Picking Up Points

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

So when I left for my walk this morning, hitting closed roads within blocks of home, I did the only logical thing. I followed the bike race route.

I passed a girl watching the riders and she commented on my "Wicked" shirt, saying she and her Mom were going to see it Sunday.

I told her my shirt was from a Baltimore production in 2006, not a Richmond run. She one-upped me  by saying she'd already seen it in San Francisco.

The match went to the stranger.

On 2nd Street, an angry-looking young woman came out of her building and approached a cop, asking how she was supposed to leave her house.

"You can't," he said solemnly. "You can never leave." He gave the joke time to register before steering her out of the lot and to freedom.

Passing a couple of black women standing on the sidewalk, I heard one of them say, "I meant to tell Nell that I saw one black guy riding in the race. But at least there was one!"

Fair enough.

After seeing bicyclists dressed so improbably - flip flops, jeans,backpacks- I asked a cop what was going on. Where was the spandex?

"This is just the warm-up," she explained. "The real racing won't start for half an hour."

I was pleased to see hand-holding couples, families with young children, groups of friends taking seats in the bleachers along Broad Street near the announcing station.

Walking west on Franklin as the bikers headed in the same direction, we were coming up the hill toward 5th Street when I heard one biker tell another, "This is where you pick up points."

His riding companion thought differently. "This is where you lose energy."

When I got home from my walk, it was to a message from my lunch companion instructing me to meet him at Dutch & Co. in half an hour for back door dogs.

I was wise enough to take Leigh Street and avoid the road issues that seem to have far too many people whining endlessly this weekend (for goodness' sake, people, we've known for a year that this race was going to happen this weekend!), arriving moments after he did.

Bartender Aaron came out to chat with us and I asked how crazy business had been in the past couple months. Surprisingly, he said it's the weekdays that are slammed and the weekends aren't too bad. Good to know.

Within minutes, Chef Caleb came out, hung the hot dog flag out and before long, I was the happy recipient of a mutton merguez dog with golden raisin and fennel chutney under a sprinkling of Feta right off the grill.

Dogs in hand, my friend said his cousin lived two blocks down the street and he had full permission to utilize his porch whenever the need arose.

The spicy fresh sausages in our hands qualified us and we were soon ensconced in Adirondack chairs on the shady porch loving life.

There really is nothing like a freshly grilled homemade sausage on a sunny day and the contrasting spice of the dog, salt of the cheese and sweetness of the chutney was the best use of six bucks I could think of.

And that was just the warm-up. The real eating won't start until tonight.

Untinged by Regret

Look. State of the plate
deems Dutch a damn fine dinner
Town coming. Go now.

When Style's annual State of the Plate issue comes out, you can be certain I'll do one thing: go to the restaurant of the year immediately, knowing full well it'll be months before I venture near it again.

And, yes, that was a haiku.

An old friend had a free night and since it had been a good, long while since we'd met up, suggested dinner. I knew exactly where we needed to go.

Dutch & Co. had only three tables filled upon our arrival, but we chose the bar anyway. On the way to our stools, two of the servers raved about my tights. I, in turn, raved about a cute Halcyon-sourced sweater and another's curly hair, looking for all the world straight.

I immediately awarded brownie points for the chalkboard listing of Blenheim's Table White, a Virginia blend of Viognier and Chardonnay, meaning I ordered a glass tout suite.

While it's only been a few weeks since I was there, it had been over a year for my friend, so he spent some quality time with the menu.

The one thing we knew for sure was that we both intended to begin with Anderson's Neck oysters off the $5 menu. Three river swallows and we were off to a fine start.

With the late afternoon sun slanting through the windows and R & B music playing, we began eating our way through the menu.

He wanted the pig face terrine and, decadent as it was, I'd just had it on my last visit, so I decided on a bowl of earthly delights: Rogue river smokey blue cheese, pork and fig roll-ups, arugula, pumpkin puree and roasted pumpkin seeds.

I could only hope to achieve a marriage as perfectly suited as pig and fig.

When my next course arrived, our lovely server with the saucy red lipstick announced, "And here's your flounder," but I informed her that as far as I was concerned, she was delivering my pork belly.

