February Small Plates

Unfortunately it is still winter ... so as we brave the last few weeks of cold here are a few mini restaurant reviews to distract you from the chilly weather: The Hard Shell, Pasture, and Acacia Mid-town!

The Hard Shell (Shockoe Slip)  

Rating: 3 stars

The Hard Shell has been around since 1995 and is a Richmond staple for seafood. Located on the lower part of Shockoe Slip, this restaurant provides a great upscale option for city dwellers or those looking to spend a fancy night downtown. 

The dining area is large, with a couple of different rooms, and is full of dark wood tables and booths which are accompanied by brick walls. It has an inviting feel but you can tell this is a fancy place. The bar is also very welcoming, offering diners the option for a nice drink while they wait for a table. 

Restaurant Club visited here during the Sampling Shockoe Restaurant week in July. I must say I am glad we did it then because like I mentioned before this place is fancy, meaning it isn't cheap. Most entrees are $20 or above and we are not talking about getting Red Lobster sized portions here. The menu boasts a large raw bar selection and mainly traditional seafood options along with some steak choices as well (but really you should never order steak at a seafood restaurant).

She Crab Soup

For appetizers we had the she crab soup and the creamy lobster dip with fried tortillas. The soup was excellent with big pieces of crab meat and a great creamy consistency, but I was not impressed with the lobster dip. The tortillas were way too salty and the dip looked like Cheez Whiz ... definitely not what I was expecting from this type of restaurant. 

Lobster Dip

Crab Cakes

For our entrees we opted for the crab cakes and the grilled shrimp and scallops. The crab cakes were very good and ample in size, accompanied by jasmine rice and asparagus. On the more interesting side was the grilled shrimp and scallops. Inspired by Asian flavors it included orange sticky rice, seared Asian vegetables, and soy ginger beurre blanc. It was delicious. The flavors blended well and everything was cooked perfectly. My lone issue was that there were only two shrimp and two scallops. I was hoping for a little more with what normally would have been a $24 meal. We finished the night with the key lime pie and the chocolate mouse which were both very yummy. 

Grilled Shrimp and Scallops

Overall I think The Hard Shell is a nice place and it would be great for a fancy date night where you can travel downtown and enjoy the scenery of Shockoe Slip and the Canal Walk, but you might find it a little expensive and underwhelming for a more everyday occasion. 

Check out the Hard Shell website at: www.thehardshell.com/downtown





Pasture

Rating: 2.5 stars

Pasture has received a lot of good press lately, in and outside of Richmond, so I was very excited to make a Restaurant Club trip here. Unfortunately I don't think Pasture lived up to all the hype.

Those stools do not look comfy!

First off it is in an awkward location at Grace and 5th Street downtown where it is surrounded by empty office buildings during the evening. You definitely have to be seeking this place out to find it. Second, the decor is not really ... pleasant? It attempts to present the stark, simple feeling of a barn, with high ceilings, low booths, white walls, and a cold tile floor. The bar is warmed up just a tad with a giant wall of wood planks behind it that give it a very rustic feel, but there is really nothing else there except the super minimized taps and metal bar stools that look rather painful to sit in. The lighting is bald and harsh as well. Let's just say it is not a place where I would want to hang out for a long period of time.

A very different looking bar area.

Simple table layout.

The menu was also surprisingly simple with snacks like Ritz crackers and pimento cheese and bread with butter and jams. More expensive small plates are offered as well as some full entree options like a pan roasted pork chop, a burger, and roasted chicken. The main focus is southern food and using fresh local ingredients as much as possible, which is pretty common around Richmond now.

