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Good Eats Cafe
Its relative remoteness is one of the features that makes the Northern Neck of Virginia such a desirable place for a second home—or a first one for those fortunate enough to not need a job. On the Neck, bounded by the Rappahannock and Potomac rivers and the Chesapeake Bay, the e-bustle of the new century is replaced by a slow-motion world where two-lane roads snake through lush woodlands to secluded waterfront vistas known collectively as "the rivah." As with any good deal, however, there is a trade-off, and one of them is the lack of first-rate restaurants. Oh sure, there are the restaurants at the Tides Inn, and a few other old standbys where locally caught seafood is consistently fresh and well prepared--my favorite in that category is the Crab Shack, with its fabulous water view just outside Kilmarnock, and a Hardee’s or a McDonald’s here and there. But until a Washington friend, the late Richard Paxson, who was a weekend resident of the Neck, told me about the Good Eats Café, I thought haute cuisine had pretty much left the area when Jimmy Sneed shuttered his Windows on Urbanna Creek (which technically was on the Middle Peninsula, looking across the Rappahannock toward the Neck) in the early 90s and reopened as the Frog and the Redneck in Richmond’s Shockhoe Bottom. So it was a delight to learn about the Good Eats Café, am ambitious undertaking by a married couple, both with big-city cooking credentials, who moved to the Neck eight years ago with the intention of raising children and operating a farm. After a few years of struggling, as Sally Rumsey put it, to "get by with a country income and a city mortgage," which they had left behind in Laurel, Maryland, it became apparent that she and her husband, Steve Anderson, needed to find a way to increase their income. So in August, 1996, out of necessity, Steve and Sally bought a former gas station, which previously housed a burger joint, and transformed it into the Good Eats Café. Located about 70 miles east of Richmond, the white frame building is an especially welcome sight to hungry daytrippers. Its biggest drawback is that it is not open for lunch. Although it would appear to be a natural drawing card on Saturdays and Sundays, Steve and Sally said experiments with lunch were not cost- or time-effective. The café seeks to balance the traditional tastes of the longtime Neck residents—crab cakes, catfish and prime rib—with the more adventurous palates of the "come heres" such as my friend Richard Paxson. The result is what in a more urbane setting might be called "rivah fusion" food. Although the menu is divided between "familiar eats" and "new favorites," there need be no disagreement on the care and quality of the food served. And it doesn’t take long to discover how good the food is, especially if you start with an appetizer called "baked oysters Nomini Hall" ($6.95). The dish is named for a local farm whose owner invited Steve and Sally over for a meal last Christmas at which he served a similar dish. Soon after that, "Nomini Hall" oysters, with a few touches added by Steve and Sally, appeared on the Good Eats menu, and immediately became a favorite of both old-timers and newcomers. The fresh Chesapeake oysters, purchased from the nearby Bevans Oyster Co., are baked in their liquor (liquid) and topped with bacon, finely chopped shallots and sweet red peppers, and simmered in a lime beurre blanc. Served in a casserole, it has the substance of a light oyster stew whose sauce you will want to sop up with the homemade bread sticks. Unfortunately, "Nomini Hall" oysters are not always on the menu, because many regular customers shy away from oysters in the summer, adopting a belief—not shared by Steve and Sally--that oysters should only be eaten in months that contain the letter "r." But they’ll it will be back in September. In the meantime, other "first eats" are excellent starters. They include a hot artichoke dip ($3.95), which also is served in a small casserole dish (our was scalding hot), garnished with parsley and radish slices, accompanied by toasted garlic rounds; cheese panatelas, so named because three cheeses are combined in cigar-shaped egg rolls and served with a spicy Cuban dip, created by Steve ($3.95); buffalo shrimp ($6.50), breaded shrimp tossed in a tangy sauce and served with blue cheese dressing, and deviled crab quesadilla, a flour tortilla with deviled crab and melted Jack cheese, dipped in Marie Rose, a French-inspired pink cocktail sauce. Most days there also will be a soup, by the cup or bowl, such as cream of roast asparagus with feta and mint, or carrot and orange ginger with scallops and turtle. In addition to nightly specials, there are eight entrees, divided equally between "familiar eats" and "new favorites." The former are bayou catfish, fried or broiled ($11.50); chicken and shrimp, served scampi style ($12.95); backfin crabcakes (market price), and blackened prime rib ($14.95). The "new favorites," each with a jazzy name, are "lemon heaven," which is linguine with shrimp, scallops, pine nuts and tarragon in a lemon cream sauce ($15.95); "blue velvet," chicken breast with a blue cheese and horseradish sauce, topped with roast peppers ($13.95); "porka vida loca"—a takeoff on the popular Ricky Martin tune—consisting of sliced pork loin with a portobello salsa ($13.50), and "jammin’ salmon," a filet of salmon topped with a crab and cilantro glaze ($14.95). Thursday nights are especially popular with the locals, about 50 of whom regularly consume Steve’s rare prime rib ($15.95), which features his own seasoning. All entrees come with breadsticks (seconds are $.50), a fresh vegetable, and a choice of potatoes or rice. When a kitchen’s ambition stretches as far as Good Eats does, it inevitably falls short on occasion, as it did on the