"I hear you talking, sister!" she testified. The combination of crispy fish, curlicues of pork belly, gnocchi, salt-baked celery root, kale and a pear and black sesame puree tickled every fancy I had.

My friend looked at me after licking clean his plate of lamb two ways and observed, "They're killing it on every level."

Um, yes, that would explain the restaurant of the year business and all.

With a now completely full restaurant behind us, we savored a dessert of dark chocolate ginger cake with aerated milk chocolate, espresso ice cream, cardamom marshmallow, candied pistachios and orange curd sauce laid out prettily to look like fried eggs.

It was as much a treat for the eyes as the tongue and we left not a trace, shameless in our delight in it all.

We managed to be out of there by the high, holy hour of 8:00, leaving behind every seat occupied except the two we'd just vacated.

So long, Dutch & Co. See you once the hoopla dies down.

She craves wordsmithing
and finds hand to hand haiku.
Funny, poetic.

Tonight I was trying something new, something called a hand to hand haiku tournament at Balliceaux.

A large man improbably named Raven Mack, and apparently a master of haiku, was hosting an evening of dueling haikus.

Arriving, I saw a woman I know who works at VCU libraries, the same one who'd recently helped me find a poem from 1986 in their special collections.

She was one of tonight's contestants, having written 25 haikus in anticipation of the competition.

Another woman came up to me, this one recognizing me from Monday's Secretly Y'All event, and introduced herself.

She had lots to share - that Gloria Steinem wants her funeral to be a fundraiser, about a website that features documentaries about important women (Alice Walker, Wonder Woman)- before we discussed the ins and outs of biking in Richmond.

We all took seats when Raven, aka Dr. Lounge, told us to. "This is about 17 syllables and I'd like to get started with 17," he said as he began to count down and remove pieces of clothing.

You see, kids, sometimes you come for the high brow and get the low.

He told us, "My heart is as big as the Blue Ridge mountains but my mouth is bigger and that's why I do hand to hand haiku."

We knew there had to be a reason.

The first match was between Selena and Paul. Each read one of their haikus and the three judges voted a winner for each round. Selena won with haikus about dancing and orgasms untinged by regret.

Next came a match between Selena and Angie, the challenger, who read this:

A snowy Sunday
calls for lounging in bed
with someone you love

This haiku caused our host, Dr. Lounge, to pull up his shirt and expose a tattoo saying, "Lounge."

See, you go for 17 syllable poetry and sometimes you get strange men's bellies.

After a monologue by the very witty Raven ranging on topics from a 90-year old catfish named Jelly Biscuit to how he had a gamecock heart and was ready to crush his haiku competitor, Lamb of God bassist John Campbell, the match got underway.

Whoever got the first 13 of 25 rounds in his favor won. Campbell, who had a white beard, also had plenty of haiku ammunition, most of it very funny and well-delivered.

I got my eyes trained 
on the color of your beard.
You see no fear here.

What was funny was that their haikus were more of a battle of insults, many beard-based (two kinds, according to Raven: true beards and trim beards), as they tried to out-do each other with unkind words.

When Raven appeared to be winning and Campbell left the stage, he called out, "Some people aren't game cock enough."

He sure wasn't talking to me.

I was really sorry when the evening was over, wishing there were more haiku writers in the audience to keep it going all night.

Raven said hand to hand haiku was a lot like a potluck, all the better for having as many people as possible in attendance to get the most out of it, making me regret that I hadn't written a haiku or two myself to prolong the poetic pleasure.

Night over too soon.
Haikus bring satisfaction
but not like good sex.

It'll be another month until the next hand to hand haiku evening and I'm already looking forward to it.

Fortunately, I got home to a message inviting me for a drink, so I sashayed over to Saison to meet a poet for wine and a blather a few blocks from home.

Beer geeks nearby talked incessantly about cellaring beer while one guy hid behind the door curtain, jumping out just as his friend came through the door and scaring him to death while amusing everyone else.

After a bit, the good, old boys of the Roosevelt crew came in, front and back of the house, and joined the revelry.

Eat and drink, haikus,
wine and good conversation,
What more could I want?

