Whether they’re at home or out on the town, whenever Richmonders sit down to share a meal, in some small way they’re telling the story of our region — its people and traditions, its history and its future. Our round table of writers and restaurateurs invite you to join them as they explore the area’s unique culinary character.

Bright Lights, Medium City
1968 was Richmond’s watershed culinary year

How many Richmonders does it take to change a light bulb?

Come on, you know this one.

One of us changes the bulb, and the rest of us talk about how good the old light bulb used to be.

In 1968, several of our light bulbs got changed. The dirt track at Strawberry Hills was paved, and Richmond began its love affair with NASCAR. Richmond Professional Institute merged with the Medical College of Virginia to form Virginia Commonwealth University. And the General Assembly decided to allow liquor by the drink at restaurants.

There are still people who decry the demise of the dirt track. There are even a few who are not excited by the growth of VCU. But there aren’t many who bemoan how good the old restaurant light bulb was.

The ability to serve wine with a meal and to offer cocktails before and after dinner has certainly changed the Richmond restaurant landscape. There has been a steady succession of establishments vying for our attention, and over the past several decades I have enjoyed many fine meals prepared by chefs who are certain to be remembered as “bright lights.”

One of the most satisfying experiences I ever had in a kitchen was actually a kind of light-bulb convention. I was helping the Central Virginia Food Bank develop its Community Kitchen. To raise funds we organized the Chef’s Cruise for Hunger. Five chefs each prepared one course of an elegant meal served aboard the Annabel Lee. I handled the appetizers, Eddie Vasaio of Mamma ’Zu prepared the soup, Paolo Randazzo of Franco’s presented the pasta course, Jimmy Sneed of The Frog and the Redneck cooked the fish course, and Paul Elbling of La Petite France provided the entrée. I learned a lot working side by side with such amazing chefs, and the meal turned out spectacularly. One of my long-held opinions was reinforced that night: Paul Elbling is, pound for pound, the best chef in Richmond, ever.

I first met chef Bob De Capri when we both entered a culinary competition held at the John Marshall Hotel many years ago. Bob did a pulled-sugar swan, and I displayed a poached salmon. His piece was incredible. He and I now serve on the board of the Positive Vibe Café in Stratford Hills Shopping Center. A potential light bulb itself, Positive Vibe serves as a training site for individuals with disabilities and features a wheelchair-accessible kitchen. Bob’s former restaurant, Café di Pagliacci, broadened our definition of Italian food and ushered in the arrival of Mamma ’Zu, Ristorante Amici, Franco’s and so many others.

The restaurants in the Bottom are still recovering from a recent flood, and I hope all of them are able to survive and succeed. But this is not the first time the Bottom has seen water. Joe DeFazio’s first restaurant, which he named, appropriately enough, DeFazio’s, was down in the Bottom before he moved to the West End and opened a catering company. My wife, Judy, was a waitress in his place, and she and I spent several days packing sandbags around the restaurant before the floodwall was built. That’s Richmond, though: Close off one source of water and another opens.

Few individuals have had as remarkable an effect on Richmond dining as Mark Kimmel, the Tobacco Company’s longtime chef. He and I taught the chef’s apprentice program when it was housed in the Richmond Technical Center. We have worked together on a number of projects, and we both have served as president of the Virginia Chef’s Association. Mark now teaches culinary arts at Chesterfield Technical Center. It’s hard to imagine what Richmond restaurants would be without Mark. As a mentor or teacher, he has affected all of us. He is a definite light bulb.

The apprentice program is now taught at the School of Culinary Arts and Tourism at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College. Yes, Richmond, we have a culinary school. Reynolds offers the same degree as Johnson and Wales or CIA but at in-state tuition rates. Many of the city’s finest culinary luminaries have attended Reynolds, including Michelle Williams, the reigning Queen of the Restaurant Scene.

