Edo's Squid - Richmond, VA

Road trip time. It was my man-love’s birthday, his favorite band was playing in Richmond and he has had this insatiable appetite for Italian lately. I put out some feelers and decided to give Edo's Squid a try. Pretty crazy name right? There is not a website to be found, not even a Facebook page. I was able to check out reviews on Yelp and Urban Spoon, as well as a few blog posts from other food fans.

The obvious resistance to technology should have been the first clue to how “old school” this joint is. It is a few blocks away from VCU (known for its art students). Walking the streets were the hipsters trying to do their best to “be different” all the while looking like the trendy clones of one another. (Dude I’m getting old.) Same goes for our feather adorned waitress, but she was super helpful in navigating us through the Italian wine list and leading us to pick a bottle from Secco-Bertam. When I say Italian wine list – they weren’t just Italian wines, it was written in Italian – “yo no comprendo!” But the wine was great. Not too dry with great spices.

A friend suggested the fried oysters and arugula salad so we ordered one of each to split. The oysters were the best fried oysters I’ve ever had. They were surrounded with a thick, flavorful breading that physically just looked prettier than your standard run-of-the-mill fried dish.

For my entrée I went with the Italian sausage with white beans and polenta cake. Having attempted to make my own polenta cake a few months back to disastrous results I wanted to check out how it should really be done. It was a great hue of yellow, firm and delicious but I couldn’t even tackle it as it was so big and completely made to look like the ugly step sister after tasting the AMAZING Italian beans. Those suckers were legit. I had an overwhelming portion of sausage that had to be made in house. Mmm so spicy good. I had SO much left over that I served it with breakfast the following morning.

Specials are written on a flip tablet hung on the wall, which is what I ordered from. The printed menu was basically - pick your pasta, penne or spaghetti, and how you’d like that pasta dressed. Here again, huge portions.

The Public House

The Norfolk Twitter-sphere was abuzz with activity regarding the opening of Public House. So when I talked about meeting two friends who work in Norfolk for lunch I suggested we try the joint out.

When I first walked in the aroma reminded me of the old college bar I used to hang out in. Not a good sign. That smell reminded me of floor drenched in cheap beer and sub-par bar clean up. It is also very dark. Not too big of a deal, but still – dark.

I had to giggle at our waiter who was an awkward dude. Kind of like it was his first day on the job and had no idea what to say when approaching a table. Come on man. It may very well be your first day but I know you’ve been out to eat a time or two.

My BFF and I decided to split the Spinach and Shrimp salad and the Blue Collar Mac and Cheese. The salad included spinach (duh) with white wine and orange-poached jumbo shrimp, pickled asparagus, roasted tomatoes, white corn and red peppers served with an avocado and cucumber dressing. I was pretty disappointed to find only four, small shrimp on the $13 salad and I didn’t taste any of the flavors of the wine or orange.

The Blue Collar mac and cheese had cheddar and organic mozzarella topped with panko bread crumbs. It was a pretty tasty dish with a nice bite of pepper throughout.However, it too had a pretty hefty $9 price tag on this crock of elbows.

This girl works hard for her money and while I normally don’t pay attention to price tags when it comes to food I did on this occasion. The price points are too high for the food that is being served. For example, the burger is eleven bucks. Do you want fries with that? Add three dollars more. That’s a fourteen dollar burger.

Any who. I came, I saw, I ate – I wasn’t dazzled. Just happy to know that there is still, (well) Still and Bardo.

Have a Coke and a Smile (and a piece of cake)!

Yee Haw! I’ve got a little country in me. My mom is probably one of my favorite cooks specializing in southern cuisine. Her fried chicken is the best I’ve ever had. Last night she hosted a dinner for a few Virgo birthdays and made fried spot. A lot of people wouldn’t waste their time on that fish but it is one of my favorites. Especially when I get to eat the tasty fried tails that no one bothers to eat because they think it is nasty. My dad got me hooked on those as a kid telling me it tasted like a potato chip. Way better, but you don’t have to trust me, just pass your unwanted tail to me.

In the spirit of southern goodness I baked a Coca-Cola Cake this weekend to take to a friend’s house as a group of them were “carb-loading” for the marathon. I’ve made this a few times. It is a simple chocolate cake with a delicious gooey chocolate icing. Make sure to not make the icing ahead of time, you will want it warm to pour over the cake shortly after baking.