Dear Me, Life Gets Real

A kind woman began my day with a message telling me how happy I'd looked last night.

That's a lovely thing to wake up to.

On this cold morning, I also woke up to two other missives, one telling me "You ROCK" and another asking to join me on my morning walk.

Since my ability to rock is a purely subjective thing, I addressed the second. Happily.

It was noon by the time I ate and dressed, but the photographer didn't seem to mind and we set out on a brisk walk that all but froze our faces off.

The beauty was that it ended at Art 180 where we viewed the exhibit "Dear Me,"  a series of mixed media collages and letters written by local people to their 15-year old selves.

It was fascinating to see the difference in what a 26-year old writes to his younger self and what a 45-year old writes. It's all about experience and perspective.

Leaving, my friend said that our unexpected art adventure had scratched an itch for him and I felt the same, going home to work for the afternoon instead of play.

But eventually, a girl's got to get out and about, so I cleaned up and headed uphill to Dutch & Co. for dinner.

There were three seats open at the bar but two were reservations so I slid into the only available one.

The bartender was a familiar face and he expressed surprise I hadn't been at the Acacia sous chef dinner last weekend, but understood completely when I told him that day had been given over to Palladio and Lake Street Dive.

Since I had plans later, I dove right into eating, beginning, as I always do, with Anderson's Neck oysters with mignonette and chives.

It was about then that I noticed the man on the other side of me, the chef from Citizen, all the favorite lunch place of downtown worker bees and occasionally me, too.

He remembered me and brought me up to date on how what's been going on with the building he's in may affect his business and about the upcoming changes in his menu.

Give me a month or so to get the new menu in place and come back down, he suggested. Will do.

Then we got down to the good stuff: eating. He and his beloved had ordered many of the same dishes I had so he gave me his all favorable takes on them, cracking wise that the soup was cold (it was vissychoise).

Most interesting were his recommendations for southside eating and shopping and he clued me in to a Polish grocery, a crowded but worth it Salvadorean chicken place and his favorite Asian market. "You have to go!" he enthused.

Oh, I will.

Then my salmon tartare arrived with three perfect blini to enfold it, and you can be sure I scooped in the shaved botargo and chive creme fraiche to top them, making for an exquisitely balanced combination of flavors.

The chef and his honey left to go watch TV and they were replaced by a couple with their own wine who'd come solely because they'd read about the restaurant in Richmond Magazine.

I talked to them anyway.

They oohed and ahhed over my duck confit with fingerling potatoes and miso vinaigrette, soon ordering one of their own.

But it was the pig face terrine with pickled mushrooms between Sub Rosa bread on a plate of horseradish yogurt that really got their attention.

Because it arrives vertical, looking like a sandwich standing at attention in a pool of white, they were flummoxed so I explained the taste delights involved.

When I got ready to leave, he stopped me to ask about restaurants. What did I think of his favorite, Mama Zu?

It's a bit one note for me, but as long as you're in the mood for garlic and salt, nobody does it better, I told him. He asked my opinion on a few other places before I excused myself for music.

Crossroads' main room was already full when I arrived but I borrowed a chair from the little back room and brought it up front.

A woman soon joined me, introducing herself as a teacher and asking how I'd discovered the band, so now I had company to talk to until the music began.

Fado is not loud music so it's nice to be close to hear the sad songs of longing for the Portuguese men who go off to sea leaving their women behind.

I'd seen Fado Nasso several times so I knew how lovely Bernadette's voice is, and tonight in addition to an upright bass, she also had a mandolin player and guitarist backing her up.

From my perch in the back, I heard songs like "I Heard You Forgot Me," an ode to a guitar, a song about a woman who tells fortunes using sea shells (all fado revolves around Lisbon and the sea) and one song advising young men to hold on to a good woman if you can find her, probably good advice for men of all ages.

A song about a woman named Maria exemplifying Lisbon with the oil of tug boats and the seagulls of the oceanfront was particularly passionate.

"Things are about to get real," Bernadette warned us. Saying that fado music is sad music, she pointed out that so far they'd been doing songs that sounded somewhat happy even if the lyrics weren't. And how would we know anyway since she was singing in Portuguese?