Buz Grossberg and David Napier were fairly frequent visitors to my first restaurant, Maxwell’s. I’m not sure if they knew one another then or now. I thought that Buz came because he really enjoyed my cooking, but then he married one of my waitresses. Buz was in the tire business then. He is now Buz of “Buz and Ned’s Real Barbeque” fame, and he pays a lot more attention to barbecue than he ever did to tires. If you’ve ever tasted his stuff, you will agree with me that there are more than enough tire dealers.

David was a busboy at Sam Miller’s Exchange Café. He’s one of the hardest working people I know, but he also knows how to have a good time. He came to Maxwell’s mainly for the restaurant workers events we held there. If you remember those, you weren’t there. The next time you see David, ask him to play his guitar for you. He was pretty good back then.

I think he’s a better restaurateur, though. His Indian Fields Tavern and White House Restaurant are now legends, and he’s in the Bottom with The Old City Bar and Restaurant.

Pho Crazy
At a suburban enclave for Asian food, one man finds bliss in a noodle dish

About two years ago, give or take a fall and a winter, I found a sign hanging outside my favorite restaurant, the Vietnamese place called Pho So #1, that announced they were closing. “NO,” the molecules in my body screamed, and I was suddenly rushing across the parking lot toward the door.

It was an impulsive, senseless act. What was I going to say inside? Long ago I’d made acquaintances with a waiter there, a kid named Bat who smiled with his mouth wide open. He hadn’t worked there in three years. Other than that, and an occasional, indecipherable exchange with the bus boy, I knew no one. You don’t have to be on bear-hugging terms with the owner for it to be your favorite noodle joint.

Anyway, what with the language barrier and the awkwardness of just marching in and demanding answers, I left it to the noodle fates. I ate one last delicious bowl of pho. Then they closed, a tragedy.

And then, like one of those little whirling cartoon cyclones, they opened again — a month or two later, right across the street, more or less.

It was exhilarating! Pho So #1, it turned out, hadn’t gone down the tubes. In fact, business was booming. Their lease had expired and a new pho restaurant, called Vietnam 1, sprang up in its place. Scuttlebutt emerged among our small group of pho hounds that the Vietnamese family who owned the strip mall booted them out in order to open a place of their own. Aside from the paint job and new drop ceiling, it was hard to tell one from the other.

The more vexing side of this development was that Vietnam 1 appeared to be entering an already crowded market. Today — this afternoon — if you stand at the stoplight at Horsepen Road and Broad Street, just behind the Burlington Coat Factory, and take off your shoe, you can lob it onto the roofs of both Pho So #1, Vietnam 1 and two other pho places: Pho Vinh Phat and Pho-Tay-Do. Never mind the three Vietnamese markets, clumped together in their midst, that you could thump with a balled sock as a follow-up.

You could see, too, with the conversion of an old Rite Aid building at

the corner into the Vietnamese supermarket called Tan-A, that a bona fide Vietnamese enclave had formed out there in the ‘burbs.

Unlike other sprawling cities, Richmond isn’t known for its town-within-a-town ethnic outposts — we’ve no Chinatown, no Little Havana, no El Barrio or Brighton Beach. Instead we have a bustling population of Indians and Pakistanis in the middle West End, sharing neighborhoods with Russians and Bosnians; we’ve got southern Jeff Davis Highway and its thick Latin mix; African immigrants on the North Side; Koreans everywhere. Their scattershot restaurants are wonderful and numerous.

But out there at Horsepen and Broad, things seem to have gelled into the real thing.

The competition, interestingly, seems so far to have had no effect on the quality or variety of the pho. Vastly more complex than noodle soup, pho has a beef-broth base and is delivered with a hard knot of rice noodles and thin strips of flank steak, tripe or brisket. It is flavored with star anise, coriander, scallions and white onions, and comes with a side of herbs, basil, lime, jalapenos, and a pile of bean sprouts. You eat the soup with chopsticks, which, on the face of it, is patently ridiculous. Part of the process is first observing the locals.

That said, I no longer have a favorite pho place — it stopped mattering, because in the end it was all great pho. Each restaurant serves it in the same large plastic bowls, under the same bad fluorescent light, for the same price (a spare $5 bucks), made with the same ingredients bought, presumably, from the same three Vietnamese markets just across the street. Some of them even share menu numbers for the same unpronounceable dishes.

