Buttering My Bridges

Usually, you need to go to a low rent restaurant to see color pictures of the food before ordering.

Tonight's menu was nothing like that.

Oxford chef John Currence was bringing his new cookbook, "Big Bad Breakfast" to Southbound, who in turn were cooking nine of the book's recipes for guests. Having been to three of Currence's restaurants (including Big Bad Breakfast), it sounded like a hoot to me.

Only problem was no one warned me about the apparently-standard traffic issues going into Chesterfield County during rush hour, thereby proving that I almost never head out of the city into the suburbs around 6:00.

I'll never understand the attraction of dealing with that mess for the sake of mowing a lawn and sacrificing your soul, but that's just me.

Once inside Southbound, tonight's Currence mix (ELO, Clash, Guns 'n Roses, Fleetwood Mac) was deemed too short, so was in the process of being augmented when an editor came in and immediately began bemoaning the state of traffic to the Southside, a subject I'd just covered with the DJ and the chefs.

"Traffic is a thing here now," the bearded one said earnestly, explaining that he made a point to avoid it. Really, a thing, a real thing here? That's just proof of how buried a woman can keep herself by not making that trip but once in a blue moon.

I glanced at the menu with its three sections with three offerings in each, but with a brand new copy of "Big Bad Breakfast" in front of me, it seemed to make sense to absorb some of the gospel according to John Currence before ordering.

In case you don't have a copy of the book, allow me to summarize the Chef's philosophy: Breakfast should be revered, respected and adored.

Which is why he opened a restaurant devoted to breakfast and why he firmly believes breakfast food deserves the full dinner treatment. Hell, he believes even all the components for breakfast should be homemade like Grandma did.

But if I had to pick one of his 10 commandments of breakfast as the tipping point for why I've crossed state lines to eat this man's food, here it is:

4. Thou shalt slather with butter. It will not kill you (consumed in quantities within reason, that is)...No fat tastes better on toast with jelly or when cooking eggs (bacon fat included).

As someone who was recently cited for the massive amounts of butter I can consume effortlessly, these simple lines speak to my inner butterball.

Ergo, it's why I'd driven through traffic roughly equivalent to the beer lines at a summer festival to eat breakfast for dinner and score his new cookbook.

I know, I know, you're wondering why I'd need a cookbook and I don't. Fortunately, this one is also a great read since every recipe is preceded by an essay combining culinary history, personal anecdote, obscure food facts and dish inspiration stories sprinkled with a healthy dose of sarcasm, profanity and attitude.

You don't need to cook to enjoy this cookbook.

Let's just say I felt no shame in cracking my book at the bar and starting to read about the most important meal of the day as a prelude to ordering.

The reason for that was that everything on the menu was followed by a page number, so inquiring diners could look up the recipe to scope out the ingredients or see a photo before placing their order.

The essay on pork posole begins with, "Make this. That's all I really have to say" (before going on to say another 500 words) so I did, rewarded with a runny poached egg atop a bowl of spicy pork rib tips, fresh corn and hominy that spoke to needs I didn't even know I had.

Double oyster hangtown fry (introduced as a Gold Rush dish known for its pricey ingredients) scored as much for its crispy fried oysters as for the scrambled eggs with bacon and thinly-sliced slices of serrano chilis mounded in the center of the ring of oysters.

My final course, sausage cinnamon rolls, was also the first recipe in the book, which says a fair amount about its place in the chef's recipe pantheon, but also about our shared addiction to the siren song of sweet and salty.

The yeast rolls' filling of brown sugar, sausage, butter and cinnamon was as integral to their perfection as the cream cheese and butter frosting they were lavishly frosted with. Even as I felt my arteries hardening, I used my very last bite to wipe up every last dab of icing from the plate's crevices.

It's probably safe to say that I had not consumed butter in quantities within reason tonight, and for that I make no apologies.

In fact, if I were the one writing a footnote under the 4th commandment about the power and memory-making ability of butter, I'd share that I can still recall with absolute clarity a childhood episode involving me on a backyard swing having my first slice of toast thickly spread with butter and  topped with a layer of jam.

The sky is blue, the swing is moving only slightly, and there is nothing in my life so far that has been quite as overwhelmingly wonderful as the layers of that toast.

