Meiser and Wayman open Nana's Bakery & Pizza, their fourth restaurant in Mystic
Mystic — With the opening of Nana's Bakery & Pizza on Oct. 30, Dan Meiser and James Wayman have added another restaurant to 85th Day Food Community — joining Oyster Club, Engine Room and Grass & Bone — and are expanding what Wayman calls their "food ecosystem" in the region.
Nana's is primarily a takeout place, with eight seats in the small spot that sits behind Sea Swirl and next to Broadway Auto, at 32 Williams Ave.
The idea, Wayman said in an interview last week sitting outside Nana's and overlooking the water, was to have a "space to sell our beautiful organic sourdough bread."
The bread comes in many forms, whether it's a hot sourdough doughnut ($3), or the house-made English muffin that serves as the base for a sandwich with a Stone Acres Farm egg and pimento cream cheese ($6), or a 13-inch pizza made with freshly milled organic grains ($10-$18).
Some of the pizza options include tomato, roasted sweet potato, fermented pepper, and New England, which has potatoes, bacon and clams. The mozzarella and ricotta come from Calabro Cheese in East Haven.
Some of the grains used at Nana's include rye, various strains of wheat, red fife, spelt and Khorasan, an ancient grain. Wayman said the restaurant is mostly sourcing from Maine Grains but eventually will also get grains from Still River Farm in Coventry.
The doughnuts are fried and come in flavors both sweet and savory, including chocolate, cardamom espresso and cacio e pepe (cheese and pepper). Nana's also sells other pastries, plus loaves and boules of bread.
Patrons may find at least a couple terms on the menu that are new to them.
Nana's incorporates the unrefined sugar piloncillo into the Oaxaca specialty beverage, which also includes dark chocolate and chili de arbol, and as a house-made syrup. Another syrup is koji caramel; koji also comes up on the menu as koji milk in the Tonka Truck espresso drink, toasted cashew koji butter that serves as a spread, and koji marinated olives as an extra pizza topping.
Koji, Wayman explained, is a mold spore that originated in southeast Asia and is used to make sake, soy sauce and miso.
Multiple menu items feature food that is locally grown or made.
A few include Finback cheese from Mystic Cheese Co., used in the pizza Bolognese ($16) and a sandwich with prosciutto, sweet peppers and arugula ($15). The Stonington-based Seacoast Mushrooms is featured in the rye toast breakfast item and the sausage and mushroom pizza, while milk and yogurt come from Sweet Grass Creamery in Preston.
Expanding the food ecosystem
For current menus, Grass & Bone supplies meatballs to Engine Room, and cuts like chicken breast and steak to Oyster Club. Meiser and his wife, Jane, own Stone Acres Farm in Stonington, which partners with all three.
Nana's arose from a desire to supply bread to the other restaurants.
Oyster Club originally was getting its bread from Farm to Hearth. But when that stopped about two years ago, the chef de cuisine at the time, David Vacca, started making bread.
"It turns out he's incredibly good at it," Wayman said, and Vacca is now head baker.
Vacca and head pastry chef Katie Clark had been baking out of Oyster Club, but when the restaurant closed due to the pandemic and renovations, they switched to Engine Room. Oyster Club reopened in September.
The bread is currently being baked in a combo cooker, in which a cast-iron skillet sits atop a deep pot. But Wayman said they recently had a steam oven installed in their industrial "workshop" in North Stonington, and within the next few weeks, grains will be milled and bread will be baked there.
He and Meiser also are in the process of launching a small-batch fermentation company called Moromi out of North Stonington. Moromi is the name of the mash of ingredients — wheat, soybeans, salt, water and koji — used to make shoyu, a style of soy sauce.
Business Snapshot
Nana's Bakery & Pizza
Location: 32 Williams Ave., Mystic
Hours: breakfast, 7 to 11 a.m., lunch and dinner, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Order online: https://app.upserve.com/s/nanas-bakery-and-pizza-mystic
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