It is thrilling enough just to head out that way, to the streets behind Horsepen and Broad, for a little lunch, or a quick, inexpensive dinner date. Dropping 12 bucks for two makes a $60 meal in Carytown seem galling. It is, for me, one of the great pleasures of eating out in the city, getting so lost, even for a meal, in this little world right up the road.

Serving It Up
As a floor manager at Croaker’s Spot, “Miss Janice” sees it all

When I was a teenager in New York City, my parents, Preston and Lillian Jackson, owned a couple of restaurants in Brooklyn. They also had grocery stores, so we were always connected to the food business. I’d bus tables, sweep — I was too young to wait tables.

My background is in medical billing for private practices in New Jersey. Because I came here from New York, the pace seems slower, but for the most part, people are friendly and nice to me.

I was married when I came here — now divorced. We knew a couple of people here in Richmond and wanted to start a new life. Of course, now I have a new, lovely, lovely man in my life. His name is Tracy Wallace. I met him here at Croaker’s Spot. He came in for dinner one night and was sitting at the bar. He saw how good the food is, and we struck up a conversation. We’ve been conversatin’ ever since.

We both are from New York, so we had that in common from the beginning. He lives here in town. I live right downtown, about five minutes away.

I was out of work, and I asked a friend of mine who’s a waitress here, if they were hiring at Croaker’s Spot. I interviewed and then started as a hostess on Feb. 16, 2005.

I’d like to see Croaker’s Spot expand — franchise — maybe farther south and maybe north to D.C. and Harlem. One of the owners of Croaker’s, Neverette Eggleston Jr., is very fond of the Harlem Renaissance, as you can tell.

I’m a floor manager now; one week I work 55 hours, the second week, 33 and a half. I work festival times and sometimes six days straight as general manager.

Some days you can leave here so tired, physically, emotionally drained. But then you get up the next day and come in and do it all over again.

Most of the folks here call me Miss Janice — they do that out of respect. People have experienced really tough things, and they vent to me.

I love the crew here. If I didn’t love it, I wouldn’t go home on my day off and make the peach cobbler for everybody. People like it, and I’ve tried it out with customers and they want it on the menu. Maybe next year.

My main focus is to keep the food great, keep customers happy. Sometimes we have personalities that might collide and need a negotiator, a mediator in the kitchen. Even customers, sometimes. There can be a lot of drama.

I work like this: “Get the plate off the line! Get the potatoes out the door!” Then, smiling as sweet as I can: “How are you doing today?” You have to flip over — you have to.

Then sometimes somebody might say, “Can you check what’s going on at this table?” It costs us money when people are complaining.

You can kill people with kindness. A smile goes a long way. I tell my people, “You need to be smiling. Happy, happy, happy. If you’re here and in a place where you need to go off the floor for 10 minutes to get adjusted, then do that and come back smiling.”

I got to treat everybody how I want to be treated when I go to a restaurant. Because the worst possible thing to happen is somebody leaves and tells their friends the service was poor or the food was bad. If they walk out displeased, that affects our revenue, it affects my revenue and I don’t need to have my revenue affected.

I see all walks of life in here, all phases of life, from the least to the highest income. It’s good to come in and have a good dinner and feel like you’re somebody. That’s what it’s about. Not everybody can afford a $15 or $20 meal, but most people can afford a $7 meal.

People know Croaker’s Spot. We’ve had here Earth, Wind & Fire, Ludacris, D’Angelo. We’ve had Tony Terry, Ray-J, Sisters With Voices, Shar Jackson from Moesha, Ghostface from Wu-Tang Clan. They get off their planes and come here, or they order for afterward. And sometimes we’ll stay open late for them.

When I go out to another place I make mental notations about what they’re doing well. I compliment the manager and the server. That can also make a difference in that person’s income. Some people can get lost in a big company, where there’s a lot of hustle and bustle. You can’t always get the recognition, and people need that. We’re not perfect here, but we’re making the effort. — As told to Harry Kollatz Jr.

