sushi

I'm going to write about a couple of sushi experiences over the last couple of months in one post. Probably unfair since I did devote an entire post to the fairly mediocre - Nara sushi (a place I recommended for lunch not dinner and which, for some reason isnt serving lunch anymore! Correction - As of June 2008, Nara is serving lunch again). A few visits to each of these have helped form a decent opinion on where each, at least this quartet, stands on the RVA sushi pantheon (apparently by no means complete).
And the honor roll (pun intended of course) goes along the lines - Akida, Niwano'hana', Sticky Rice and Sumo San. Disposing off the bottom two:
SumoSan - Rather empty on a couple of visits (including, what has become fairly common - a Saturday night). There were just a few other tables occupied. In fact this place was empty on both visits. Sushi quality - passable. They did try a few of the "innovative" rolls but faltered on taste. Even the edamame was a bit disappointing. The service was slow despite the empty place (no water refills for eg). The check came to around $40-$45 and we thought it was quite more than the quality merited. C- (the plus being its walking distance proximity for me)

Sticky Rice - It was nice to see the restaurant buzzing even on a wet and late night on one of our visits. The foggy (weather-related) windows and bulb-lit interiors looked rather inviting. The place befits a college-age hangout place and the crowd reflects that. SR was slightly drafty on a couple of our winter visits (not a problem in summer of course). While the quality of the sushi is definitely not superb, it was decent and they did get moderately innovative (GI Joe sushi?). The downside of Sticky Rice is the fact that people smoke at the bar and the ventilation isnt great (more below). Our table was near some strange odor that kept wafting up every so often.
The check came to $20-$40. Cheap and decent option and quite obviously the college meetup place. Not worth the wait if actually looking for good sushi. C

One (small) reason why both these places rate low - The proximity of the bar (ie cigarette smoke) made for an unimpressive score on the decor front. I do not see why these places allow cigarette smoke. I havent been to Japan, but given its smoking friendly nature, I'd be very curious to see the melding of smoke and sushi but as far as Richmond is concerned, it was not very pleasant.

Sí redux

A recent visit to Sí was just as satisfying as the previous. I qualify that by saying it was culinarily satisfying and since I promised (not that anyone is keeping count :)) of any updates here goes:
With the rather "cozy" confines, an early Saturday evening visit saw the dining room quickly fill up and by about 6, there was very little maneuver room in the restaurant. With the exception of probably 1 of our choices, all the tapas we picked were very good and came out with a regularity that there wasnt a pause in the dining. Good.
Some of the dishes that we ordered (echoing what I said earlier about a lot of usual suspects) - duck breast with cocoa nibs and kumquats, squid with crispy rice cooked in squid ink, sauteed mushrooms with lentils and almonds, lamb meatballs with harissa, calamari with aioli, jumbo prawns, tuna carpaccio (a very tiny dish it must be warned). The carpaccio vanished in 3 quick gulps!

While we had to keep asking for bread, it must be noted that the bread (apparently from Billy Bread) is excellent. If choosing a dish with some sauce-like component, do not hesitate to ask for more as the mop up is one of the most satisfying way to fully enjoy the dish.
The desserts were excellent. We shared the poached pear with caramel and sorbet and a chocolate lava cake with icecream. They provided quite a punctuation to the entire meal.
Service was great. No empty glasses, no dawdling around waiting for food etc.
All in all, an excellent dinner. And definitely not a contrarian experience that I was half-fearing.

However, I must record that I think (as was also the consensus opinion) that Sí is definitely overpriced. A dinner for 3 with a single alcoholic drink and shared dessert (all $8) came to something in the range of $130 (with tip). Almost all the tapa were over $10 and quite small (yes of course by definition). A trio with a reasonably healthy appetite would easily gobble up around 7-9 dishes and still have room for dessert. When one tacks on the ridiculous 11% tax and tip, you are easily looking at quite a large check.

Bottomline: B

Can Can Brasserie

A longer review of Can Can will be appended but the one thing I wanted to write about was the desserts. After lamenting the lack of quality desserts in most restaurants here, a fact that presumably has to do with a missing pastry chef, we found the desserts at Can Can quite delectable.

