by Cesse Ip

Last week ANXO quietly opened the front doors at its 711 Kennedy Street location. Last summer ANXO had to close its flagship location in Truxton Circle and said that they were planning on expanding their location on Kennedy Street. Phase 1 is finally complete with the new “bottle shop” in the front part of their property opening.

After your first visit to the bottle shop, you can see right away that a lot of thought went into curating the awesome selection of cider, natural wine, craft beer and spirits. ANXO has one of the only wine-pub permits in DC that allows them to sell cider and wine on and off-premises, even if they don’t make it in-house (Capitol Cider on Georgia Avenue has another).

Beverage director Cooper Sheehan says ANXO is proud to have the largest selection of beer and cider not available anywhere else in DC. If you go soon, check out their first ever house-made wine, a single-varietal Vidal Blanc orange wine, made by macerating Maryland-grown Vidal Blanc grapes on their own skins for ten days. It was entirely made at 711 Kennedy Street.

Seating at 711 Kennedy Street has also expanded with the opening of the new bottle shop opening. Tables are available now in the front building, and sidewalk seating is also available. You can order your pizza and drinks at the bar in the back and bring your meal to the front. The sidewalk tables have a nice view of the inside of local ice cream parlour Everyday Sundae, and Sam is encouraging his customers to get their dessert from next door and bring it to their tables at ANXO to enjoy.

ANXO owner Sam Fitz said that it was a lot of work to renovate the front part of the building, but he was helped by his wife, Cerrissa Fitz, who owns her own design firm, Piranha Design. They were able to reuse a lot of their own materials and fixtures from their old place in Truxton, and a few new custom pieces were built just for 711 Kennedy. Plans are still in place to expand to open a bigger kitchen on the second floor with construction starting winter 2022. He also hopes that at some point he can open earlier and serve coffee.

When asked about his interest in staying in the neighborhood, Sam said he has the lease at 711 Kennedy Street for the next six years and is already interested in extending it. In fact, he said he is interested in possibly taking over the lease at 701 Kennedy Street. Rotonda, the “home of imaginary pizza on Kennedy Street,” has occupied the space since 2017, but as residents know, the restaurant failed to open and all hopes of it someday opening have diminished to zero.

Oddly enough, Sam credits Rotonda with the idea of making pizza at ANXO. Like so many of us, Sam was also excited about potential pizza when he saw that Rotonda was coming to the neighborhood. But when they failed to deliver, he thought that ANXO could perhaps step up in its place. He initially worried that perhaps Rotonda would open while ANXO was still figuring things out, but those fears were never realized.

Now ANXO’s Brightwood Pizza has established itself in the Brightwood Park neighborhood as the best place to grab a pie. Additionally, they are also now open during the work week Wednesdays through Fridays, and have expanded their menu to include sandwiches to cater to the work-from-home crowd. Sam hopes that as the DC restaurant scene returns to normalcy this summer, that the pizza business grows enough to justify more dining space.