The 3S's

Its not like some restaurants around need validation; but continuing on the recent national press RVA (dining) has been getting, the WaPo had this piece on 3 outliers of the restaurant scene,  calling them "surprising, seasonal and sophisticated".
Being a huge fan of Tom Sietsema (the WaPo food critic), I wanted to share, with a minor dissent on the "surprising". In summary:
Dutch & Company - ★★½
The Roosevelt - ★★
Rappahannock - ★★

Also, a quick thanks for his usual quantitative evaluation of the sound levels. 
Dutch &  Company - 80 dB
The Roosevelt -77 dB

Rappahannock -80 dB
(at these levels, one "must speak with a raised voice". )

Roasted chicken

Easily the best roast chicken we've had anywhere. @ Zuni Café SF.

This legendary recipe is peppered over the interwebs. We like this version @ the smitten kitchen blog adapted from the ZC book.

Pancetta Rorschach

Projections from the Belmont Butchery!

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?

Anise drinks and chemistry

These days, the word mixologist has entered our lexicon and one has a multitude of choices of elegantly crafted cocktails and exotic concoctions all over RVA.

In a simpler variant, come summer, one of my favorite drinks is the good ol' pastis. Basically an anise-flavored liqueur and apéritif, this is a quintessential summer quaff. Just add water !
One other aspect that makes for some fun while drinking, is the rather nice bit of chemistry involved. Pastis (and even drinks like ouzo and absinthe) have a characteristic of turning cloudy on adding water (right).


The distinctive flavors of anise and fennel come from an essential oil called anethole. (interestingly enough, its isomer estragole is found in tarragon and basil). Anethole is only slightly soluble in water but highly soluble in ethanol (above 30% if you're keeping count). When water is added, the difference in solubility due to dilution causes it to "separate" out as an emulsion, and solution becomes opaque (the so-called "Ouzo effect"). Fun to ponder as you nurse your drink !

Can Can for one, sells both Pernod and Ricard pastis for $8.

The Well

Observed around VCU: In the Chesterfield Apartment building occupying the space formerly held by Cous-Cous is a new dining option - The Well. A lot of fairly ok, albeit generic pub food, but a rather interesting (intentional?) choice for the restaurant name. I would assume that folks at VCU typically see "The Well" associated with this:






* - The Chesterfield was apparently the first high rise building in Richmond, dating way back to 1903 (courtesy architecture richmond).

Edible flowers

My heart leaps up when I behold a flower on my plate… Among the prettiest things to see on a plate are edible flowers. While they've been a bit of a haute cuisine fad for a few years and running, there's something more down to earth about them as well - perhaps redolent of spring/summer or foraging through fields and finding spots of color/taste using whats around. 

We’ve been on a little fruit (flower?) less quest to find places in Richmond that have flowers on the plate and not just for decoration. These eye pleasers can be palate pleasers as well, albeit rather rare around, even among the usual suspect restaurants in RVA.

Other than the odd special, recently…success at the very good Dutch&Co. in Church Hill!*


Dessert of Honey Pot with Milk & Honey Puddin', Floral Ice, macerated stone fruit and honey brittle.

Any others in town?

* -@ D&C, the "perfect egg"with cured salmon, quinoa, braised cabbage and cumin yogurt has to be one of the most intriguing appetizers in RVA. And delicious !

paper boxes tied up with string

Amidst the Aramark and chain (almost) wasteland that is lunch around VCU Monroe Park....

Fun experiments with sound

We’ve often sought more quantitative measures of noise levels in RVA restaurants, as opposed to subjective descriptors. In the absence of a real sound meter, I’ve been playing with the Sound Meter app for Android over the last year or so. The app uses the phone mic to estimate the sound levels which is output in decibels (dB). See numbers on the left and their corresponding levels.

Note that the decibel scale is a log scale. Thus an increase in dB by ~3 dB is a doubling of sound intensity. An increase in sound intensity by 10x = 10 dB. So going from 60 to 80 dB is actually an increase of 100x in sound intensity!! We of course, tend to register sound differently in our ears (based on pressure which is roughly 6 dB for 2x sound), which makes the numbers tricky.
 
So what was the measure of sound in RVA restaurants? 

   
The results: Overall, this app turned out to be quite finicky and I’m still not sure about its accuracy. Some control experiments included a VCU Rams Basketball Game and next to a prop jet airplane (both very loud over 80 dB but did not exceed 90 dB) to a quiet room ranging from 40-60 dB. 

After collecting multiple data points in several restaurants, rather surreptitiously of course :), I ended up with numbers with little to no statistical significance (p-value)! So I finally throw in the towel on this experiment. The (rather obvious) data – most restaurants typically have levels between 55 dB – 75 dB, with wide fluctuations as a function of time!

Verdict – need a better sound meter. The app is fun though!!

