell’Anima. From there I started a small restaurant group with some marketers and we opened three restaurants and a wine bar. Katherine is from here. She grew up in Arlington and went to [the College of] William & Mary. I’d been pestering her for years about getting our own restaurant, and started almost immediately after moving here in 2016. She was pretty against it
After Mad Fox
A look at Falls Church’s craft beer trailblazer and how the ensuing wave of area breweries ultimately led to its downfall.
Page 19
Growing up in Texas, with a lot of TexMex food making up the culinary scene, how did you land on Italian as your restaurant’s cuisine? Well, side note — opening a Tex-Mex restaurant is my dream. Was chatting about that with someone when we were putting together the concept for this place and they asked “Why wouldn’t you do the Tex-Mex thing?” and I said “I’d never done it as a restaurant before, so I’d like to do something first that I know instead of launch into something that I’d never had a service of before.” I think it was that experience at Clarklewis that really did it for me. It was amazing because it wasn’t really an Italian restaurant — you know, lasagna and meatballs, not super off-the-boat Italian. It was respecting the ideas of Italian cuisine but using the ingredients you had around you and making your own pasta and or maybe getting a pig and breaking it down, doing a sauce with it, different things like that. I thought that this could be Italian food, or could influence a philosophy of cooking more than anything. What made you want to come to Falls Church? We didn’t want to be in D.C. We wanted to be in this area, because we live in Arlington and our kids go to school there. We knew we weren’t going to do that at a restaurant in D.C. I was never going to see the kids and Katherine wouldn’t be as involved at the restaurant, so it just made sense to do it in this area. When we looked at Arlington, there was nothing available that fit what we were looking for. Someone said “Why don’t you look in Falls Church,
Continued on Page 20
Also Inside: • The Little City’s Sauce Guru Returns • Taste of Falls Church Lineup & Menu • ‘Taste’ Judge Q&A’s