Mushroom Toasts

On our visit we had the mushroom toasts as appetizers which honestly looked like cat food spread on crunchy pieces of bread. I found them way too salty and did not like the consistency at all. For our entrees one friend had the mixed green salad and the pork and house-chorizo meatballs with  chili grits and pozole broth, while myself and another friend had the grilled top sirloin with yukon gold mashed potatoes, charred onions, and red wine mushrooms. The salad is just your typical mixed green salad and the meatball dish, which we were expecting to be a little spicy due to the chili grits, was rather bland. The steaks were fine and the flavors blended well with the mushrooms and onions, but it was nothing to write home about ... and I hate paying $19 for sirloin. 

Meatballs

Sirloin Steak

So ... I don't know, I wasn't very impressed with the food or the atmosphere at Pasture. Perhaps it is a new cool thing that I am missing. I mean, I get what they are going for ... but I just don't get it. 

Check out the Pasture website at: www.pastureva.com





Acacia Mid-town

Rating: 5 stars

Now this is a cool place to go. If you have ever driven past this restaurant on the Fan side of Cary Street and thought to yourself "Man that place looks neat/good/interesting," you were right! 

Super hip!

This restaurant has a super hip vibe from the cute waiting area up front, to the snazzy bar, to the fun art installation in the middle of the room. The dark walls and tables make the sexy lighting scheme pop and you get a sense that this place always has a chic buzz going on. With the addition of free valet parking and open doors on warm evenings Acacia is much more upscale and classy than your typical Fan restaurant. All night I kept saying that I felt like I was in New York City instead of Richmond.

Snazzy bar

Calamari Salad

Restaurant Club chose this as our fall Richmond Restaurant Week outing and lucky for us they have half price wine bottles on Tuesdays! The wine menu is very extensive and the food menu consists of a few small plates and appetizers plus several substantial entree choices. I am not going to lie to you, Acacia is expensive, but this is one of the few places that is actually worth it! They also offer a $24 fixed price menu from 5:30-9pm Monday through Thursday and 5:30-6:30pm on Friday and Saturday. So if you pair that with half priced wine on Tuesdays you can get a lot of good stuff for a decent price.

Tuna Tartare

Crab Cake

We had the fried calamari salad (delicious), the tuna tartare with wasabi mayo appetizer (great if you like tuna tartare, hehe), the hangar steak (unfortunately this was a little over cooked but they quickly replaced it with a perfect one), and the crab cake (awesome, major lump crab, and I even liked the cheese grits that accompanied it which normally I do not). I believe we had some different desserts than what they have on their menu now, and I can't remember their exact names, but they were wonderful (see pictures below!).

Acacia provides that unique combination of a fun and exciting experience and great food. So grab your significant other or a group a friends and treat yourself to a dazzling night out at Acacia soon!

Check out the Acacia Mid-town website at: www.acaciarestaurant.com



Be Real.
~Samantha

Burger Bach

Rating: 2.5 stars

I'm sorry but no cheeseburger and french fries is worth $12.

So Burger Bach (pronounced "batch", apparently it's a New Zealand thing), is the new restaurant that is occupying the former Ellwood Thompson Cafe. I have never been to the Cafe so I can't compare the two, but let's just say I wasn't that impressed.

Burger Bach states it is a European Gastropub (ala Blue Goat), except that they specialize in what I guess are supposed to be "gourmet" burgers (if there is such a thing). Sorry, but I feel like if you are going to have all farm raised/natural foods you could come up with a little better specialization than burgers, which we all know taste best when they are made from the cheapest meat.

So I ate there tonight for the first time. The interior is fine, small, but accommodating, with a fairly large bar. There are 4 large screen TVs, but do not mistake this place for a sports bar because it is not. We were trying to watch the VCU tournament game (GO RAMS!) but no sound, and there is only one wall of TVs, so if you are facing the opposite way you have to turn away from your party to see them. It's a rather small place to have so many TVs at the bar anyway, the could totally get away with one.

But the colors are nice and it is pretty peaceful if you are there just to eat, a very modern feel going on. Though I really do not get this trend of having one really long table that you seat multiple parties at (Stella's has the same thing). It is just not functional and causes alot of issues. Personally I do not want to have to sit right next to a person that I don't know (maybe I am just anti-social). They would be better off having several two seater tables that they could push together if needed.