The next set was full of the slow, mournful sounding fado that is more typical of the genre, like "Seagull,"  a song she introduced by saying, "If you're far from home and missing it, this one's for you."

She sang about the wee, small hours when you miss the one you love and she sang about the one that got away.

If it hadn't been for the trio gabbing non-stop near me, I could have been in a dark and intimate fado house in Lisbon, getting lost in sad songs.

On the other hand, I'm looking mighty happy these days, so sadness is more of an entertainment than part of who I am.

And maybe that's what I'd have written to my 15-year old self if I'd been asked to participate in that Art 180 show.

Dear Young Karen,

Remember to always be happy. Two indescribably sad things are going to happen to you as an adult, but you will find your way through both and come out surer of who you are and stronger for having made your way through them. Smiling and laughing are the best ways to remind yourself that you always have reasons to be happy, so practice both every day.

Love,
Karen the Elder

Saturday Night's Alright for Sipping

It was a night to call me a wine geek.

Dutch & Co. had posted a link to a New York Times article about Vin Jaune - yellow wine- made with the savignan grape and the vinous pride of the Jura region of France.

Like any self-respecting oenophile, I'd read the article and been thrilled at Dutch's status. "Beyond excited to pour this unique wine by the glass. Arbois Vin Jaune 2005."

One of the rarest of French wines with a taste influenced by the unusual production method being poured at a nearby restaurant?

I was so there.

Once hospitably greeted at the door, I took a seat at the bar and told one of the owners that I was on a Vin Jaune mission. She told me it was a polarizing wine, with some people "getting" it and others downright hating it.

She recommended it as a light, palate-cleansing wine but one she hadn't yet tried with food.

The NYT piece had made it clear that while it might not impress alone, it was killer with certain foods like Comte, for instance

Dutch & Co. had no Comte but did offer several worthy pairings, so I trusted them on this.

They are the pros, after all. Just ask the Washington Post.

Meanwhile, I spotted a favorite server who waved and blew me a kiss across the bar before coming over to say hello.

When I told her I was on a mission to experience vin jaune, she laughed and said, "You're so cute."

Am I? Or am I just a wine geek eager to learn while sipping?

The chef was recommending sweetbreads with the Arbois Vin Jaune 2005 and I took his word for it, savoring crispy fried sweetbreads over black bean puree with fall root vegetables to go with the sherry-like wine.

He nailed it, the flavors of the sweetbreads marrying beautifully with the vin jaune.

The bartender and I were busy talking to a couple at the end of the bar who lived in Powhatan. Seems she was interested in moving in to the city, setting off a discussion of neighborhoods, crime rates and walkability.

They even inquired about the apartment over Dutch & Co, which was happily taken and nothing like available. You can be sure I was singing the praises of my beloved Jackson Ward.

Back to my yellow wine fact-finding mission, I also ordered cotechino made with fall spices over celery slaw with persimmon ketchup, a terrific earthy sausage that stood up to the vin jaune and then some.

I heard the bartender offer a guy more Billy bread, their current substitute for SubRosa's bread, with which he was obviously unfamiliar because he began mocking him, saying, "Sure thing, I want more Biiiilllly bread," as if it were a joke.

With my elegant yet powerful vin jaune to sip on, he could have been tying cherry stems in a knot with his tongue for all I cared.

Give me an opportunity to taste something completely different with a couple of top-notch pairings and I don't care what the people around me do or say.

That said, on the way out, a sever complimented my tights, telling me how nice I always look, a lovely thing to hear.

My dear, one simply doesn't dress shabbily when experiencing yellow wine for the first time.

Especially when one has a date just afterwards.

Working on my Karma

I've found the best way to meet Church Hill people: go to Dutch & Co. on Monday night.

I took a seat at the bar and before long was asked to move down a stool to accommodate an incoming couple,

Doing so put me next to a Church Hill resident, business owner and eager conversationalist.

While I ordered a glass of the house red, Vina Temrana Garnacha, he was busy chowing down on a bunch of the $5 blackboard specials, also my favorite way to order.

