The Richmond Way

I quickly discover that outsize delights like these are woven into the fabric of the city. At Lee Gregory’s buzzy ode to mid-Atlantic seafood, Alewife, I turn the heads of nearby diners as I tuck into a savory waffle laced with kimchi, slathered with smoked fish, and sprinkled with bonito flakes. The dish strikes a balance between comforting and startlingly unusual. The restaurant occupies a quiet corner of the historic Church Hill neighborhood—the city’s oldest and one of its loftiest, up on a perch over the churning rapids of the James River—but inside, the din mid-week reaches such a zenith that I strain to hear my waitress.

Enveloped by moody charcoal walls and spare decor, diners find little to distract from the bright flavors and local ingredients that arrive with just enough explanation. “We don’t need an episode of Portlandia at the table,” says chef Patrick Phelan—though the source material is certainly in place.

Phelan and his partners—wife and pastry chef Megan Fitzroy Phelan and fellow chef (and Richmond native) Andrew Manning— made a name for Longoven with a series of sold-out pop-up dinners starting in 2014. Bon Appetit named Longoven one of the best new restaurants in 2016, two years before the doors opened at their brick- and-mortar space.

Phelan refers to the restaurant as “a food-centric experience.” I’d call it an all-out locavore immersion and have rarely felt so cocooned at a restaurant. My sensory-rich meal of small plates included everything from a textural risotto coaxed out of seeds to Spanish mackerel and oyster mushrooms roasted to umami perfection. A gold-dusted toffee bar arrived with the bill.

At the Jasper, a Carytown cocktail bar concocted by a trio of the city’s best barkeeps, the drinks are plenty delicious, from a good-times bourbon-ginger on nitro to the nuanced pleasures of the Night Moves, in which bergamot and dry vermouth join forces with absinthe and Toki Japanese whisky for a dangerously smooth sip. And yet it’s the details that really put this place over the top—right down to the care with which the bartenders brand their hand-chipped ice cubes with a “J” insignia.

COOKING WITH ZEST

Back in Scott’s Addition, Brenner Pass makes its mark with a menu that’s as subtly surprising as it is representative of rising chef Brittanny Anderson. Named for a mountain pass on the border of Italy and Austria, the restaurant celebrates all things Alpine: fondue and schnitzel, diot and speck, and an impressive roster of cheese, alongside dishes with roots in other regions of France and Italy, like steak au poivre and cacio e pepe.

When I first walked into the airy space, all light woods and Edison bulbs, I was almost disappointed by how stylish it was. Surely a place so decidedly on trend couldn’t deliver a lasting culinary impression. And then I sat down to one of the most pitch-perfect lunches I’ve enjoyed in recent memory: buttery littleneck clams and a salad of smoked trout and marcella beans tucked under a zingy heap of radicchio, paired with the house beer—a rustic farmhouse ale brewed by the neighborhood’s cult-favorite Veil Brewing Co. Anderson cut her teeth (and sharpened her chef’s knife) in New York before returning to her native Richmond in 2014 to open Church Hill’s ode to modern German fare, Metzger Bar & Butchery. Brenner Pass came three years later. Of course, Anderson isn’t the only chef bringing European flavors to Richmond. But she does it with the sort of confident fervor that pervades this city’s most inspired destinations.

Over at the cafe-boutique mashup called Pomona in Union Hill, husband-and-wife owners Frayser and Melissa Micou love coffee and plants as much as they excel at creating a perfectly beguiling little urban hideaway. The chalkboard over the bar details shrub flights, toasts, and creative spreads, and my order: a tiny pitcher of iced coffee sweetened just so with condensed milk and cardamom, ginger, and orange zest. Pomona is a soda fountain for the modern era, complete with Shaker-style brooms for sale in the corner.

Across the James River in leafy Forest Hill, Little Nickel also specializes in evoking instant holidays with a menu of “vacation food” and tiki drinks. Even a salad for lunch feels decadent, I discover, when sitting in a green banquette and gazing out at palm leaves and flamingos (even if just on the wallpaper). Next time I doubt I’ll be able to resist ordering the punch bowl.

With the scene set, each dish puts on a show—from the “Fabergé egg bedazzled with caviar” and the oysters rockefeller that come with a tableside absinthe fog to the “vegan orgy on Texas Beach” (crispy papadums with vegetable spreads), named for an isolated stretch of woods and sunbathing rocks along the river. For dessert, over-the-top choices include a rum-soaked bundt cake speared with a pirate flag and a rich chocolate flambé that comes with a side of pyrotechnics.

It’s only natural, then, that most locals seem to light up when mentioning the place. “Dazzling” is the word fellow restaurateur Kendra Feather uses. “It’s like, ‘how did that come out of [Shannon’s] brain?’” she says. “Because only he could do that.” Feather knows sense of place. She owns a handful of neighborhood anchors around town, including the Roosevelt,

Church Hill’s breakout hit that helped put Richmond’s food scene—and its take on new Southern cuisine—on the map when it opened back in 2011.

Around the corner from Comfort, a bronze statue of Maggie Walker—the US’ first female bank owner, a former schoolteacher, and the daughter of a freed slave—stands as a reminder of the Jackson Ward neighborhood’s onetime prosperity as Black Wall Street.

Dining options in this small, resurgent district run the gamut: There’s Mama J’s, a soul-food standby where a veritable cross- section of Richmond food lovers convene to dig into flaky catfish nuggets, crispy fried chicken, and candied yams on white tablecloths. The servers wear t-shirts that say “Welcome home!” and fluffy coconut cake tempts from a glass-domed pedestal on the bar. Mama J’s trademark friendliness earned the restaurant a James Beard award nomination for outstanding service. On the opposite end of the block, Saadia’s Juicebox doles out good vibes for the wellness-minded in the form of yoga classes and acai bowls, superfood lattes, and juice shots laced with turmeric and wheat grass.

More dichotomies abound within a radius of a few blocks. The sexy sophistication of Restaurant Adarra, a new haven for Basque- inspired dishes and rare wines, balances out the level of cheap thrills found among the fake blood splatter of GWARbar. The latter is owned by Michael Derks, who has played guitar for Richmond’s homegrown, satirical heavy-metal band for three decades. (His stage name Balsac the Jaws of Death tells you most of what you need to know about GWARbar’s over-the-top vibe.)