Anyway, on to the food. So yeah, it's $10 for a burger (which is their MO), which comes with, guess what...an all leaf salad! That goes perfect with a burger right??? It's an extra $2 for a small side of fries, which are cooked Five Guys style, fried in peanut oil. I don't know about you but if I am going to order a burger (and fries) I want my fries to be as greasy and as bad for you as possible, because that is the way they taste best. I am not hoping that my fries are healthy for me. If you want healthy you should not be ordering a burger and fries in the first place! Which is why the salad thing does not work at all!!!

I had the bacon cheddar cheese burger (as all good burgers should include bacon and cheese). It was good, but the bun was way too soft and the thing kept falling apart on me. Also it comes with thousand island dressing (ala the Big Mac's special sauce) and I prefer the good old fashioned mayo. But guess what...no substitutions allowed! Really??? On a burger??? Are they that spectacular that the "chef" absolutely cannot take off lettuce or add mustard??? I don't know about that. If I am paying $10 for a burger I better "have it my way."

Speaking of prices, they have a fairly limited beer list for Richmond (although the wine list looked quite extensive... so if you like wine with your burger you are good ;) ), and the only domestic beer they have is Miller Lite in the bottle, which costs $4!!! That is the same price as all of their craft beers on tap. And FYI this is NOT listed on their menu. I had to ask if they even had any domestic beers, and I thought I would be getting a deal with the Miller Lite (which I am not a fan of), but nope, when the check came I realized I could have been getting a craft beer for the same price. Let's just say I was not happy and recommended that that really needed to be changed ASAP, and if not, then it at least needed to be listed on the menu. Also, this place could benefit from some happy hour specials. Oh, and no free refills on tea or soda because they serve those by the "chilled" bottle, because it's the "real" sugar kind.

On a side note, my friends liked the Reggae music they were playing, but kept complaining of some kind of smell, which I just chalked up to fries, burgers, and onions (didn't really notice it myself).

I guess I am just not a fan of paying way too much for what should be cheap beer and essentially a cheap meal, no matter what kind of cow it came from. In my opinion you can get the same tasting burger at Hometeam Grill, Red Robin, Capital Ale, etc, for ALOT cheaper, and they already come with fries!!!

Let's just say that the taste nor the atmosphere was enough to make me want to go back. Their menu specifically asks that you let them know how they are doing and if they have "gotten it right". Sadly, I'd have to say no.

Be Real.
~Samantha

BlowToad

Rating = 2.5 stars

Let's talk about BlowToad.

This was one of the most anticipated restaurant openings I have heard about in Richmond for a while. My guess is because: 1. It is located in Carytown right across from The Byrd Theater, and 2. because of it's name.

One comment on the name. While this probably gets alot of people curious about what your restaurant is all about, it is also very weird and kind of nasty sounding...so not sure which way you want to go.

The name actually comes from a type of fish, pictured below, alive, and cooked.

Photo credited to Kendra Morris - http://fatbackandfoiegras.blogspot.com/

BlowToad serves this gorgeous fish as an appetizer, which we of course had to try, since obviously it is delicious enough to name a restaurant after. Unfortunately after tasting it, it wasn't that obvious to me... It was pretty bland, the batter was kind of greasy, and you have to eat it like a drumstick. I don't know, I guess I just expected more.

Now, to be fair to this place, we went here on the second night they were officially open, on a Saturday, with a group of 7. Note: Do not ever do this...anywhere. A friend suggested we go and if I had known they had just opened, I would have argued against it, so I feel this review has been somewhat colored by those circumstances.

