About DC Restaurant Openings A guide to the newest places to eat and drink. G. Bradley Shorten, a Chicago native, and Meg Schmitt, who is originally from St Louis, both grew up eating variants of tavern pizza. “In Chicago everybody eats tavern pizza,” says Schmitt. For Shorten and Schmitt, La Merna is recreating the kind of place they love, just transplanted to a new city. “We did the menu pretty much just like we did in Chicago,” Shorten says, “and we’ll just let it rip and see what happens.”