most recent of two visits this spring. I ordered one of the specials, tuna, and asked that it be cooked medium rare, having had rare tuna too often arrive looking like tartare. But what I got at the Good Eats Café was closer to medium well. There were no signs of red, much less pink, and very little juice. It tasted fine, but more like swordfish than tuna. When I later started to mention this to Steve, he interrupted, saying "let me finish your sentence—the tuna was overcooked." He added that the night of our visit in May was "the worst weekend distaster we’ve had in three years." (My wife’s soft-shelled crabs also were a bit dry.) He has since taken steps to correct the problem, beginning by no longer grilling the tuna. He now pan sears the fish, which is the same way he fixes filet mignon. Just the fact that Steve admitted to a mistake (chefs and journalists are notorious for not wanting to acknowledge errors) made me determined to return. The accompaniments to both entrees were inventive and delicious. The tuna was topped with portobello mushrooms fixed in salsa, accompanied by rice and asparagus and decorated with a purple flower from a chive plant. The soft-shelled crabs were served with small, red potatoes topped with shreds of cheese and squares of red pepper. On our first visit, a month earlier, our entrees were cooked to perfection. My wife’s filet of salmon, called a "dilly filly," topped with a mustard and dill glaze and fried capers, was chunky and pearl white, while my ‘pork-o-bello," sliced pork loin topped with a portobello mushroom, grilled onion and brandy sauce, was lean and tender. The Good Eats Café is a child-friendly place, offering three meals for those 12 and under—chicken nuggets, cheeseburger and buttered noodles, all with fries—for a maximum of $3.50. Lighter fare also is available for adults. The list includes a Caesar salad with chicken, and four sandwiches with fries--a black Angus cheeseburger, crabcake, tuna steak and grilled chicken. The café, or house, salad is $1 with a meal ($2.50 a la carte) and two other salads are $2.50 with the meal or $3.50 stand alone—a Caesar salad and a salad soleil, which consists of mixed green with toasted almonds, seasonal fruit, feta cheese and an Oriental vinaigrette. The desserts are made in house, except for the popular "chocolate puddle," a baked white mousse cupcake with whipped cream (canned), which comes from a woman in nearby Calleo. The restaurant has a full liquor license. The wine list is short--three whites, three reds and a blush--all priced between $12 and $22 ($2.95 for a glass of the house wine, Corbett Canyon), but it is always supplemented by at least one special. The list includes a Chardonnay and a claret from the nearby Ingleside Plantation winery. On our last visit, we enjoyed an Indigo Hills Chardonnay from Napa, at $18. Steve and Sally met at a "Taste of the Nations" benefit in Washington 10 years ago when Steve was the chef at Tortilla Coast, a Tex-Mex restaurant on Capitol Hill, and Sally was—get this—cooking for the District’s homeless population. Sally, a native of upstate New York and a graduate of Johnson and Wales, the culinary college based in Providence, R. I., was living the culinary equivalent of Jekyll and Hyde. By day, as the training director for the D. C. Central Kitchen, a project of the Mitch Snyder’s Community for Creative Non-Violence. There she supervised the cooking of 2,000 meals a day, with leftover food gathered from some of Washington’s finest restaurants, which were distributed to shelters, halfway houses and street people. She also conducted eight-week courses in basic cooking skills so that homeless men and women could qualify for entry-level jobs in restaurants. "To keep sane," she explained, she worked nights as a personal chef for some of the city’s "very richest people." Steve, the child of a nomadic civilian employee of the army—Alaska and Japan were among his temporary residences--got his first restaurant job by walking into a New York City restaurant and posing as a cook. The owner quickly discovered that he had lied—he knew nothing about cooking—but they liked his enthusiasm and kept him on. Over the next 15 years, he did learn to cook, as a line cook and sous chef at such famous places as the Rainbow Room, the Palace Hotel and the Quilted Giraffe. Steve, who had been working as a consultant to supermarkets along the East Coast, moved to Washington in 1990. Shortly after they met, and he and Sally, who each have children by previous marriages, decided they wanted a less frantic lifestyle, began using their days off to search for a small farm, which had always been Steve’s dream. After a year and one-half of wandering around Maryland, West Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley, they saw an ad for a 40-acre farm on the Northern Neck. "We had never heard of the
Neck," Sally said, "but when we pulled off Route 301 onto
Route 3, we knew we were in a special area." When it became evident that her part-time
work and the farm receipts weren’t enough to pay the bills, they
looked around for a restaurant. A five-minute drive from the farm they
found the beige, frame building that is now the Good Eats Café. Steve
and Sally gutted the place, painted the interior a bright yellow-gold,
and in August, 1996, opened the Good Eats Café. Many of the fresh ingredients used in the restaurant, including all of the dressings, breads and seasonings, are grown on the farm, which has 900 blueberry bushes, several varieties of tomatoes and melons, an asparagus patch, an herb and flower garden and an apple orchard. This review originally appeared in 64 magazine in July, 2000. DiningPro has returned to the Good Eats several times since then, including for the Thursday night prime rib special, and was not disappointed. |
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