The breakout star of Any Day Now, the new all-day cafe from chefs Tim Ma and Matt Sperber, is the breakfast sandwich swaddled in a housemade scallion pancake.
“We thought if we sold 50, we’d pat ourselves on the back,” on opening day June 1, says Sperber, 32, Ma’s business partner and chef de cuisine. “By 11:30 we were sold out.” At the same time the next day, all 150 sandwiches produced by the Navy Yard kitchen were gone. Shortly after 10 a.m. that Saturday, Ma went outside to tell a hungry crowd there was nothing more to sell after the restaurant made 217 hot pockets. By Sunday, Any Day Now pumped out nearly 300 orders — before noon.
End of carousel“It was a blessing we didn’t anticipate,” says Sperber, and the chief reason for pushing back dinner service until late July. The sandwiches, which start with a labor-intensive dough and get filled with steamed egg and a choice of bacon, sausage or kimchi, live up to the frenzy. In my experience, crackle gives way to tender egg and melted cheese, a sensation enlivened by a dip in the accompanying garlic-chili soy sauce. Recipients are truly sorry when the last sesame-oiled crumb is dispatched. The only reason I didn’t get back in line for a second round is because the sandwiches are griddled to order, they take about 10 minutes — and I had a lunch reservation on the horizon.
Lots of fans have trumpeted the praises of the Taylor Swift of sandwiches. I’m here to tell you evenings offer plenty of entertainment, too.
Dinner was actually my first visit to the restaurant, which follows ABC Pony in its space. Little on the menu at Any Day Now reads unusual; lots of places serve tuna tartare, barbecue spare ribs and burgers. Yet this is the only place I’ve encountered diced raw tuna with blue cheese in the same dish, a novelty that took me no time to finish once I tasted the combination.
Ahead of their joint venture, Ma, 45, dug up menus from his many previous restaurants — American Son, Kyirisan, Water & Wall and Maple Avenue, among others — gave them to Sperber for reference, and told him to apply his own story to whatever dishes he envisioned for Any Day Now. Sperber, who left the Salt Line in Ballston to work with Ma at Lucky Danger, Ma’s American Chinese takeout, is a New Jersey native whose favorite childhood food memories embraced family trips to diners.
Which is how Any Day Now’s atypical tuna tartare came about: Sperber wanted to both riff on a classic tuna melt and offer an alternative to beef tartare. Diced tuna is bound with mayonnaise, miso, cold-smoked egg and blue cheese, which imparts a meaty note, and spread across a raft of toast, which is finished with a carpet of minced scallions and pickled mushrooms — perfect ping. For sure, the combination is different. But intriguing, too, and an example of the “polished casual” approach Sperber says he is aiming for here.
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Servers steer customers toward certain dishes by flagging their inspiration. The cucumber salad, a waiter says, “is like a gyro.” Sure enough, the small plate gathers all the makings for the Greek staple: chunks of cucumber arranged with merguez and feta cheese, both made in-house, along with fresh mint and sourdough croutons for contrasting texture. The salad sits on a puddle of toum mixed with tahini and eats like a gyro — a gyro sent to finishing school, that is.
Sperber says he loves honey walnut shrimp served at Chinese restaurants. His version swaps in fried calamari, which he scatters with black walnut crumble and arranges with broccoli, typically a garnish. Instead of serving the vegetable steamed, though, he chars it, for depth of flavor, but also to give it a more prominent role.
The menu is small but inclusive. Steamed rockfish, which a server compares to clam chowder, delivers on the promise with a moat of diced potatoes, bacon and milky sauce around the entree, freckled with scallion ash, a handy way to deal with the abundance of scallions in the kitchen. Oxtail tagliatelle is a mash-up between the beef lo mein offered at Lucky Danger and Taiwanese beef noodle soup, a Ma childhood memory. Any Italian preconceptions are erased by the inclusion of five-spice powder, fermented pineapple and fresh mint. Busy at it sounds, forks go into over-twirl.