Before long, he was telling me his thoughts on Boston (we agreed Cambridge is eminently bike-able), the U.S.'s economic woes (devalue currency before violence forces the issue) and karma (you can only skirt giving back for so long).

He told me his opinions on the three blackboard specials he'd had, even sharing his fromage fort with me.

The blend of cheeses, garlic, salt and pepper on toasted, thick-sliced sub Rosa bread was lovely and his unexpected generosity negated the need for me to order it.

Instead, I ordered beef heart stracetti (meaning thinly sliced) with bone marrow and apple slices on crostini.

Yum, tender beef heart with rich marrow and crisp apple was a delightful way to begin my evening.

While discussing how many hours are necessary to master an instrument (he said he'd done 1500 of the 10,000 required for guitar), he highly recommended the abalone mushroom with persimmon, walnut and mushroom vinaigrette as "delicious and nutritious."

As if to prove his point, he ordered it a second time, intending to take this one home with him as a snack while he practiced guitar.

It was a unique preparation and since I'd never had the distinctive abalone mushroom, a chance to try something new.

He left with his abalone while I was still eating mine, but I soon found the stools around me taken by new Church Hill residents on both sides.

Over another glass of garnacha, I chatted with the low-key man on my right (also a Bistro 27 fan) and the chatty duo on my left (brunch hounds who wish Dutch & Co, would stay open later at night), all of whom wanted to know why a Jackson Ward resident had climbed the hill on a Monday night.

It's not that far, people, and any restaurant with great food open on a Monday night is a worthy destination as far as I'm concerned.

The guy to my left ordered the skirt steak with pork belly and shared his favorite brunch spots (Magpie, Black Sheep and Lunch).

His friend spoke of inefficient cab companies, texting versus e-mail and how reliable Bamboo Cafe is while her phone charged at the bar's outlet.

When they cleared out, I got my final companions of the evening, a local mixologist and his companion.

They'd already been to Magpie for small plates and a firkin, but wanted a "perfect egg" to finish out the night.

They accompanied it with rye old fashioneds, rillettes and beef heart minus the apple, due to a fresh fruit allergy.

That topic led me to confide my stone fruit allergy and suddenly, I had a brother-in-arms.

Only another person with the same allergy can truly understand the pain of not being able to enjoy fresh peaches.

At one point, a customer came up and asked of the bartender, "Is it always this crowded on a Monday night?"

She assured him that Mondays vary, but since it was my second Monday, I feel qualified to say, yes, given the dearth of Richmond restaurants open on Mondays, of course it's busy.

But a smart Jackson Ward resident will arrive early enough to grab a stool before all the neighborhood regulars show up.

That way, she's assured of non-stop conversation and some excellent Monday night eats.

The way I heard it, I may as well spend my currency before it get devalued.

Heart, Loin and Ice

To the far reaches I went tonight.

1708 was opening Jessica Segall's show, "A Thirsty Person," which spanned two journeys and had a fair crowd when we got there.

Segall had done residencies in the Arctic and Mongolia and the exhibit spoke to both, while she provided the anecdotes during her talk.

She'd traveled to Mongolia for a self-directed residency, expecting to find a third world sensibility.

"Everybody had solar panels, so they all had cell phones and TVs," she admitted with surprise. "The new thing is they herd sheep with motorcycles because it's more fun than on a horse."

"Cultures change quickly," she said, explaining the importance of documenting them.

So much for jokes about outer Mongolia.

The very abstract black and beige pieces used the varied patterns of solar panels as elements.

Further back, the work sprung from her Arctic adventure with old refrigerators sitting around, opened and lit, some on their sides and others upside down.

The centerpiece was a copper screen chilled by a freezer coil and showing a video of Segall in an elaborate solar-insulated costume she'd designed and worn for the shoot.

With the coil constantly cooling, the screen was slowly being covered by ice.

Segall told us we could touch it, but not to scratch our names in it.

The image on the screen was particularly lyrical because of the frosty layer forming over the image  of the colorful Goya-inspired costume being broken up by areas of luminous copper.

It had a vintage photograph look - an exotic-looking woman on an icy landscape.

Near the front of the gallery was a photograph of her in the costume on top of the global seed vault (yes, there is one), with nothing but ice all around.

