All you have to do to figure out this no-brainer is find the next GRTC bus and lick the handrail. That should be pretty accurate.
In all honesty, let’s think about our go-to restaurants and think about how we should describe our taste to be. The chief downtown restaurant district would undeniably be Shockoe slip and into the bottom. There we’ve got Tobacco Company—solid, classy American food, Siné—Irish pub food, Buffalo Wild Wings—sports bar food and beer, and Bottoms Up—unique thick crust pizza. What is the sum of our go-tos? Pretty…standard.
Now that’s not to say that any of those places are bad. Quite the contrary. But nothing among those Shockoe area go-tos sticks out in my mind as different or separate from the normal American standard cuisine. We are by all means a big enough country to have regional cuisines and Richmond is an important enough city to have it’s own style even though Virginia doesn’t even have her own style of barbecue! More on that at a later date though.
So what do we have that does stand out as Richmond’s signature style of cuisine? First, what defines Richmond? It’s the former Capital of the Confederacy. It’s the first significant stop in the cultural south. We’re about two-hours from salt water. A majority of the population is African-American and can trace their roots to slavery. We have brutally humid summers. Virginia is known for salt ham, peanuts, and dogwoods.
And so why is there not a SINGLE restaurant in all of Richmond that serves peanut butter, Smithfield ham and dogwood sandwiches?
In all seriousness though a better question may be, What SHOULD Richmond taste like based on what we have nearby? When I ask myself this question two restaurants come to mind. Comfort, at Broad and Jefferson, and Croaker’s Spot, formerly in Jackson Ward.
I was so upset to hear about Croaker’s Spot having to cut back and close their landmark location in Jackson Ward, the former “Harlem of the South”. Serving fried, fresh-water fish with a slab corn bread in a serving size big enough to feed two, Croaker’s Spot was pure Richmond soul food flavors. It’s always nice to go to a place where you’re treated well, given a mountain of delicious food and leave with a full stomach, another two meals in a doggy bag, and a new pin in your map marking the best parts of your city. It’s such a distinct memory of mine noticing the excited smiles of the waiters when I’d order something as if they were trying to tell me, “Ohh you’re going to like this.”
Comfort is the one restaurant I insist on taking out-of-town visitors to. It’s perfect for where we are. Heavy, soul food inspired southern food like your mother would have made if she were a Richmond-born trained chef and used only the best, freshest local ingredients and never made a mistake. If the entrées and appetizers aren’t enough, which they are, there’s the banana pudding crème brulee. 
It nearly brings me to tears every time I eat it. I’ve never left Comfort without a sleepy satisfied smile on my face and a mouth full of praise.
Not as southern as Savannah, not as northern as Baltimore, Richmond can occupy a spot that fills in the gap between crab cakes and…the other style of crab cakes. Bad example. We have our tea in both sweet and unsweet. We like to eat heavy fried foods but with a side of vegetables and Virginia salted ham. We are just now seeing what was once the peasants’ food become Richmond-unique fine dining, as it always does in every cuisine. Let’s be okay with that.
We are lucky to live in Richmond if not for the river, the people, the weather, the price of living, the proximity to mountains, ocean and Washington, D.C., the jobs and the schools, for our cuisine. Top-notch restaurants are plentiful here and for our size, we have some of the best, most diverse cuisine in the country. We just have to remember what our base is—what we need to show people when they come in from out of town. We have great food but we need our go-to restaurants to entice people from I-95 and make them say, “We’re not in Delaware anymore!”
Tags: buffalo wild wings, capital of the confederacy, Comfort, Crème brulee, croaker, Croaker's Spot, cuisine, David Mattera, dogwoods, food, GRTC, Harlem, I95, Jackson Ward, regional cuisines, restaurants, Richmond, shockoe, shockoe slip, smithfield ham, Soul food, sweet tea, thick crust pizza, tobacco company
