Daniela Moreira, Andrew Dana, and Chris Brady
Call Your Mother | Washington, D.C.
DECEMBER 2018
Daniela Moreira grew up in Argentina and learned to cook alongside her mother, who provided meals for the family’s summer campground. Although Moreira didn’t immediately love the kitchen, she enrolled in culinary school so she could continue working in restaurants to earn money for her true passion: travel. She moved to the United States at the age of 20 to learn English, and after being an au pair for a year, won a scholarship to attend the Culinary Institute of America. This lead to an internship at Eleven Madison Park, where she became friendly with classmate Kwame Onwuachi. In 2015, Moreira moved to Washington, D.C., intending to help Onwuachi launch a restaurant. But while she was waiting, she met Andrew Dana and Chris Brady of Timber Pizza Co, a mobile pizzeria in a blue 1967 Chevy truck that parked at local farmers’ markets.
Dana and Brady had left corporate jobs in education technology to launch Timber Pizza Co, but neither had any significant culinary experience. When they saw Moreira’s talent, they asked her to join the project as executive chef. The trio moved from the truck to a brick and mortar shop in 2016 (plus an additional three roving pizza ovens) and TPC was named one of Bon Appétit’s best new restaurants of 2017. In 2018, Moreira was a semifinalist for James Beard’s “Rising Star Chef of the Year” award, and, in October, Dana and Moreira opened Call Your Mother, a Jew-“ish” deli that showcases bagels (complete with a bagel-slide foraged from a local playground).
