teutonic tastings..

While Newport News doesnt strictly qualify as Richmond area dining (clocking around 75 miles from my house !), a recent visit to Das Wald cafe for some almost good old fashioned Bavarian cooking was quite satisfactory, especially considering that I havent found any such places around this area.
In a rather hard to find (GPS saved us), non-descript location, the only thing that seems to suggest its food heritage is that the waitresses are in dirndls .. they have most of the usual s-s - schnitzels (good), sausages (a bit chewier than I would have liked), (potato) salad, spaetzle, soup, sauerbrauten, sauerkraut etc. Their potato salad was quite good, vinegary and not unlike ones I've had in the Rhineland. So that was quite nice.
Bottomline - nothing flashy but simple, hearty Bavarian cooking and staples in a very casual environment. The main room was sporadically loud (courtesy of some large groups) but conversation was easy. Extremely reasonably priced - Dinner for two with a couple of drinks each + t&t (no dessert) came to ~ $60. Service was very slow since they only had 2 waitresses for the entire restaurant on a weekend !

The other knock on Das Wald is its rather pedestrian offering of beers. Bavarian food and beer go together like well....Bavarian food and beer. They have the usuals - paulaner, weihenstephaner, franziskaner etc but I wanted to try some of the better brews from Deutschland, preferably served in a stein ...alas...

If you're willing to add another 50 miles to the mileage (rt from RVA) and a 1.5-xing of the check, Old Europe on Wisconsin Avenue near Georgetown is a better choice, but if you're in the NN neighborhood....
(Edit: This OE dinner may be nicely followed by dessert at Leopold's Konditorei down the street in G-town)
Das Wald cafe - Newport News - map

rankings....

I am not a huge fan of ranking restaurants but this recent blog post deserved a thought -
The Richmond Goodlife has taken an ostensibly* meta approach to ranking restaurants in RVA using ratings from other "recognized media sources":
http://richmondgoodlife.com/bricabrac/?p=88

(TRG has a bunch of links to other rankings that I shall not repost) - the top 3 by this approach - Edo's Squid, Mamma Zu and Millies....
For obvious reasons, including wildly differing tastes and opinions, specific positions on the list are not something worth debating, but..(yes, contradiction)... ES @ #1 is a bit head scratching !

*- I think it can be reasonably argued that this specific approach has intrinsic error via a biased sample with nonprobability sampling.

Open Tables

Recent bits of time-wasting made me think of dining in the 21st century. A visit to a certain (anonymous) restaurant that didnt accept reservations of any sort was a particularly curious event. Typical waits ranged from 1-2 hours and there were groups of people just milling around. And, this was just one of many such "waits" experienced at restaurants in RVA. Now, forgoing discussions on time utilization, the (social) value of time, putative laziness and other factors, I think at a fundamental level, the "Smith, party of 4" paradigm is one that can be disposed of, or at least minimized these days.

A perusal of Opentable showed only 20 or so restaurants (a dozen of them are chains) in Richmond that are part of it. This is quite surprising. When practically every restaurant worth visiting (across all price ranges) in most cities are part of some sort of online reservation system, why is Richmond so far behind? And this is hardly a new phenomenon. OT, for example, has been around for > 10 years.
There may be certain economic constraints but I wonder if I am incorrect that the financial incentive generated from enabling a customer convenience or even employee scheduling should justify the capital expense. Isnt there a critical mass of people who would rather make a quick online reservation/ check availability online than call or worse yet, show up and be told that there is a long wait ?! Or is it related to a sort of buzz factor (clearly RVA diner centric)?
Dining points (as on OT) help as well !!

Beards 2010

It was good to see that Richmond was represented on the James Beard Awards semifinalist list.
http://bit.ly/cCUaMm
Best Chef - Mid-Atlantic - Dale Reitzer, Acacia, Richmond, VA
I think this is a nice thing for RVA dining.

I've previously had the pleasure of noting that Acacia appeared to stand out from so many on the RVA culinary stage...
Going through the DC list and finding so many of my favorite places on there brought back some excellent dining memories:
http://bit.ly/9ihzNV
The inclusion of Rasika is terrific (since so many of the others are the usual suspects, a set Rasika has been asymptotically joining for some time now !).

Noise levels

I think in terms of dining parameters, an important one that doesnt seem to get much coverage here in RVA is the noise level (something we were acutely aware of on some of our recent experiences). Its rather surprising that I havent seen many RVA food sites (blogs or other reviews) quantify this in any way. The Times and the WaPo, for example, have been doing this for a few years now, with Tom Sietsema using a nicely scientific scale that I like - http://bit.ly/9dzwJk

Quiet (under 60 decibels)
Conversation is easy (60-70 decibels)
Must speak with raised voice (71-80 decibels)
Extremely loud (over 80 decibels)

As someone who loves the log-scale, it is useful to point out as Tom writes - "The brain registers every 10-decibel increase as a doubling of loudness. Thus, a restaurant that measures 80 decibels sounds twice as noisy as a place that measures 70 decibels."
I wish I saw more of this sort of thing on reviews here. I will try and parametrize (albeit subjectively, lacking a db meter) this in future - the QCME scale.

Edit: A little science detour - while a 10 dB corresponds to a 10x power increase (2x power = 3 dB), the brain views things differently. Consequently, there are different units called phon and sone which are related to dB by the psychophysically measured frequency responses of the ear (ie how we actually perceive the sound/loudness). Hence this little mathematical discrepancy.