You Say Tomato, I Say ‘No Thanks’
So much for family tradition: The daughter of a Hanover native spurns the county’s venerated fruit

It’s not easy being a tomata-hata when you grow up in an Ashland-born-and-bred family. That’s right, the only incorporated town in Hanover County, Center of the Tomato Universe.

Although I grew up just down the road in Henrico County, my father and his siblings are from Ashland, as were my grandmother and great-grandmother. Daddy Joe, my grandfather, must have felt real pressure to produce his homegrown tomatoes by the Fourth of July. They were expected. Folks salivated over the Hanover tomato, which has a more succulent consistency than those grown outside the county. Perhaps it’s the sandy soil or the plant brands used, or some sort of alchemy practiced by old gardeners.

An old story, possibly apocryphal: In the early 1950s, the Mantlow brothers from Black Creek took a knife and cut the roots of their tomato plants, forcing the fruit to redden the next day — about 10 to 15 days earlier than the other farmers’ tomatoes. The Mantlows sold them at market, and soon people started raving about the delicious Hanover Tomato.  

But don’t ask me — I’ve rarely tasted the fresh fruit. The slimy seeds, the juicy texture, the smell — they just turn my stomach.

One summer, just after the school year started, my mother had a bumper crop of Henrico tomatoes — so many that she was preparing to freeze the pulp for use in winter stews and pasta sauces. This entailed cooking the tomatoes briefly and then peeling them. When I came home from elementary school, my mother was missing and the kitchen was a horror show: red skin and red pulp everywhere and a lingering odor. I ran outside, gasping for air.  

Family members, who tried to ply me with cute cherry tomatoes and old-fashioned BLTs over the years, believed it was a childhood dislike and that I’d grow out of it. And that proved true with mushrooms, asparagus and broccoli. But at age 32, I’m still waiting for my taste buds to accept tomatoes.

The thing is, I’m happy to eat tomatoes as long as they’re sun-dried, blended into bisques or otherwise masked. But keep me away from the sliced, fresh tomato, adorned only with salt and pepper.

I’ve known plenty of other tomato-haters, and some wear their dislike as a badge of honor, not unlike the folks who say they only eat meat and potatoes, beating their chests all the while. Not me; I consider it an affliction.  

It’s a problem I’ve often pondered as I make a jerk of myself in restaurants and sandwich lines: “No tomato, please. Please, don’t forget.” There’s nothing nastier than having to handle the thing, peeling it off the sandwich, where a few slimy seeds are inevitably left behind. Or dodging tomato chunks in an otherwise perfectly good stew or chili. Gross.

The saddest of all is sitting by while everyone in your family chows down on fresh tomato sandwiches, fixed with wheat bread and Duke’s mayonnaise. I feel a strong sense of envy that they get such pleasure from a simple thing.

But do people still get the same amount of pleasure from the Hanover tomato, or has its reputation exceeded its modern-day worth?

Cabell Luck Jr., a Hanover tomato enthusiast and a member of my extended family, says that he’s found some good tomatoes here and there, especially at the Ashland farmer’s market, but they aren’t of the same quality as those of his youth. He’s even heard that some fruit stands are offering hydroponic tomatoes under the name of Hanover tomatoes.

Perhaps that’s technically correct, but it still feels like cheating to me. After all, it’s the sandy soil in eastern Hanover near Old Church and Studley that gives the tomato its particular qualities, experts say.

Mike Wiblin grows Celebrities, Royal Mounties and Mountain Fresh varieties just outside Ashland’s limits, and he swears by his acidic, sandy soil, which promotes the tomato’s acidity. He starts his plants in a greenhouse, growing them until they flower. Then he moves them to his fields, where they typically produce fruit by June 15.

He says that for many tomato farmers, the season has been extended with the introduction of sophisticated irrigation techniques, allowing farmers to plant tomatoes even in the heat of mid-summer, producing fruit through September. But Wiblin prefers the old-fashioned way, sticking with varieties that produce tomatoes in a 30-day season early in the summer.  

