The VA Capital Trail along Charles City

The VA Capital Trail is one of the more exciting outdoor projects coming to the area, promising miles of dedicated biking and pedestrian paths from RVA to Williamsburg. While large portions of the trail are still under construction, some sections are already open including parts by the river downtown.
Along Route 5 between Richmond and the Charles City Courthouse is another open section that we recently tried (purple section in map). This is a mostly flat bike ride along pastoral pathways that takes one from the VCU Rice Center at one end to the Charles City Courthouse at the other (~8 mi each way). Historic landmarks including the Berkeley Plantation and the Site of the First Thanksgiving in the US (circa 1619!) pass by!

Adding to the ride amidst the idyllic cornfields is the reward of a very nice repast along the way. We stopped for dinner at the Charles City Tavern - a quaint little farmhouse (replete with a silo) turned into a restaurant. The menu was largely Southern inspired comfort food at reasonable prices. While it did seem that they catered to larger groups of visitors to the nearby plantations (Berkeley and Shirley among them), we were lucky enough to have a quiet and pleasant dinner on the patio, enjoying the sounds of birds and bees and the odd car whizzing by on Rte 5.
One would reckon that the trail once complete would bring a new set of customers.

RVA dining in 6 days

We recently hosted a friend from the Western half of the country, who was visiting RVA for a week. This occasioned for the classic conundrum– finite time to cover the best possible eating subset.

Coming up with a shortlist, we had two criteria (other than good food of course) – capturing some of the essence of RVA, and offering different tastes from what one could find elsewhere. These caveats meant that a couple of really good places (some sub-cuisines as well as entrants/stalwarts on the scene that fell into that all-encompassing “modern American” category) were out.

Within our admittedly narrow parameters, the end result was the following:

Croaker's Spot

The Roosevelt

Heritage

Mama J’s

Alamo BBQ

Buz and Neds, Ipanema and sundry MCV food carts for the working lunch

Bar visits at the Jefferson, Can Can and Secco.

  

Thematically predictable perhaps, but other than possibly one misstep, I think we did pretty well overall.

lex parsimoniae

A recent dinner at a "happening" RVA restaurant made us think of the Occam’s Razor Principle when it came to dish construction. The food was perfectly satisfactory. All through though, one couldn’t but help wonder about the dictum: “Do not multiply entities beyond necessity”. Is it vain to do with more what one can do with less?