BY ADVOCATE NEWS SERVICES
When David Shannon returned to his native Richmond in 1997 after a year-long stint as chef of the Ashby Inn in Paris, Va., the first restaurant review he read in the Richmond Times-Dispatch gave him pause.
It was about a new McDonald’s in Carytown.
Shannon, who also spent eight formative years at the esteemed Inn at Little Washington, asked himself, “What have I done?”
“The great thing about the city now is how far restaurants have come,” says the chef behind one of Richmond’s most intriguing establishments, the two-year-old L’Opossum. Not only are there more and better restaurants, he says, but they also offer a world of flavors.
Within the past year alone, the mix has expanded to include a promising Southern source (Spoonbread Bistro), a casual regional restaurant from a fine-dining chef (Shagbark) and yet another branch of Peter Chang, the much-hyped creation of a former Chinese Embassy chef of the same name. And one of the best modern German restaurants I know — indeed, one of my favorite destinations in Richmond — the youthful Metzger Bar and Butchery in Union Hill is poised to open an Alpine retreat in the Scott’s Addition neighborhood early next year. The 4,000-square-foot brasserie, Brenner Pass, will draw on accents from the mountainous areas of France, Italy and Switzerland.
Chefs and restaurant owners say they’re attracted by a wave of adventurous eaters moving in from the suburbs and by the relatively moderate cost of doing business. Travis Croxton, co-owner of the popular Rappahannock seafood eatery and the new Rapp Session saloon next door, says the rent for those combined 4,500 square feet is one-third of what he pays for his Rappahannock Oyster Bar — a mere 600 square feet — in the District’s Union Market.
Richmond’s vibrant arts scene infuses the food arena, too. Insider tip: The (free) first-class Virginia Museum of Fine Arts displays a fetching bar with a postcard view.
Tastemakers can’t seem to stay away from the Virginia capital. Brandon Fox, the food and drink editor of Richmond’s Style Weekly, jokes, “We’re always on the verge!”
But that’s changing, and fast, says Maureen Egan, co-founder of the six-year-old Real Richmond Food Tours. The success of her culinary excursions – and a bit of “Charleston envy,” says Egan - helped spawn a food festival in Richmond called Fire, Flour &Fork in 2014. The first year, 1,600 people showed up. Next month (Nov. 16-20), Egan expects 6,000 attendees and close to 50 events, including farm tours, cooking demonstrations, wine dinners and food seminars.
“Richmond,” she says, “deserves a stage to tell many more stories.”
Here are some of mine:
L’Opossum
There’s no cheekier restaurant in town than L’Opossum, home to a dim dining room dressed with replicas of Michelangelo’s David, large and small, and a menu that describes a salad as “a tawdry &salacious” mix of mesclun “bound by the frigid embrace” of cucumber with a “happy Thai basil ending.”
Ring a bell (maybe a gong)? The Inn at Little Washington’s signature humor clearly rubbed off on chef-owner David Shannon, 54. Silly verbiage, he says, “lowers everyone’s defenses.”
Consider the name, a wink at French pretentiousness but also a throwback to the time he took a break from cooking: “playing dead, like a possum,” explains the chef. Behind the goofy labels is some serious cooking: Filet Mignon of Beef “Swellington” translates to six ounces of beef on a port wine reduction with a phyllo purse of mushroom duxelles and foie gras held together with a rosemary-sprig “hobo stick.” (“Older diners recognize it right away” as modernized beef Wellington, says Shannon.) The gimmicks make sense on the tongue. Instead of using Pernod in his delicious riff on oysters Rockefeller, the chef relies on absinthe - sprayed via an atomizer over the baked bivalves at the table.
Bottom line: The comic can cook.
Sugar &Twine
Portland, Ore., boasts one of the best baking scenes in the country, and Beth Oristian had the honor of learning from one of its champions, Kim Boyce, owner of Bakeshop there and author of the James Beard award-winning Good to the Grain. Why would she leave the fragrant Pacific Northwest?
“I spent five Christmases away from my family,” members of which are scattered around the country, says the baker, 31. “That’s the way it is in the food business.”
When Oristian decided to break that streak, she relocated to Richmond, where she has a brother, and discovered a community not unlike Portland’s, with a river running through the city and “a lot of tattoos.” A year ago, she opened Sugar &Twine, which, true to its name, sends customers away with boxes of pastries and sweets bound in string. Smart cookies know to ask for Oristian’s moist apple bran muffins, cheddar biscuits, croissants laced with fontina and fresh thyme, and the pretty, sugar-dusted hand pies. The last are filled with whatever looks good in the market: strawberry with rhubarb in warm months, apple with blackberries in the fall
Meanwhile, a breakfast sandwich of egg, cheese and sausage is what McDonald’s can only hope to accomplish, and it’s best washed back with a thick pottery mug of local Trager Brothers coffee at Sugar &Twine’s pine counter.