This week you’re getting a column that was written on a plane, a train and an automobile.
What we’ve heard
So many shells to collect:
Seashell at Brenner Pass
One of our favorite pandetimes was hanging on the gorgeous patio at Brenner Pass. In 2020, chef Brittanny Anderson and company cooked up pop-ups that let us all get together—but stay apart—with gorgeous scenery, heaters for the chill and great food. Anderson is bringing back the pop-up scene at BP with an homage to her youth and her great-grandmother’s general store. Seashell Saturdays feature local oysters, fresh crab and other salt water treats. The word is she might make it a permanent thing somewhere in the future.
Dead Shell Mobile Oyster Saloon
The tagline has us: “Local oysters and other sea beast, ode to Thomas Downing.” Chincoteague, Va. native Downing opened an oyster bar in lower Manhattan in 1825. The Black businessman learned to farm oysters in Virginia and took his knowledge to New York where his bar, Downing’s Oyster House, became incredibly popular. Dead Shell pops up at Ruby Scoops on May 31 from 2 to 9 p.m. or on June 1 at Pizza Bones.
Openings
The Tamale Factory opens on the Southside
To a very loud social media welcome. Your choice of sweet or savory tamales are just $3.50 each, get a half dozen for $20 or a dozen for $36.
Julio’s Bagels opens in the Northside
Had we known a bagel shop from Pizza Bones’ owner/baker Ashley Patino could be on our bingo card at some point, well, we wouldn’t be begging every person who travels to New York to ferry bagels back to us. These naturally leavened, boiled and baked beauties can be purchased solo with your choice of plain, herby, spicy or sweet cream cheese, or on a few select sammies. The shop also offers espresso bevvies. We hear pizza bagels are coming soon.
Does anyone else fondly dream of the battleships from Black Sheep many years ago? Chimbo Sandwich Shoppe is the closest we’ve seen since with big hulking sammies featuring freshly cut meats. It’s pretty bare bones and only open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday through Tuesday. Order your sammies to go for picnics or the pool this summer. Meat eaters can go deep on options like the Classic Italian that’s piled high with ham, pepperoni, salami, capicola, plus banana peppers, provolone, chopped romaine and oil and vinegar. But there are enticing meat-free choices, too, like the Fried Chokes featuring deep fried artichoke hearts with lemon garlic aioli and marinated sundried tomatoes, or the Chickpea, featuring a bright caper and lemon chickpea salad. They also have a few sides and desserts—yes, we spied dirt cups complete with gummy worms.
You’ve got to try it (and can we get more of it)?
P2 Champs at Lost Letter
Can we get 125 cheers for P2 by the glass at Lost Letter? That’s Plenitude by Dom Perignon, a 20-year-old (!) Champagne. For reference, DP’s Chef de Cave (winemaker) feels that at around nine years, Dom Pérignon reaches its first Plénitude, or its completeness; and so it becomes the Dom Vintage that most people are familiar with. Years later, after sitting on the lees for much longer, the wine reaches its second Plénitude and becomes Dom Pérignon P2. A bottle retails from $800-$1,000.
Lost Letter’s sommelier Grayum Vickers has some history with the 2006 Dom Perignon. When he was coming up as a sommelier in 2006, he waited on the band Metallica (they’re really into Champagne, apparently). Vickers says they drank some very good Champagne the night he waited on them, and after they gifted a bottle of 2006 Dom to the staff.
His reasoning behind pouring P2 by the glass is to make luxury wines more approachable. “I’m already pouring large format wines by the glass because drinking out of those bottles is a different experience—they age differently—and usually can be so cost prohibitive,” says Vickers. “And I want everyone to experience it.”
Lost Letter will be selling the incredible liquid by the glass at cost. Unsurprisingly, it’s pretty dang limited. According to Ryan Larson, Virginia’s Moet Hennessy representative, there are only a few bottles in the state of Virginia. Lost Letter will join only two other spots in the nation (Aspen, Los Angeles) serving P2 by the glass.
What should you pair with your luxe glass of Champagne? Vickers says Lost Letter’s homey, rustic rabbit ragu dish makes an ideal pairing with this lush, once-in-a-lifetime (we say) pour.
Ramp up, people.
It’s allium time. Our favorite local “onion” pops up for just a few fleeting weeks and everyone begins swinging for the ramp(arts) and causing a ramp(age) to eat any and everything rampy. Wondering why we’re making such a rampus? We love the distinctive flavor that hits somewhere between garlic and onions—bring your breath mints. Here are some of our favorite spots for them:
Ramp white pizza at 8 1/2 in the Fan, which you can also find at Dinamo, alongside a creamy, decadent ramp gnocchi.