For me, I try to fathom so cold a place when I have cold hands inside my gloves on this merely 37 degree night.

The art lover and I went our separate ways as I headed up the hill to the far reaches of Church Hill to meet a buddy at Dutch & Co.

It was prime time, so I walked into a bustling bar under low, gas light and never even saw my friend, buried in the back at a table.

As it turned out, the benefits were its proximity to the Sub Rosa bread and the loo.

I joined the Cotes du Rhone lover in a glass of 2010 Ferraton et Fils, full of ripe fruit and blood-thickening warmth.

Winter is wearing out its welcome for this thin-blooded Irish type.

Best of all, he was already knee-deep in conversation with the two-top next door, who also happened to be the owners of Anderson's Neck Oyster Company, the ones served there.

How conveniently social for us.

Just last summer, I'd done a big piece on local oysters for a Northern Neck magazine and had talked to all kinds of oyster-raising folk, from the Rappahannock River Oyster Company cousins to a grandfather/granddaughter duo who began doing it to share a hobby and benefit the river.

This lovely couple was still doing it for philanthropic purposes, not yet having actually earned a profit on their endeavor but already increasing from 50,000 to 8 million seed oysters.

Since I'd had their oysters the first time I'd been in D & C, I felt comfortable telling them how much I'd enjoyed them.

My friend and I went even further, ordering a couple of plates of them off the $5 chalkboard menu.

Glasses of the Whitehall Lane viognier accompanied it and our server, affirmed it all, saying, "That is the way to start a meal."

Over bivalves, we talked news since he is the only other human I know besides my parents and me who still gets the Washington Post delivered to him everyday.

It is a unique bond.

So when I ask if he's read a certain article, he will begin with, "Front page of Style, left hand corner?" and I will confirm the location of the piece before we discuss its contents.

This is a singular pleasure to a newspaper nerd.

I was telling him about the 1708 opening I'd just seen when our server came up and joined in, saying she liked 1708 for how "out there" they were willing to go in showing art.

That's my kind of server.

When it came time to order, he wavered between the monkfish and skirt steak, eventually choosing the latter.

That worked out well for me because it came with a smoked pork belly, celery root, persimmon, brussels sprouts and ginger herb sauce that he was too full to eat.

As far as I was concerned, one entree seemed boring when I could get three small plates off tonight's $5 menu.

Cured venison loin and celery root were sliced paper thin and dotted with a rich, sweet  blueberry beet sauce.

Venison merquez meatballs came atop cashew and pickled grape anchoiade for a satisfying contrast in flavors.

Corned beef heart was a thing of beauty with pickled mustard seed and peppery arugula.

When our server came to ask how we liked our food, I couldn't help but state the obvious.

Chef Caleb's a master with meat.

She laughed at my terminology but acknowledged that I was exactly right.

Shoot, the heart and loin told me everything I needed to know.

Since it was my friend's first time there, he scoped out the room, pondering the authenticity of the pressed tin ceiling, noting the wine shelving and the bar's materials.

I still maintain that the place looks lifted from Edward Hopper's painting, "Nighthawks," a reassuringly lit presence on Marshall Street.

He finds the interior too dim, making menu-reading challenging for him.

What a drag it is getting old.

As we finished up, the place was emptying out, not surprising given their 10:00 closing hour.

It would not be a meal out for this friend and me without dessert, so we agreed upon the chocolate chicory toffee cake with chunks of walnut nougat, decorative lines of orange "taffy," chocolate ganache and a mint sauce.

I found the mint sauce to be maybe one component too many, but the nougat was like something I made with my grandmother as a child, a unique touch.

And while taffy was a misnomer, the orange flavor complemented the chocolate even without the chew factor.

By then, we were among the very few, so we gathered up our necessaries and headed out into the not-so far reaches of the city.

That was some good eating.

Take It Easy

So, Holmes says and the night is on.

I am curious about Dutch and Co. and he and his beloved agree to go along for the ride.

I'd tempted Holmes and Co. out to Church Hill to check out the handiwork of Aziza's former chef, whose food I'd introduced them to almost three years ago, here.