Emily Gianfortoni, a master gardener with the Hanover County extension agent, notes that the varieties of tomatoes grown commercially are different than the Big Boys and Better Boys grown years ago. The new kinds are disease-resistant and have fewer cracks than the old-fashioned tomatoes.

Now if only they would engineer some gag-reflex-resistant ones, I’d be all set.

Local Flavor
I may be a chef about town, but it always comes back to Mom

I grew up on Church Hill, and my mom raised me as a single parent. When I came home after school, I was the one who put dinner on the table so that she didn’t have to. We didn’t have a lot of money, and one day I made peanut butter cookies but overcooked them. I thought she’d be mad. But the only thing she said was that they needed salt.

Most people think I started cooking at The Butlery, but my beginning was really at the cafeteria at the Eye and Ear Hospital. I was only 16. It was just a job so I could earn money to buy a car.  My second job was at Piccadilly’s Cafeteria. Then, one day the district manager came in and told me if I didn’t fry chicken faster, he was going to fire me — so that was the day I quit. I went to The Butlery, and that’s when cooking as a career became a real possibility for me. Don Blue, the owner, was a food visionary, and he taught me a lot. Brussels sprouts, for example — people hate Brussels sprouts. But he taught me a way to cook them in beef stock with caraway seeds, and they are excellent. He always told me, “If it doesn’t taste right, just add butter.”

I didn’t realize it at the time how my life would change and what an opportunity he gave me. The Butlery paid for me to go to school. I went to the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, N.Y., in 1988 and trained in pastries.  But the funny part is, when I came back, they wouldn’t let me do any of the things I had learned. It was simple stuff that really drove me crazy. At The Butlery we were cutting cakes into 12 pieces, and at the CIA they taught me to cut them into 16 slices. I said, “Hey we could get a bigger profit margin doing it this way.” But they wouldn’t do it. It’s that Southern thing — hospitality — like a bigger portion means you love your customers more or something.

Ukrop’s Super Markets was looking to go into prepared foods back then. The Butlery was having some problems and eventually closed, so I left and went to work for Ukrop’s, where my Mom had been a cake decorator for 25 years. I worked my way up from the position of kitchen clerk and eventually ended up as the recipe development chef for the company. I had never done anything like that before. That job taught me costing, controls, measurements, how to make a profit on your food items. Then I got this phone call, kinda out of the blue. Barry Word, a running back for the Kansas City Chiefs who had gone to the University of Virginia wanted to open a restaurant called None Such Place in Shockoe Bottom. Ukrop’s was very nice to me.  They actually let me cook in their test kitchen to get that job. That’s why I love them. They are not in the habit of holding people back.

But even though I was a part owner of None Such, I decided I really wanted to open my own place, so I opened The Vine in the 6th Street Marketplace. It was huge. I should never have done anything that big at the beginning. But you couldn’t tell me that back then. Then I went to work for Maggiano’s when the new malls were being built. They don’t hire anyone — it doesn’t matter who you are — as the executive chef right off the bat. And I had about 16 years of experience.  Still, I had to work as the sous chef. It was humbling. But that job led to a meeting with Kevin Worthy, general manager of The Berkeley Hotel. Kevin offered me the executive chef position, and, in turn, I got to hire my own sous chef, Michael Yavorsky. He was my No. 1 draft pick. He’s a local boy who went to the CIA, too. And he’s very much my opposite. He’s meticulous.  He measures.

I do a lot of publicity for The Berkeley. I do events like the March of Dimes Chefs’ Auction, and now I’m doing a live cooking segment every other Monday on WRIC Channel 8. I also won the local Desperate Housewives cook-off promotion that they were sponsoring, and now I have a shot at being on Good Morning America. If I win, I’m going to make fried spoon bread topped with scallop-mousse crab cakes.

I’m working on a cookbook, too. It’s sort of a virtual tour of Richmond — Carytown, Oregon Hill, you know.  We needed a baby picture of me for the cookbook, and I asked my mom if she had anything I could use. She pulled out this big book. My mom has kept every article, every review,  every clipping that was ever written about me. Wow, she had my whole career right there. I love that woman. — As told to Karen Miller