Just another five year old who knew instinctively that no fat tastes better on toast with jam.

Try it. That's all I really have to say.

Aglow and Affectionate

Once in a blue moon, that's how often I have two reasons to go to southside in one evening.

The first was my annual Christmas celebration with Moira, who lives on that side of the river but works on this side, so we always meet in the city. Not so tonight when our destination was Southbound.

Let the record show, I've been a fan of Chef Lee Gregory's cooking for a very long time. Waaaay before the Roosevelt. I was a regular back at Six Burner when he was the unsung hero there. During his stint in Charlottesville, I drove an hour to eat his food.

So of course I was going to cross the river to see what had been wrought in this enormous new place.

I got there just as they opened and was the sole occupant of the three-sided bar. Moira showed up before long craving a Christmas cocktail, but instead we toasted another year of friendship with glasses of a Macabeo blend Cava (from a  list that included only two Virginia wines) and followed with recent tales from our lives. She was bowled over with the Christmas spirit of my flower savior, here. Hell of a guy.

As we tucked into a charcuterie and cheese plate of Mortadella, salami, chicken liver mousse, cheddar and brie (mortadella and onion jam were decided highlights), we watched in amazement as a steady stream of humanity began to fill up the place.

Given the early hour,many in the crowd were older but there were families, too. A mother and elementary-age son sat side by side at the bar. Moira ran into the man who built her new porch and I was surprised to run into the woman I lived next door to for 13 years on Floyd Avenue.

By 6:15 every seat was taken. We were told that 200 people were served last night. Great balls of fire.

The bartender got major points when I gave Moira her gift, a copy of Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking," because she clutched her hands together in rhapsody at the sight of the book, Didion being a personal favorite she said. Who knew millennials read?

We moved on to the one-two punch of Thai chili wings followed by sticky and crunchy pickled chili smoked drumsticks, at which point Moira had a French 75, satisfying the cocktail craving she'd arrived with. I had a few sips of the heavenly gin and champagne cocktail before returning to bubbles.

That'll get a girl in trouble.

Around us, people were milling about awaiting a table or bar stool to empty, but since we'd been there first and it was our annual fete, we continued our conversation oblivious to them.

"I've had just enough alcohol to go home aglow and affectionate and make a few demands," she announced, giving me the best laugh of the night. We finally gave up our valuable bar real estate only because we had somewhere to be.

With no demands to make, my next stop was the Artisans Cafe at Stony Point Fashion Center, a place I avoid like the plague (truthfully, I avoid all malls).

Tonight was the monthly installment of the Noir Cinema series and NYC filmmaker Stefani Saintonge was showing her short film, "Seventh Grade." Two of her films were being premiered tonight in other cities, so it was a coup that she'd chosen the Richmond premiere to attend.

The brief film chronicled a middle-schooler named Patrice who still happily played with her Barbie and Ken dolls, albeit making the noises for them as they made out, while her best friend had moved on to real boys. Before long, the boy has told everyone in school what service she provided for him in the bathroom and everyone's making fun of her.

Patrice comes to her friend's aid by doing something that becomes the new hot topic and leaving her dolls and childhood behind.

Saintonge took the floor to discuss the film and take questions, saying she'd been trying to convey the culture that permeates the hell that is middle school.

One of the most interesting questions was directed at a member of the audience, a ninth grade boy. He was asked if the film was an accurate portrayal and if now kids used phones and social media to perpetuate the rumor mill at that age. "Yes, definitely," he said.

Reports of the early death of childhood circa 2015 are apparently not exaggerated. This must be a truly awful time to have to navigate the waters of budding adolescence.

The film has already garnered Saintonge a 2014 Essence Black Women in Hollywood Discovery Award and a trip to L.A. to meet film luminaries, no doubt in part because everyone can relate to the horrors of seventh grade.

What I remember about my own experience that year is how mortified I was when a brainy kid named Anthony told me I had food stuck in my braces as we were walking into the school building one morning.

Then, I'd wanted to die of embarrassment. Now, I understand what a favor he was doing me.

Maybe if it had been those killer drumsticks stuck in my braces, I wouldn't have cared anyway.