We arrive to find three bar stools empty, although they are not three adjacent bar stools.

The hostess makes an adjustment and we are seated together, not surprisingly near someone Holmes knows..

Initial impression: it looks surprisingly like the Roosevelt, right down to the ceiling and chandelier.

My small group requests  Brandbourg Pinot Noir, all the more enthusiastically when we hear that its limited distribution means Dutch & Co. is one of the few local places offering it.

Who doesn't like to be exclusive? Some of us are so easily led.

SubRosa Bakery (mere blocks away) bread arrives in a napkin charmingly closed with a clothes pin stamped D & Co.

Second impression: the vibe is low-key and there is no need to be cool here.

Like we could if we tried.

Even Holmes had to admit that the vibe was terribly comfortable, demanding nothing more than admiring the tin ceiling, slurping the Pinot Noir and savoring every bite that came from the kitchen.

I couldn't resist beginning with what the kitchen called porridge.

Please, sir, more.

It was a savory/sweet concoction that involved malted barley, smoked maitake mushrooms, roasted pear, kale and almond cream.

The mushrooms are so earthy as to be like chewing dirt, a much tastier thing than it probably sounds.

As someone who eats oatmeal every day, let me just say that this porridge was the exact opposite of oatmeal.

Predominantly savory, the dish had occasional flashes of sweetness with the pear and almond cream, but mostly stuck to the savory side. Every bite delivered savory where I expected sweet, an exquisite play on my taste buds.

It didn't taste like anything else in Richmond.

Both my companions had the perfect egg (a former Aziza staple and aptly named) with cured salmon, herbs, sprouted quinoa, braised cabbage and cumin yogurt.

As Holmes pointed out, it sounds like a lot, but once you break it down, it's mighty satisfying, especially that buttery salmon.

Tonight's special was three Anderson's Neck oysters for five bones, so Holmes generously ordered oysters for everyone.

It's been a good week for tasting brine, that's all I'm saying.

After another bottle, I ordered the pork and winter squash rillette with honey-roasted nuts, pig skin cornbread, cabbage and cumin yogurt.

Creamy rillette and hot and dense cornbread were a match made in heaven.

Meanwhile, the hanger steak and smoked pork belly with celery root, persimmon, bitter greens and ginger herb sauce impressed Homes and the missus no end.

"I thought those were carrots," Holmes said of the brightly-colored persimmons.

At one point, Holmes turned to me and had to admit, "I like the relaxed vibe here. They didn't spend a million dollars redecorating and it's comfortable."

True that and the food was just as impressive as when I'd first taken them to Aziza.

For our next course, we looked at the dessert menu, deciding on the honey pot and the chocolate.

The winter's honey pot was made of warm milk, honey, pound cake, lavender ice cream, assorted citrus and candied nuts.

Holmes' beloved had spotted it before she'd even decided on dinner; it was that appealing and unique.

It arrived in a little ceramic honeypot decorated with bees. When the guy next to us ordered it, his came in a straw-colored honeypot sans bees.

I forsook the caramel waffle (for which our server gave us hell) for the chicory chocolate toffee cake with orange ginger Chantilly, candied fennel and olive oil anglaise.

By the time we finished, most of the room had cleared out and we had little desire to be the "campers" of the room.

Abandoning Church Hill, we headed back downtown for a nightcap.

By default, Tarrant's won out, offering one last glass and a couple of sassy barkeeps.

A bottle of Prosecco greased the wheels for a discussion of the 130 herbs in Green Chartreuse, reminding me of covering that topic recently with another bartender.

This one suggested we add the Green Chartreuse to our bubbly, an unlikely but totally doable combination.'

"Green Chartreuse is like Lalique glass," my comrade-in-art-history observed.

Well put, my friend, even if no one else besides me knows what you mean.

We sipped the 130 herbs in a very un-monk-like fashion, but quite appreciative of the unusual flavors.

It was almost as satisfying as finding a relaxed vibe in a trendy, new Church Hill eatery.

Fact was, I owed them one after our last meal out a few weeks ago where I'd chosen a dud and we'd all paid the price.

You ebb and you flow, my friends. It's all an experience, right?