I didn’t want to tell you all about Cook Out coming to town. There were plenty of ways to spin it, and I used all of them. But, I also didn’t hide the truth.  It’s cheap and tasty, the everyday food that people generally look forward to (until they step on the bathroom scale). The NC chain is going to have lines into the street on Quioccasin even after they add more Richmond locations.  So, to make sure your trips to the West End are fruitful when you drive past Cook Out feeling exasperated, here are three reasons you should have been getting your take-out near Regency Mall for years now instead of lining up like lemmings at the drive-thru for bags of heart attacks wrapped in Bible tracts.

Read Mediterranean. Think Middle Eastern. Taste Heaveny.

Mediterranean Bakery and Deli

Part market, part sit-down cafe, but most notably a deli counter with to-die-for prepared foods that you’ll want to cart home by the pound and never cook again.  And the falafel sandwich, one of the best in Richmond, you’ll eat that in the car on the way home.  The frenzied togo food experience may be a guilty pleasure that few of us admit to.  But this fine falafel will be less shame inducing than the Cook Out experience. (more…)

Everybody knows that when you bring your Groupon into a restaurant, you deduct the ($20 that you paid $10 for) from the total, but you don’t merely tip on the remaining few dollars, and pay with pocket lint. It’s stated on the coupon for almost any special offer. Servers should be tipped based on the pre-discount total. In other words, the server’s time and effort is not on sale, or dug out of the clearance bin. for them, your special offer demands the same level of service. It’s an important insight that should be common sense.

So, let’s take this situation into a less explicitly stated, more grey area. What about discounts for friends of the restaurant? Richmond is a small town. It seems like everybody’s got some connection to someone at the restaurant. Or maybe you’re in the food service industry, and there’s an understanding about discounted food and bevs when you patronize each other’s places. That’s probably just as likely, considering Richmond’s concentration of restaurants and bars. For either reason, if you got an affordable check because of your connections, how do you tip? Is it 20% of the total price? Or, despite the fact that you got prices that actually reflect a reasonable mark-up, should you follow the promotional discount rule and pay 20% of the bloated price that everyone else has to pay?

Obviously, I’m skewing the phrasing here a bit (more…)

At a recent South-er of the James farmers market, I ran into Gina Collins while we both bought our Blanchards coffee from Taza’s table set up near Forrest Hill.  You might know Gina as the coordinator/spokesperson for Victory Farms CSA. Today, she wasn’t selling produce.  She was dressed in fashionable civies, and looked much more relaxed than I’ve ever seen her (we’ve been CSA members for two years now).

Put this stuff on your pizza.

We both approved of our Sumatran coffee.  She hoped that the cup would help with her migraine headache.  I jumped in with my compulsive comment that Sumatran is my favorite bean, at least when served at Hyperion Espresso in Fredericksburg.  She knew the place, and liked it.  But, for some reason, Gina always has a headache when visiting Fredericksburg.  Weird. I get chronic migraines. And I went to Mary Washington College… in Fredericksburg.  A four year long migraine.

In the awkward moment before acquaintances typically part ways, I mentioned my excitement over picking up four dough balls from Victoria’s Pizza Tonight stand (a topic I like to test out with people to a: find out if they love that dough as much as I do or b: turn them on to a great local food phenomenon that I think is likely to take off in a big way).  I think Gina’s reaction was something about not being able to find really great pizza in Virginia, especially having been spoiled by the pies back in Arizona, made by some guy named Chris Bianco.

(dramatic pause) (more…)

For years, I’ve looked at Andrade’s always perched near the top of Richmond Good Life’s personal hot list of restaurants, but it never compelled me to make the trip to Petersburg, Virginia. And I’m a Latin American food junkie. Then, when I finally did pay a visit, it was largely a coffee shop that lured me down 95, and it turned out that Andrade’s was closed. My mistake for assuming that most restaurants would be open during the day on New Years Eve. In fact, aside from the bustling bean-freaks at Demolition Coffee, time seemed to stand still in Old Towne Petersburg, which may also be the case year round. I hope I get to return enough to find out.

Something bold. Something new.

