Years of Practice Have Perfected This Petworth Pizza

Jose Velasquez, left, co-owner of Moroni & Brothers restaurant on Georgia Avenue NW, tosses pizza dough. The restaurant features pizza and Salvadoran dishes, including a La Capra pizza (spinach, roasted garlic, goat cheese, onions and tomato sauce), top, which is headed for the Italian wood-fire oven, and tamales, above. (Photos By Mark Gail -- The Washington Post)

Moroni & Brothers is part of the slowly changing face of upper Georgia Avenue NW.

Opened in August, this small, sit-down restaurant brings gourmet brick-oven pizza to the Petworth corridor, along with Salvadoran favorites.

Jose Velasquez, who owns Moroni & Brothers along with his wife, Reyna Isabella Acosta, says the menu melds Latino and Italian specialties because "pizza is what I know," and the Salvadoran specialties are "my tradition."

Velasquez and Acosta met at Pizza Paradiso off Dupont Circle, where both started as dishwashers soon after they came to this country from El Salvador 17 years ago. They worked their way up to kitchen managers. Acosta still works there; Velasquez left when their restaurant opened.

The interior of Moroni & Brothers is plain but clean. A jukebox is stocked with Latino music and there is a television close to the bar area. The room's main feature is the brick oven, imported from Italy, which dominates the area behind the bar and is stoked with oak wood day and night.

Velasquez works the kitchen and the dining room; his brother Jorge (who worked eight years at Pizza Paradiso), bakes the pizzas and son Jose waits tables after school at nearby Roosevelt High. Acosta joins Velasquez when she's not working at Pizza Paradiso. The restaurant is named for their youngest son, Moroni. Dennis, their middle son, is often at the restaurant helping out, too.

The Georgia Avenue location was chosen because it's close to their home, it's outside Pizza Paradiso's three-mile no-compete zone and because there simply weren't many restaurants in the Petworth area.

Moroni & Brothers has almost a split personality; Latino by day and Italian by night. The restaurant opens at 8 a.m. weekdays and attracts a crowd eager for Salvadoran breakfast specialties, including Chorizo con Huevos, the most popular dish. It is a large serving of eggs scrambled with the stuffing of chorizo sausages, onions, green peppers and tomato. It tastes much better than it looks and is served with black beans, rice, sour cream and two thick, Salvadoran-style white corn tortillas. There is also a smaller, breakfast sandwich version of the dish.

The Latino menu also includes quesadillas and enchiladas, carne asada (grilled steak), lomo saltado (beef strips with green pepper and onions) and a good pupusa, especially the cheese and pork version. The fresh corn tortillas are a treat, almost sweet and served steaming hot with sour cream.

The Latino dishes are good, but the pizza is even better.

Velasquez makes the dough, combining flour, yeast, honey, salt and olive oil. The dough is hand-stretched into a flat pie before being topped and put into the oven.

The pizza that emerges a few minutes later is crispy in the middle and bubbly but not doughy around the edges. The toppings are all first-rate gourmet: prosciutto, buffalo mozzarella, good Parmesan cheese, fresh tomatoes, roasted garlic, goat cheese and zesty pepperoni. Mushrooms are dark and earthy tasting, and the mozzarella creates long strings when you cut the pie.