Central Michel Richard

yes, the backlog et al. and this restaurant is not even in the RVA area and hence doesnt rightfully belong here. But another visit to the city up north reminded me of why my search for good food in Richmond has a ways to go.
Lacking the PP to go to Citronelle, I have been waiting to visit Michel Richard's other baby - Central for a while now. 2 reservations earlier had to be cancelled and finally my much anticipated trip to Central came to fruition.
The food was very good. Not sublime or terrific but very good. Echoing my earlier rant about price ranges and the food quality in those brackets, this place delivered. Unlike Citronelle, Central has a rather hmmm....interesting menu. Hints to its French pedigree abound although the food is best described as modern American. Who'd think of a Michel Richard restaurant with hamburger, lobster burger, rotisserie chicken etc on the menu?
The decor was, oddly enough, like something out of the 80s. Rather sparse and very "orange". It was like looking at the world through yellow glasses (which is quite literally true of the partitions). Visible kitchen - love 'em.

For the appetizer, we ended up getting the charcuterie tower which is indeed a 3-tiered tower of salami, proscuitto, duck rilettes, faux gras terrine (with the faux gras atypically from a chicken) and a delicious salad with marinated pearl onions and cherry tomatoes. A terrific start to the dinner although there was definitely more than could be eaten by two people. It is quite an appropriate starter for 3-4 people. We ended up getting almost half of the "tower" to go (which our waitress very efficiently packed in separate containers for each element. Good).
For the entrees, I felt I should have tried the pied de cochon (pig's feet) but I wasnt feeling that adventurous. Or even the burgers. Next time....
Instead we ended up getting (rather traditionally I'm afraid) a wonderful braised rabbit with spaetzle and sauteed scallops with tagliatelle. Halfway through the meal, we decided that each of our choices suited the other one's palate and switched. I simply loved the tagliatelle with its little beans and tomatoes. The sauce for the rabbit was rich. Portions initially looked quite large but turned out to be just right.
The desert of pear tart with marzipan and sorbet wrapped up the meal quite well. It must be said that the desert menu was also a bit "standard" - kit kat bar, fruit plate, sorbet assortment and the like.
Service was decent. No dawdling around empty glasses of water for one ! The check came to a little over $100 (no drinks). Money well spent.
Bottomline: B+

Zuppa

My previous post essentially stated that I downgraded the restaurant almost 5 minutes into the meal owing to the quality of the soup (and confirmed shortly thereafter by the subpar food).
The question of the inverse problem now crops up? What if the soup is good? With a name like Zuppa, one would imagine that this restaurant specializes in the aforementioned item (an appetizer or a full meal if one chooses so).
A couple of visits to this Zuppa have resulted in pretty good soups - The creamy tomato being our favorite. A nice consistency and taste. They do justice to their name. However, oddly, they serve crackers with all their soups, which seems a bit of a cheapening of the entire premise.
What of the food? It turns out that the answer to the posed question is - 'not necessarily so'. We havent actually had any entrees here but we tried a few of their sandwiches and wraps. And they were decent, not great not bad but very deli-ish and very importantly - greasy !! I had to use a copious quantity of napkins for a couple of their sandwiches (notably - the barbeque sandwich with apple bacon bbq sauce). The quantity of the grease made the otherwise decent sandwich a bit disconcerting on the old gastric system.

The one downside to zuppa is the really slow service. On one particularly poor occasion (which was a holiday of some sort but the restaurant was pretty full), there was one waitress for around ten tables !! We felt bad for the poor girl. It wasnt her fault but the restaurant management could perhaps do a better job making assignments. Other visits havent been positive either with the clear problem being that the restaurant is quite severly undermanned. Is finding waitresses difficult?
Another quirky thing about Zuppa is the really weird artwork on the walls. They have the brick wall decor too (we've lost count of the number of places with this) and some really odd pieces of art hung on the walls without any apparent theme (or artful quality either sadly). It does provide some conversation when one looks at the walls and tries to gauge the mind of the "artist" and/or the individual who decided that they merit such a place of visibility.

Now, if they improved their service, got some real art (or just stick with generic posters/prints quite the like the vintage french they have when you enter) and cut down on the grease....
Note: On Sunday nights, they do not serve the dinner menu but the lunch menu.
Our lunches and dinners averaged $20-$35.

Grade: C (the soup B-). Zuppa 101 N 18th Street, Richmond VA 23223 Google Maps.

ginger thai

I've decided, for the sake of overcoming my inertia to at least get one item off my backlog plate (all bad puns intended) by wrapping up my Ginger Thai review quickly. Twas a dark and stormy night, when I felt that Tom Kha Gai soup would be the ideal antidote and we stepped into Ginger Thai....
I have a (somewhat weak) theory that many (especially Asian) restaurants can be gauged by the quality of their soup. This has stood me in good stead in testing many a Chinese restaurant by the quality of their hot and sour soup and Thai places by their Tom Kha or Tom Yum.
The Tom Kha Gai @ Ginger: The coconut milk was completely missing in action, a weak lime taste, stringy chicken and...... disappointing ! This did not bode well for the rest of the meal.

