Like many mid-size Southern cities, Richmond (population 277,000) has in the past five years been sprouting a wide range of restaurants in every category and style, from the fine dining at Lemaire in the Jefferson Hotel to Central American restaurants like Saison and the Mediterranean bistro Secco Wine Bar. Here are some old, new, an in-between well worth a visit.
LEHJA
11800 West Broad Street
804-364-1111
I try hard not to use superlatives often, and the likelihood of any restaurant reaching that bar is slim when it resides in a place like the Short Pump Center, a shopping mall that could be Anywhere, USA, full of all the usual stores like Baby Gap, Banana Republic and Crate & Barrel, along with eateries like Chipotle and Cheesecake Factory. Lehja sits right across from the last, but once inside you find yourself in a carefully designed, very personalized restaurant owned by Sonny Baweja , which The Washingtonian magazine honors as among Richmond’s top 15 restaurants.
But I’ll make the leap and say that not only is Lehja one of the best restaurants in Virginia, but one of the finest Indian restaurants in America, not least for its imaginative regional and modern cuisine but also for its superb wine list (including a few Indian bottlings) that Baweja has chosen to go with the menu.
The three-room space and bar is fresh, flush with color and sleekly modern, like few traditional Indian restaurants anywhere look.
Many of the menu names of dishes will sound familiar to aficionados of Indian food, but here they have a spark and identity unusual for their color, presentation and impeccably cooked ingredients, from chaat papi made with kale ($8), inspired by the food of India’s food stalls, to curry scallops with beets, masala-dusted leeks and spiced coconut curry ($14). Heed the descriptor of “firecracker chicken tikka” ($10), marinated in a pungent ghost chili with a ribbon of pickled cucumber and a plate painted with mango and kewra, which tastes similar to rose water. It packs a wallop.
These were followed by main courses of butter chicken in bright, creamy yogurt that tamed the fire of the preceding chicken dish ($17), and chicken zafrani, cooked in the tandoor after being marinated with yogurt and saffron ($22). Duck à la Pondicherry was like pulled pork, with spices called vadouvanthat includes Tamil fenugreek mustard seeds, cumin, curry leaves, garlic and onions, accompanied by seared portobello mushrooms and plantain crisps ($26).
The spinach-based, cream cheese-laced sag paneer($16) had a marvelous complexity of textures and flavors, and lamb vindaloo ($20) is a classic, here with more levels of flavor than mere heat.
Several Indian breads were brought with the meal, including an unusual naan topped with mushroom, local goat’s cheese and truffle oil. Best plan is to order a basket with assorted breads and chutneys ($8).
Freshly made, beautiful desserts finished our meal: pistachio kulfi ice cream ($7), coffee & donuts with pastry cream and mocha crema ($7), and strawberry-flavored ras malai dumplings ($9). Here again, a sampler plate ($16) is advisable for a table.
We left ourselves in Baweja’s hands to choose the wines he’s so proud of and the selections were very fine accompaniments to the scads of flavors in Indian food, from an Albert Bichot Crémant Rosé to a remarkably good Bordeaux blend from Grover Vineyards in the Nandi Hills of India.
All the while Baweja will be there catering to your table, suggesting you try this and that. If you do, you’ll have a meal few other Indian restaurants in America can match for creativity and respect for true tradition.
Open daily for lunch and dinner.
The Roosevelt
623 N. 25th Street
804-658-1935
Located in an old clapboard building in Church Hill, The Roosevelt has been around since 2011 and became an immediate local success, winning several local awards, not just for the homey look and the quality of its sophisticated comfort food but for the care and hospitality of chef Chef Matt Kirwan and partners Kendra Feather and Mark W. Herndon, along with bar manager Cary Carpenter.
The building dates to 1890, first as a boarding house, then as a drug store, and since 1950 one restaurant or another, including a chitlin store. Although the menu says something about being “a connection between the land and our history and the food and wine that have been defined by them,” I don’t quite see the Roosevelt name connection.
It’s a charming big dining room with an active bar, with a tin ceiling and walls full of antiques gathered by Feather, sconces that throw a soft light and ceiling fans. The service staff is most accommodating, and you can tell by the crowd that it’s a local spot that also manages to draw a few tourists out to this neck of the woods.
There is a snack section with items like warm cornbread lavished with whipped maple butter ($4) and hot chicken wings with a BBQ rub ($9). I enjoyed chicken liver toast ($8) with passionfruit jam, pomegranate seeds, almonds and fennel powder, though the jam seemed mixed into the whipped liver and overly sweetened the dish.
There are also small plates of vegetables, and a wonderful parsnip soup laced with apple butter, crunchy Virginian peanuts and a little nutmeg and sage ($6). Main courses run from seared rockfish with sweet potatoes ($24) to a hanger steak with roasted sunchokes, mushrooms, onions and horseradish demi-glace ($26). It happened to be fried chicken night, which I could hardly fail to order, and I was ecstatic over the exceptionally crispy, dark crust that stayed on juicy meat consistently cooked and very hot throughout ($11). The kitchen drizzled on some honey I would have preferred on the side.
For dessert I very much enjoyed a homey bourbon-drenched ginger cake ($6).
The Roosevelt prides itself on its lengthy specialty cocktail list, and there were 15 Virginia wine bottlings that night, with about another 15 from other states, all at pretty fair prices.
Dinner nightly; Brunch on Sunday.
SALLY BELL’S KITCHEN
2337 West Broad Street
804-644-2838
Way back in 1977 my wife and I were driving cross country and back on our honeymoon, and very little that we ate made us as happy as what we had at Sally Bell’s Kitchen, then on Grace Street in downtown Richmond. It was tiny, with a single glassed-in counter showing the day’s goods, from dainty sandwiches of Smithfield ham, egg salad, pimento cheese, cream cheese and nut, and corned beef spread, available in a box lunch with a side of cole slaw or potato salad and dessert. The desserts were myriad, from chocolate devil’s food and lemon yellow batter cupcakes to coconut pie, lemon chess pie and sweet potato pie.
At a time when Cracker Barrel was taking over the South’s food culture, Sally Bell’s was a true rarity, opened in 1924 by Sara “Sally” Cabell Jones, who called the shop Sarah Lee Kitchen. But because of confusion with the conglomerate baking company by that name, it was changed in 1959 to Sally Bell’s. In 1963 Calom Hunter Jones and his wife, Marcyne “Cene” Owdom Jones, took over (she died last year) and passed it on to daughter-in-law Martha in 2015, the year Sally Bell’s was named one of five restaurants in the country to receive a James Beard Foundation America’s Classics Award.
The eatery’s original location was bought by Virginia Commonwealth University, and the eatery has now moved to West Broad Street and much larger, spanking white quarters, just across from the Science Museum. So for all kinds of reasons I always try to get back to Sally Bell’s Kitchen when I’m in town, and I still bring home goodies for my wife.
It’s a very special place to so many people, and to my wife and me it will always be among our favorite moments of that fourteen-week honeymoon, forty-one years ago.
Open Mon.-Fri. 10 AM-5 PM.
