1 of 5
Hawaiian nachos
2 of 5
Lamb burger, with fennel, cucumber, feta and lemon-garlic aioli
3 of 5
Winterspice Painkiller
4 of 5
Little Nickel interior
5 of 5
Coconut creme pie
Why can’t I wait to go back to Little Nickel, the newest restaurant from hitmakers Johnny and Katrina Giavos?
It’s not the menu, which is literally all over the map.
It’s not the cooking, which at times drifts toward the sloppy.
It’s not the service, though nothing went wrong on any of my visits — no mishaps, no moments of neglect.
It most assuredly isn’t the long wait for a table, which left me standing outside in the cold for more than 20 minutes on one recent night.
And by the way, this was not a weekend night, it was a weekday night: a Monday night.
No, the reason I can’t wait to return, the reason I can’t stop thinking about the place, can be summed up in a text message I sent a good friend of mine the morning after she and another good friend and I had had our first meal there, the entirety of which was: PUNCH BOWL.
Throughout the day, and continuing on for the next several weeks — continuing, in fact, to this very day — we repeatedly and giddily invoke that (otherwise ordinary) meal. PUNCH BOWL has become a meme for us, shorthand for a kind of road trip of an experience — minus the road, minus even so much as leaving the table.
To say the words is to go back there instantly, to remember how we happily, giddily (and in time, almost instinctively) scooped our cups into the pinkish-orange mix of brandy, curacao, rum, chartreuse, white wine and lemon juice, as our voices rose, and our laughter became more raucous, and nearby tables turned to us for their entertainment.
There are, in this cocktail-crazed city, better, more delicious drinks, even better, more delicious rum-based drinks. But punch bowl stands in an over-the-top category of its own for its blithe and beautiful heedlessness.
Two weeks later, my friend and I returned at lunch to find the experience virtually unchanged since that first dinner.
But Little Nickel is the kind of place you can’t help but love, even with its flaws. I have to wonder, actually, if it has built those flaws into its design, in order to make its tug on you that much harder to explain, that much more baffling.
To look at its parts independently, it’s an old-school diner grafted onto a low-ceilinged bar, with forest-green banquettes, a garish floral print on the back wall, and pink flamingos by the bathroom.
Put it all together, however — and the sweet but strong drinks will definitely help you do that — and you have something daffily delightful.
Even the Asiatic music — debatable in context — sounds a little better after you’ve drained your Tiki glass of, say, Banana Overboard! (exclamation point theirs), with brandy and orgeat, or a Winterspice Painkiller, with two rums, plus fernet branca and coconut cream, or a Saturn (gin, passionfruit, falernum), or a Naval Base Baby (an unlikely blend of bourbon and tequila). In the warm, spreading haze that follows, it begins to seem as indispensable to the off-kilter retro vibe as the banquettes and flamingos. Truly, it’s only a matter of time before Tarantino’s location scouts come calling.
If the Giavoses specialize in anything, it’s mood, specifically, a mastery of the intangibles — lighting, ambiance, sound, the moment-by-moment feeling of being within these particular four walls. They have replicated this formula unformulaically — and brilliantly — across their portfolio of now 10 restaurants. Stella’s, the cozy, communal Greek taverna in the near West End, and perhaps the restaurant of theirs most beloved by Richmonders, is the ultimate expression of this mood-intensive vision, a restaurant that makes you feel so good to be there that you tend not to notice any menu missteps.
The Giavoses have said that their idea, this go-round in restaurant-deficient Forest Hill, was to serve up party food from vacation spots around the globe, from Hawaii, from Israel, from Brazil, from the Philippines, from Greece. It’s a fun idea, especially if you don’t get too demanding and just go with it. Drinking, as I may have mentioned, will help with that. Otherwise, you might focus on the fact that the ukoy, a Filipino fritter, is more squishy than crunchy. You might find yourself thinking that the griddled chickpea cake, a kind of socca, would have been good if it had actually been cooked through. You might wince at the crab (lump, but dry, and not terribly pristine) in the ceviche-like avocado crab cocktail. You might go picking through your crab spaghetti, festooned with roasted artichokes, fennel, lemon panko and chili flakes, and wonder when you’re going to get to the flavor. You might, after the initial excitement of the pu-pu platter, which arrives complete with low, smoldering flame, nitpick the low-on-flavor lumpia and the could-be-juicier chicken skewers.
On the other hand, the Hawaiian spin on nachos, with grilled pineapple, crisped bacon and a dousing of thinned white cheddar, only sounds like a mess. OK, it was a mess — the sort of dish you eat in spite of yourself, and blame later on the alcohol.
The best stuff tends to be the simplest, like the lamb burger, which Giavos has perfected elsewhere (a beautiful heap of juicy, charred meat, lemon-garlic aioli and feta) and reprised here. Or the lamb cheesesteak with its varietally incorrect queso blanco seeping between the pieces of meat and keeping every bite moist. Or — speaking of varietally incorrect but delightful — the octopus tostada, wherein the traditional role of beans and meat are played by a zesty hash of chopped octopus, chorizo and potato. And don’t leave without a slice of the coconut cream pie, which 3-Ds its headliner ingredient by setting its thick, creamy filling down into a marvelous coconut crust and blitzing the top with shavings of crunchy, toasted coconut.
We turned to it, the night of PUNCH BOWL, both because we craved it, and because we needed it — something rich and hearty to soak up all the alcohol and keep us from staggering into the night. We walked, though in truth it was more like dancing.
2 1/2 out of 5 stars
4702 Forest Hill Ave.
804-230-8743
Hours: Monday to Thursday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Prices: $9 to $16 (excluding market-rate fish)