Ma says people should “eat to be challenged” instead of ordering something they can get at home. Spare ribs of the size that tipped the Flintstones’ car are in fact daunting but delicious, glazed in a guava barbecue sauce I probably wouldn’t whip up in my own kitchen. The hulk, confited in brown butter, comes to the table on potatoes that taste like equal parts butter and Yukon Golds, their silky texture achieved by a pass through a fine-meshed strainer.
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Ma says he likes adding a little mystery to the familiar. What look like mozzarella sticks turn out to be stretchy with potatoes, too, and what appears to be marinara sauce is in fact tomato gravy tinted with turmeric. The oceanic taste in the dressing for the fetching green papaya “Caesar” salad is not anchovy, but nori. Another welcome vegetarian dish is katsu, in which breaded eggplant replaces the usual pork or chicken cutlet, and I’m reminded that Sperber also cooked at the much-missed Momofuku in CityCenter. The centerpiece, marinated in mirin, sake, miso and sugar, shares its bowl with shredded carrots, bright green pickles, pickled red onions and gold pickled fennel — a riot of colors and flavors atop a dusky curry broth.
The owners want you to know their captivating omelet “is not from ‘The Bear,’” says Ma, never mind that the tender yellow picture arrives with a similar rich filling (sour cream and onions in this case) and crushed potato chips. Black truffles and caviar explain the item’s “fancy” menu designation, $25 price tag and good reason for sharing as an appetizer.
This is a kitchen that likes to repurpose ideas. Did you expect the hamburger to be bound in anything but a scallion pancake? The effect is like eating potato chips with every bite of sandwich, a joyous meld of American cheese, crusty patty and “special sauce” that resembles McDonald’s, save for the wasabi tease slipped in. Light, beer-battered onion rings extend the pleasure.
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In contrast, the one dish that a table of food lovers merely picked at: fried chicken atop okonomiyaki, or stuffed Japanese pancake. The riff on chicken and waffles was too dense, too sweet.
Busy with his takeout venues, Laoban Dumplings (sold at Sprouts and Whole Foods) and combating anti-Asian violence through his nonprofit Chefs Stopping AAPI Hate, Ma debated jumping back into full-service restaurants. He reconsidered after he thought about his family legacy; his uncle, Paul Ma, an immigrant from China, was so instrumental in teaching customers about regional Chinese cooking at his restaurant, Paul Ma’s China Kitchen outside of New York City in the 1970s and 1980s, that he was honored with inclusion in an exhibition, “Food: Transforming the American Table,” at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
Tim Ma ultimately decided he had to “finish what I started doing,” despite the industry’s challenges in the wake of the pandemic. Any Day Now is the uncommon restaurant to be open on Monday and give workers two consecutive days off in the middle of the week, but it is also the increasingly frequent business to withhold a phone number. (The wine collector in my posse had to wait until arrival to learn the corkage fee: $35.)
Kitty corner from the Capitol Skyline hotel, the dining room, separated from the bar by a see-through bookshelf, is as relaxed as the food is fun. By day, the botanical-topped tables and low couches are populated by almost as many laptops as sandwich eaters and coffee sippers. (The morning of my epiphany, Ma was working by his lonesome at the bar.) Come evening, a layer of sophistication is applied as cocktails take the place of coffee cups.
Stick around for an $8 dessert. The kitchen puts out a super-moist carrot cake veined with golden raisins and a yuzu curd pie topped with lightly torched waves of meringue. Apple pie can be ordered “a la Ma.” Expecting an inside joke or backstory, I was a little disappointed to discover it’s just vanilla ice cream.
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Ma says he opened Any Day Now with a mission — “Let’s be really good at one thing” — accomplished by the line-prompting breakfast sandwich. The debut of dinner finds the all-day restaurant good at a lot of things.
Any Day Now
2 I St. SE. No phone. anydaynowdc.com. Open for indoor dining 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily and 5 to 10 p.m. Thursday through Monday. Prices: appetizers $8 to $19, entrees $22 to $34. Sound check: 74/Must speak with raised voice. Accessibility: No barriers to entry; ADA-compliant restrooms.
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