Functional and Accessible: the New Avant Garde

The preserved historic feel of any Olde Town (Old Towne?) always makes me feel reflective – like I’m walking among ghosts. In Petersburg, those ghosts are made of brick, often several stories tall, with picturesque but antiquated signage, and most of them are seemingly empty. Maybe a better analogy would be to say the streets of N. Sycamore, Bollingbrook streets are like aisles in an antique store, the buildings looming like dusty but majestic heirlooms – especially ironic, since half the active store-fronts operate as antique shops. Nonetheless, my wife and I love these kinds of strolls – poking around little shops, peeking in windows, admiring other people’s everyday cityscapes.

A counter for coffee that creates culture.

So, how the heck did I get here? It goes back to that previous story I did about Richmond’s increasingly delicious coffee options. Just as I started to tune into the coffee buzz, I heard rumblings about something called Demolition in Petersburg. The action noun peaked my imagination. Not only is Petersburg stretching the definition of chic, the name just sounded exciting. Maybe I’ve watched too many episodes of Top Chef, but I pictured their caffeinated product served in some deconstructed format, like this thing happening in Petersburg was gonna demolish my concept of coffee. Surely that would be worth seeing for myself. Boy, did I over think it. (more…)

As much as I pride myself on focusing my blog on my hometown, Richmond, VA, I do get giddy when big league sites link to this site.  Once upon a time, my grilled ramen escapade drove international traffic to the hibachi on my back porch.  Today, thanks to @bunnycaper, the biggest pizza blog there is, Slice at Serious Eats, posted an excerpt of my guest blogger Doug’s “Star Tavern” bar pizza story/recipe.  Hits to my site jumped instantly (not something I look at often, to be honest – usually 200-500 per day depending on when I post a new entry).

Scroll down and you see the name of this blog (gasp!).

The really interesting thing here is the bone of contention around semolina flour. The current proprietor of Star Tavern says there’s no semolina in his dough. Doug’s recipe, from a previous owner, calls for 2 parts semolina and 3 parts bread flour. The comments are fixing to erupt over this bit of dough-craft. I don’t know about you, but I’m on the edge of my seat.  Stay tuned.

ps: that same day, Slice posted an homage to Star Tavern pizza that really describes what the fuss is all about. Yes, this is the pizza I wish I was eating as a kid instead of that Pizza Hut cracker crust (tho, I liked that too).

The latest Style Weekly food section features a sort of best and worst of 2010 (termed, “protagonists and antagonists”) by Jack Lauterback (aka Jack Goes Forth, Shockoe Bottom’s “blogging bartender”).  

Foodies are listed among the antagonists:

“Foodies. Big pretentious wads of vascularized ass fat. I’m keeping them around because we need a stuffy, high-minded, self-important group of fucknuts to die violently when the Russians attack in Act IV.”

I’ve got my take on the trendy insult, but I’d rather hear from you. Is this characterization warranted? Is it informed? Charming? How many points does Style gain or lose with you?

For the past several weeks, Richmond.com’s Karri Peifer has been running an interview series wherein “foodies” analyze the loaded term and what makes food such a keen interest. I think the subjects of that series provide a whole lot more incite into the topic of foodies, love them/us or hate them/us.

I’d never heard of Cook Out until @JohnDWatt on Twitter suggested that someone needed to start talking about the arrival of this North Carolina based chain. Googling the name revealed no company website (they really don’t have one) and all I had to go on was a couple relatively pitiful fan pages, and a Wikipedia entry that included the following:

Cook Out has a variety of religious phrases printed on its food packaging. For example, “John 3:16″ and “God Bless America” are printed on the cups, “God Bless the USA” and “Galatians 6:10″ are printed on the french fry bags, and “THANK YOU GOD FOR AMERICA” and “Psalms 119:165″ are printed on the full size bags.

Now, just when I thought we were through with overpriced grocery stores reminding us to visit our places of worship, here comes a Bible-thumping meatery wrapped in the flag (they serve mostly meat: hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken, and NC style BBQ). I had to see it to understand what Richmond was in for (and would likely swallow whole, if not demanding it intravenously). Cook Out has already got 75 locations in North Carolina, and there’s not much dust getting kicked up except by the throngs of rabid fans and the pace of Cook Out’s expansion, so the proselytizing probably wouldn’t be as intrusive as my imagination foretold.* Or maybe everyone is just easily placated by Cook Out’s 40+ milk shake flavors (they also have coke and Cheerwine floats).

The first Cook Out, rumor had it on Twitter, was on Quioccasin, near Regency Mall where a Bullet’s used to be. (more…)