Spring rolls: decent but completely bland. The entrees (a green curry and garlic chicken): terrible because well....they tasted like Chinese food. Thai cooking is not supposed to taste like Chinese cooking (not that there is anything wrong with Chinese food). There were no hints of basil, lemongrass or anything remotely Thai.
I think I've reached my wordlimit on what I wanted to say about this place.

Bottomline: F. Avoid.

hiatus

what a long hiatus ! Have such a long backlog of restaurants to write about. So, here I go - listing them before I forget:
Sette, Cafe Gutenberg, Sticky Rice, Pomegranate, Mekong, La Grotta, Zuppa, SumoSan, Niwanohana, Ginger Thai, Papa Ningo, Can Can Brasserie

Laziness !!

This is obviously a function of purchasing power, but indexed for inflation and my PP, I think a dinner for 2 (including tax&tip (16-20% of pretax amt) and not including alcohol) under $30 is cheap, $30-$60 moderate and $60-$90 somewhat expensive and >$90 expensive.

Also probably reflected in my (thus far) tepid rating of food here. Something we've felt about restaurants where the check has come to $60 or greater; what I refer to as the "above-average" or "somewhat expensive" set: we were nowhere near as satisfied as the majority of the dinners we had in (my benchmark city) DC. The menu was either unimaginative in at least one or more department, or the food was very dull (I need to find a bunch of synonyms for dull). A lack of imagination/talent in the menu department should be compensated for in taste but alas....
Another observation is how "empty" all these places are at primetime. Maybe we're going to the wrong places....

sunday evening

Almost all the restaurants downtown were closed. I guess its not that surprising (Sunday dinners are traditionally the lightest time for business) but it certainly was odd driving down rows of darkened streets.
Is Richmond a city of expatriates? Come holiday season, does every one head "home" forcing the restaurants to run reduced hours? Or was it simply an aberration? Guess I wont find out since I wont be around either.

Sí

Yes, of course !
After our terrible experience @ Europa, there was some despair re: the availability of good tapas in the area. Sí comes to the rescue.
This new hotspot is the Spanish sibling of Bank, a restaurant/club that we were somewhat lukewarm about. Sí has none of the grandeur of Bank, instead concentrating its efforts on a setting quite antithetical - what could pass off (and probably was) a house nestled in the Fan. This place apparently housed the Cafe di Pagliacci prior.
Informed of a long wait, we ended up on the functional couches next to the bar in the dimly lit lounge upstairs as opposed to the dimly lit dining room downstairs. The menu is fairly large with around 30 or so choices split again between seafood/meat/"vegetarian". As I settled down with a glass of sangria, I noticed an element of familiarity about the menu with a decent sprinkling of the "usual suspects". There were the stuffed peppers, stuffed shrimp, marinated olives and the like and ....a calamari. One could almost be chastised for selecting this...but we did and it was very good. Crisp and small, a perfect starter.. Another tapas, the patatas bravas has been a perennial and I was curious how this one compared to the José Andrés' version.
A couple of the tapa(s) looked rather interesting. A half dozen for the three of us was just right. It is definitely a plus when each dish is plated differently as opposed to some places (hint) where one size appears to fit all.
More visits are definitely planned and from the sampling of the menu, it would be a fair guess that the food wouldnt disappoint. Contrarian experiences would definitely be up !!
Oh and the potatoes have a little more work to do before they get to JA's level !!
One big "problem" with Sí is the rather limited (one might say cozy) confines. While we lucked out on our Saturday night visit, wait times were rather long with a rush of people towards the later hours. Making reservations prior might be in order...

Bottomline: The clown wouldnt be too sad after this dinner. The menu could use more originality (a LOT of standard fare) but taste and presentation scored well. Service was decent and obviously theres the new chic kid on the bloc factor. B-.

Sí: 214 N Lombardy Street, Richmond VA 23220 Map.

"hedging" a review

After a few posts, I notice that I have tended to think in terms of grade ranges rather than a definitive grade for a restaurant now. While this would probably never get me a job as a food reviewer, I guess I am trying to extrapolate based on a limited amount of data. A "real" review would naturally incorporate the benefit of many visits on different days (and possibly different times) to get a comprehensive picture of the place.
As an aside, this would be an interesting optimization problem. What are the variables for such an experiment (the obvious - day, time (how busy they are), size of party etc.). Would there be a redundant visit too?
As far as this blog goes, I am trying to stick to reviewing a place only after we've visited it at least twice. Of course there are always outliers - when one visit was terrible enough not to want to go back (or when the place is sufficiently expensive to not have had an "opportunity" to revisit).