So we walk in a little before 8 to, of course, a packed house. And in reality this place is not very big, especially the way they have chosen to set it up. The bar is right up front, so anyone waiting is going to be standing in this area, which makes it a little overwhelming at first, and you have to walk through the bar to get to the hostess stand. Adjacent to the bar are two tall, yet very skinny bar tables, luckily we were able to eventually grab one of these to sit at while we waited out our 45 minutes to get a table. The bar tables are good looking but it would be very difficult for a group to actually eat at them, as there is definitely not enough room for every one's food, so sadly, I feel like there is some wasted space there. Also, there are two large screen TVs playing ESPN at the bar, definitely causing you to feel you are not in a really upscale or posh atmosphere. The main dining room is thankfully separated from the bar by a wall, so though we did not get to sit over there, I assume it is much quieter, calmer, and more spread out than the bar area.

About the 45 minutes, that is totally expected of a new place on a Saturday with a group of 7. Unfortunately it turned into more like an hour and a half, while we watched one large table be cleared and have no one seated at it for 20 minutes, and then watched our actual table sit empty and uncleared for another 20 minutes before anyone noticed and came to clean it up for us... Let's be nice though and chalk that up to it being just opened and working out the kinks. We got some wine from the bar and were able to chat for a while, so it was nice...right?

When we did finally get seated, I asked the table next to us what they thought of the pizza they had ordered, because, unlike what you would assume due to the name, this place is really a wood fired pizza grill (surprised?). They said the pizza was good, but was too salty. I said ok thank you and turned back to my table, but apparently it was really really too salty because they brought it up to me twice more before they departed, so, yeah.

Ok, time for dinner, finally. We ordered another bottle of wine, and then tried the blow toads (see above). Then it came time to order the meal. Apparently this place is trying very hard to be tech savvy. The waiters actually use iPads instead of paper pads to take your order. Cool right? And I assume this shoots your order right back to the kitchen, which saves on time right? Not so much. Our waiter had to wait several seconds for his iPad to unfreeze to take the order, and then of course it takes longer to punch buttons and such than write things down in short hand. And then, just as our final person ordered he got a message on his iPad that they only had 6 chicken wings left in the kitchen. Well we had two people ordering 6 wings. In the time it took to decide who would take them, another table ordered them with their waiter's handy dandy iPad, so booyah, no chicken wings! I don't know, I just see this causing alot more trouble in the future. Oh, they also let you know your table is ready by calling your cell phone, so make sure you bring one of those with you.

The menu is not very extensive I must say, which I was surprised by since it is not really upper scale food. And two of our friends were very disappointed that there was copy in the menu about a cheeseburger which come to find out that is only available at lunch. I would highly recommend that the burger be added to the dinner menu as well. After finally getting everything ordered we started to enjoy ourselves now that we were more comfortably seated. We were also close enough to the next table (very close) to be able to enjoy a conversation with them as well, so that is good, if you like that sort of thing.

Eventually the dinners came out, luckily the time waiting for food was not bad at all. I must say, my pepperoni pizza was very good,  I did not find it too salty, and it was a generous size, though I am not sure $13-15 is that great of a price. (In my opinion Bellytimber's is better and cheaper) It appeared that everyone else also enjoyed their dishes. I did not hear many complaints. We chose not opt for desert since it was now almost 10:30 and instead opted for the check. But unfortunately we got someone else's, and once that was fixed we were informed they couldn't run but so many credit cards per table (5 or 6 was the limit I believe) so that added another 15 minutes to our evening at BlowToad. Can someone explain to me why you can call my cell phone to tell me my table is ready, and can use an iPad to take my order, but can't run 7 credit cards? So on that pleasant note we made our departure.

Honestly, I am not really sure what to tell you about BlowToad. I guess it was so hyped up I was rather disappointed, just by what it ended up being and the overall experience. I am sure they will work out the service kinks in time, but I am not sure the limited menu and confusing atmosphere will get any better. When we were there my friend made the comment "I am not really sure what this place is trying to be, is it a sports bar or a posh restaurant?" I am right there with him. Let me know if you figure it out.

Be real.

~Samantha