My good friend Janette is a Cleveland Park resident and I often feel a bit guilty that I always make her meet me somewhere near my apartment and never make it to her part of town. The fact that she owns a car and I don't always seems to make it seem more reasonable for her to come to me. At any rate, Janette and I are great friends for many reasons but both of us will tell you that one of the main pillars of our relationship springs from a mutual love of good food and good wine. Our primary activities together usually center around eating out, having cocktails, grocery shopping (did I mention she has a car) and even cooking every once in awhile.Janette has been talking for sometime about Vace, an Italian deli in Cleveland Park (they have a second location in Bethesda). Several people had told her that it was the best pizza they had ever had in DC and Janette had always wanted to try it, but was a little gun shy about ordering a pizza just for herself. Being the great friend that I am, I happily volunteered to help her out.
We met up on a Thursday evening around 6:30 and ordered a pizza to go. This is really the only option since Vace does not have any kind of tables or chairs. It was a build-your-own-pizza set up with a list of ingredients on the board to choose from. This proved to be a little bit daunting for us, especially since it was pretty obvious that everyone else in the place were pretty regular and knew exactly what they wanted and we were obviously in the way. Eventually, we settled on spinach and sausage which may sound odd but we were thrown into upheaval when they did not have any fresh tomatoes. So, lesson number one was to know what you wanted before you got in line and have a Plan B ready to go. The next lesson: order before you get to the restaurant. We probably waited close to 40 minutes for the pizza which w
ould have been fine if there had been any place in the deli where you could stand without being in someone's way. We did have plenty of time to peruse the shelves of Italian wine, dry noodles and the freezers full of home made ravioli and lasagna (ranging from $6 - $12 for a pound).We eventually got our pizza and it smelled pretty amazing. A 16-inch large was only $12 after tax which already had me leaning towards loving Vace. It should be noted that single slices of pizza can be purchased for $1 for those who don't want to commit to an entire pizza. The White Onion pizza looked particularly appealing (all things we noticed after we had ordered our pizza).
We made it through the rain back to Janette's apartment and pretty much devoured the pizza that we had repeatedly decried "way too large" for two people to eat. The crust was fantastic and Vace put their tomato sauce on top of the cheese which seemed to make the pizza crisper and lighter. The spinach was obvi
ously frozen in its past life which was a little disappointing, but the sausage was home made and excellent.I don't know if I could go as far as calling Vace's pizza the best in DC, but it was definitely near the top and the price is hard to beat.
Vace Italian Deli
3315 Connecticutt Avenue NW
(202) 363-1999
http://www.vaceitaliandeli.com/
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