Ramp night and bottle share at The Roosevelt on May 21. You can’t go. It’s already sold out. But you can order firefly goat cheese with ramp jam on the regular menu. Or a fried soft-shell crab with ramp Caesar dressing; and now we die from spring flavor amazingness.
Ramp butter from Leek & Thistle. This delicious, smelly tub of butter can be spread on toast or used for cooking. Whatever you make will taste fantastic. We get it Saturday at the Farmers Market at St. Stephen’s.
Breakfast at Yellow Umbrella Provisions Patterson
There’s a new chef in town at Yellow Umbrella Provisions on Patterson Avenue.
Hans Doxzen, formerly of Pasture and Grisette, has taken the helm at the counter and recently added breakfast from 8-10 a.m. on Tuesday through Saturday from the shop’s take-out window. Online ordering is coming soon. When creating the menu, Doxzen focused on hearty but not heavy dishes that his team could create quickly and affordably—every menu item is under $10.
So far the star of the show has been the breakfast burrito that weighs a hulking three-quarters of a pound and features green harissa marinated chicken, two whole eggs, fresh scallions and queso fresco for that “creamy salinity and a little fat for the palate,” Doxzen says. The breakfast sandwich is made with a chawanmushi-style steamed egg that’s “nice and velvety silky, but still structurally sound” alongside house-made fresh Autumn Olive Farms pork sausage, pepper jack cheese and Duke’s mayo served on a Martin’s Big Marty’s roll.
All hot entrees come with a side of house-made piri piri hot sauce that Doxzen describes as less capsaicin forward and more packed with ginger and lime flavors. The potato side features a half-pound of Doxzen’s signature triple-cooked potato wedges with rosemary, black pepper and thyme alongside house-made chimichurri mayo. And the acai bowl is gluten free, dairy free and nut free with house-made sunflower seed butter, clover honey and no added sugar.
Doxzen says he won’t mess with the lobster rolls and smash burgers on the lunch menu, but as he’s also taken over recipe development for the production kitchen, he’s adding rotating specials to test out new flavors.
A big pizza pie at Enoteca Sogno
Pizza on Tuesdays is back at Enoteca Sogno. A few years ago, the Bellevue Italian restaurant started hosting pizza pop-ups on Tuesday nights, when they are usually closed. We are happy to report that they have resurrected the pizza and are forging on with their on-and off-again pizza making. You can choose from several thin and crispy crusted pies like margarita and cheese (add pep if you want), or listen to a few specials, which most recently featured pizza with nduja and one with rapini and turkey sausage. It’s good pizza. So good, in fact, that we ran into former Richmond Times Dispatch food editor, Cheryl Magazine.
What we’re eating at home
Robey: It’s spring farmers market time and I’m a sucker for a weekday market. I’m team Birdhouse Farmers Market (opened for the season May 6) which happens every Tuesday for in-person shopping and has vendors like Ruby Scoops Ice Cream, Sub Rosa Bakery, Tomten Farm and more. I just got some killer asparagus from Old Tavern Farm and stupidly affordable lion’s mane mushrooms from Easterday Mushroom Co.
Megan: I’m team Farmers Market at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church on Saturday morning where you can score a Mayor Meats sausage breakfast sandwich while shopping the likes of Bundy Heirloom Farms produce alongside prepared foods. Get the bagel chips and the salad dressing; Oro pasta; Europa Crust bread; Liberty Tree Farm salad greens; and HaaShrooms, where I regularly drop insane amounts of money on maitakes, lion’s mane and more.
Where we’re headed
As the weather heats up, we’re headed to the mountains to drink some exceptional petit manseng—forging our own petit manseng path, if you will. Read up on the grape which was brought to Virginia rather recently in 1987 by Virginia Tech Professor, Tony Wolf.
It turns out that Virginia makes some dang good white wine from the grape which gets a bad rap as sweet and cloying. If the research is TLDR, here are the SparkNotes: In Virginia, our temps are favorable for the low loose grape clusters making a rich, big bodied—and really great, not sweet—white.
Spots to try petit manseng
Winemaker Maya Hood White is the head cheerleader of this varietal it seems. She’s producing beautiful renditions using perpetual lees aging creating a multi-faceted, big, bold white wine that’s supremely drinkable.
Helmed in part by Ben Jordan (previously at Early Mountain—perhaps there is a theme here?), Lightwell is making surprising but approachable wines with their petit manseng blends being some of the wildest. Their description of one of their petit manseng blends: “62% Petit Manseng, 38% Riesling. Fuck yeah, the 2022 Hintermen is bangin’. It’s truly the most balanced it’s been. Part Chenin, part Chard, all yum. It’s floral, elegant, it’s bright, and it’s racy. It’s a frozen buttercup in a glass.”
—XOXO Megan and Robey
