american flatbread: pizza with integrity and convenience

43170 Southern Walk Plaza

Ashburn, VA 20148

703-723-7003

http://www.americanflatbread.com/

Pizza for dinner?  Again?

I kind-of hate American pizza.  I know, I know, my disgust for Dominos and Pizza Hut and Cici's is something akin to a crime against American culture.  Dough, sauce, cheese, veggies--sure, the ingredients are fine on their own.  But something unfortunate happens when they are combined by a bored teenager in a wide-brimmed sanitary visor who lackadaisically throws frozen sausage on top of a mushy white pie and into a stainless-steel oven for ten minutes and then shoves it into a brown cardboard box.  (Where exactly have those hands been? Don't tell me.)  To me, pizza--it's boring.  Even with pineapple and ham on top, the sauce, the cheese...it's formulaic, processed, and always the same.  Perhaps I should blame all those school pizza parties from my childhood, or cake-and-pizza birthdays, or those Friday nights when mom didn't feel like making dinner.  How many slices of pizza have you consumed in your lifetime?  Too many to count.

Which brings me to my very local Loudoun adventure for this week: the American Flatbread restaurant in my hometown of Ashburn.

Situated in a shopping mall.  No surprise there.

My next-door neighbors, Cheryl and Olivia, introduced me to American Flatbread a few months ago.  I'd never heard of this restaurant that came out of Burlington, Vermont, about twenty years ago.  I didn't know what a flatbread was, but quickly realized after hearing it enthusiastically described by Stone Bridge High School student Olivia that it's basically a fancy way of saying "pizza."  (Except that it is in the shape of an oval, not the traditional circle.)  Always one to try new foods, I shrugged off my pizza hate, and after my first visit, I was hooked.  I have been back to their Ashburn restaurant at least six times since.

"wood-fired artisan pizza"

This is no bland-sauce, tasteless-dough, limp-veggie pizza.  It's gourmet, and the prices show it.  An average flatbread costs between $15--$22 and serves about two people.  However, it's definitely one of those times where you get what you pay for: preservative-free, locally grown, identifiable food products.  (I brought my dad to the restaurant recently and he was appalled.  A long-time soda drinker, he was shocked to find not a single Coke or Pepsi product listed on the menu.  "This place is un-American," he said, shaking his head at his all-natural can of root beer.  "What kind of restaurant charges you twenty dollars for a pizza and doesn't even serve soft drinks?"  Sure, the pizza tasted ok--"Like eating money," he said.  He never went back.)

ham, apple & cheddar

On this weekend's trip, the three of us ladies shared two flatbreads and had a pile of leftover slices to take home.  We devoured my favorite, the Virginia Country Ham, Apple and Cheddar flatbread.  Sounds like a strange combination, but the chefs are adept at combining unusual ingredients into something spectacular.  Each week the menu boasts special new flatbreads, and the one we tried was the odd Roasted Garlic Mashed Potato flatbread.  At first, the garlic was overpowering, and the potato nonexistent.  But after a few bites the flavor and texture is slowly drawn out, and you realize that you are actually eating a pizza with mashed potatoes on top.  It was bizarre, but I liked its unusualness and enjoyed the playful idea behind it.

"flatbread kitchen"

Eating here is a completely different experience than the typical American-chain restaurant.  Usually, when we go out to eat, patrons give their order to an overworked server who may or may not write it down, and once he or she leaves we pray that they fill our orders correctly and the food will come quickly.  This is not the environment at American Flatbread.  The restaurant's openness allows customers to see basically everything that's being done to their food, from the creation of the bread to the cheese being sliced and the veggies being washed.  There's something reassuring about this visibility that is so uncommon in today's restaurant world.  Eaters have become dissociated from what we order and what sits on our plate.  It was captivating to see how the chefs worked.  Watching the flames of the wood-fire oven while our food was prepared before us was a much better way to wait for our meal--much more homey than, say, staring emptily at television screens.

"philosophy of food and place"

from the American Flatbread restaurant brochure:

"Food is important.  What we eat and how it is grown intimately affects our health and the well-being of the world.  American Flatbread is an experiment in post-modern baking.  It is about exploring how to make meaningful food: food that fills our hunger and tastes good, food that nourishes, nurtures, and helps us heal, food that reminds us of home and the things that truly sustain us."

American Flatbread devotes itself to buying its ingredients from farmers like Steve Baker, part of the Virginia Cooperative Extension, who produces ham, bacon and sausage on his sustainable farm in the Shenandoah Valley.  About farming and encouraging people to eat mindfully, he comments: "We're not getting rich, but what we're doing is honorable."  I think most of us would agree.  The ingredients used in their flatbreads, salads, and desserts are organic and grown and bought locally.  Tasty food, a wood-fire hearth, Dogfish Head beers aplenty, and a restaurant that supports local agriculture?  Sounds delicious.

Dig in, Loudoun County!