Coca-Cola Cake from Southern Living

Ingredients:

1 cup Coca-Cola

½ cup buttermilk

1 cup butter, softened

1 ¾ cups sugar

2 eggs, lightly beaten

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

¼ cup cocoa

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 ½ cups miniature marshmallows

Combine Coke and buttermilk and set aside. Beat butter at a low speed until creamy. Gradually add sugar until blended. Add egg and vanilla and beat at a low speed till blended. Combine flour, cocoa and soda. Add to butter mixture; begin and end with flour mixture. Beat at low speed until blended. Stir in marshmallows. Pour batter into a greased and floured 13 x 9 inch pan and bake at 350 for 35 minutes. Remove from oven and cool 10 minutes. While cake is cooling prepare frosting.

Coca-Cola Frosting

Ingredients:

½ cup butter

1/3 cup Coca-Cola

3 tablespoons cocoa

1 16 ounce package powdered sugar

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Bring first three ingredients to a boil in a large saucepan over medium heat, stirring until butter melts. Remove from heat; whisk in sugar and vanilla. Pour frosting over warm cake; garnish with ¾ cup chopped pecans.

A little blog/blogger fact:

This is the second time Coke has made an appearance on my blog even though I think soda is liquid satin. In the pop war my preference is a fountain Pepsi - as a brand though, Coke is it.

Salacia. You Need to Get Your Stuff Together.

Oh Salacia, where do I begin?

This is supposed to be about food, and I will get there, but I first must address your ultimate marketing FAIL. You see I am in marketing, and I know when you are going to run a promotion you better have your sh*t together. You Salacia, did not – and because of that you’ve really pissed me off.

See me loving people who use social media for marketing.

Early in the week I saw a post on the SkyBar Facebook page. For those who are not familiar, Salacia, Catch 31 and SkyBar are all establishments in the Hilton at 31^st Street in Virginia Beach. The post announced that if you dined at Catch 31 or Salacia this week they would give you a free passport pin to the American Music Festival. So I thought “awesome!” I love the American Music Festival, I planned to purchase a passport pin ($35 pass to see all the music acts at the 5^th Street stage over Labor Day weekend), and I planned to eat at Salacia since it is on the top ten Hampton Roads restaurants.

After spending a couple hundred bucks on food and wine we were told that they RAN OUT of passport pins. WHAT? When I posted my comment of FB about what a great offer it was, how come they didn’t comment back that they had run out? I mean it was the SAME DAY as my reservation. Get it together people. The manager attempted to make good with the offer for tickets to see the band at the adjacent park that evening. That show was already in progress and due to the number of Q-tips I had the displeasure of creeping behind like they’ve never been a parking garage, I’m thinking the show wasn’t meant for my demographic. I WANT MY DANG PASSPORT PINS! At this point it is principle. You advertised a promotion and you completely failed. That is a big no-no, it’s called false advertising.

Now that I’ve covered that, let’s get to the food.

I love establishments that allow you to make reservations online. Salacia participates in OpenTable and I was easily able to secure my time early afternoon when I’m sure the restaurant wasn’t even open. Having been in Catch a few times I was familiar with where Salacia was, however – it was still a bit confusing which hostess stand to visit and we ended up walking straight into the dining room without passing go or collecting $200 (or our passport pins). You also have to walk past the kitchen to get there - how fine dining is that? The dining room is small and cold. Not just in temperature, but just not a warm, friendly space.

We started with splitting a Salacia Caesar salad. I loved the crisp, triangle Parmesan cracker that adorned the top of the salad. For my entrée I went with the waiter’s suggestion of the Surf And Turf. I was contemplating the salmon but didn’t want to make the mistake of ordering seafood at a steak house. I enjoyed the six ounce filet, and eight ounce Maine Lobster tail. However, having been to Byrd and Baldwin, if I want a great steak I’m going to head to Norfolk rather than back to Salacia.

 

The best part of the meal was the bottle of wine and dessert. We really enjoyed Valle Perdido Malbec2006 from Argentina. It was super clean and smooth. The strawberry tart was equally delicious.

The service was good but I think I was expecting more with an AAA Four-Diamond designation. I checked out exactly what that means and I wasn’t off base with my expectations since it states, “The equally proficient service staff demonstrates a strong desire to meet or exceed guest expectations.” Did I mention the passport pin fail?

So I can cross this one off of the list. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t disappointed with the food. It was good, but it wasn’t exceptional or creative. I just wasn’t dazzled like I’ve been at other top ten establishments.

Don’t believe me? Check out their own website pulling reviews from OpenTable. The first two aren’t exactly “glowing.” 

Salacia, here's a free piece of marketing advice. Get a new social media employee. Whomever it is is failing your brand. There are several unanswered questions of the SkyBar page. The point of social media is to connect and respond. Social media = fail.

*Update* After posting the above and pushing it out via Twitter and Facebook, Gold Key PHR, which is the management company for the Hilton, sent me a make good message. We got our pins, yay!