As an example, the WaPo has used the following QCME scale to describe restaurant noise levels for some time now:

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

Within this data set, I can however crown the winner for the average quietest dining room we’ve encountered here in RVA. Quiet drumroll.........No surprise here – on average, the dining room at the Lemaire was the best place to carry out a conversation in hushed tones (averaging 55-65 dB).

The bar at the Lemaire, on the other hand….

(PS: While dining acoustics are indeed important,  this "experiment" was all in jest. Its bad enough to have people like me taking pictures of food !!)

Black Hand @ Patterson + Belmont

Perhaps not so new, but a charming addition to the Museum District

Pear cider

Our friendly neighborhood wine bar Secco was pouring a delicious pear cider from Eric Bordelet a while ago. And oh my! what a delight it was. Slightly paler than the apple version, either the Authentique or the Poiré Granit are scintillating products of 300 year old pear trees. It was a pity that they ran out.... (was relieved to find it in plenty on the West Coast though). 

Everything is better with bacon?

Seen at the ABC store:

Meanwhile....these guys over at Naughty Bacon seem have taken this concept a bit too far. I don’t think Bill Gates had this in mind when he proposed his $100,000 challenge to reinvent the condom.

orange salad

Deliciously simple winter salad - courtesy of 2 Amys in NW DC.

Sliced oranges (blood and regular) + red onion + olives + chives. Drizzle with some good olive oil.

Gingerbread locomotive...

Edible but not eatable? Christmas cheer and a feast for the eyes at the Jefferson/Lemaire. Nice touches on the track ballast !
Happy Holidays !!

Richmond Cheap Eats - skewered meat edition

Variously spelled - Kabob/Kebab/Kabab/Kebap, all cover different kinds of meats either skewered or directly heated by flame. Forgoing the sundry chain K places around, there are at least two very decent places around where one can get very good kebabs/shawarma style food for cheap (~ $10 pp).

The first is Dӧner Kebab in Carytown. We’ve had some pretty good shawarmas and Middle Eastern style kabobs here. Their falafel sandwich is also terrific. The preserved lemons (and pickled veggies) add an extra kick to their offerings.  (A while ago, these guys used to be out @ Broad/Meadow where they had some of the best pita chips in town for $1).
The second is more narrowly defined with some caveats. For the kabab of the South Asian variety, the Bangladeshi-run Darul Kabab on Old Parham Road makes for great takeout. One can get chapli as well as delicately spiced shish varieties of different kababs (all halal) with a well sized naan, salad and side.


A stone’s toss away is a little hidden gem – the RVA version of the Indian Pastry House. There is plenty of debate on the (largely average) Indian restaurants in RVA and food therein. However, there aren’t that many places around that serve Indian snacks and street food. With plenty of vegetarian options and a variety of dishes like dosas (delicate, crispy crepes made of rice flour and served with lentil soup and different fillings) and chaats, all for < $10, its hard not to like the IPH. 

NYKR cartoon

What we're watching ....

amidst some busy times, a thoroughly fascinating documentary film on the great sushi master Jiro. Dining at his celebrated, sushi only, Michelin 3-star restaurant, Sukiyabashi Jiro, may well be beyond the reach (or even interest) of most, but this movie offers a mesmerizing glimpse into a chef, his craft and notions of 'perfection':

From the superlative, to a mixed bag of a book by Tyler Cowen, "An Economist Gets Lunch". Primarily included here because his blog has long been on my reading list and led me to some good eats around DC. A fascinating premise, if he focused on tying economics and food, which crop up every now and then. Instead, his skewering of foodie pretentiousness and holier-than-thou "locavores", both easy targets to begin with, is upstaged by his own, albeit in a different sense.

palate pleasers....

An amuse-bouche [aˌmyzˈbuʃ] is variously defined as a "little bite of delight before the meal begins". From wiki - Amuse-bouches are different from appetizers in that they are not ordered from a menu by patrons, but, when served, are done so for free and according to the chef's selection alone. These [..]...are served both to prepare the guest for the meal and to offer a glimpse into the chef's approach to cooking.

Seemingly de rigueur at many restaurants, seeing an amuse bouche in RVA restaurants is still somewhat of a rarity and comes as a pleasant surprise ...Wish more RVA places had them...

Recent outings to two newer entrants to the museum district - the Belmont Food Shop and Deco were very pleasant. Rather small (cozy?) (the former more so) with some very interesting menu options and good execution on the cooking, BFS and Deco both harken back to a simpler (and welcome) dining approach in different ways. No prizes for guessing that at least one of these scored nicely in our minds with a terrific mouth tickler!

Edit: The BFS has quickly (and deservedly) shot to fame in the RVA food scene. Its become so much harder to score a table, but all of this of course bodes well. Res secundae!