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Tanglewood Ordinary restaurant in Goochland County
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Tanglewood Ordinary is one of America’s largest commerical buildings constructed from logs.
A line of rail fences, open meadows, barns and a log building. 1819? Nope, 2019.
The Tanglewood Ordinary family restaurant defies time, sited along River Road (state Route 6) in Goochland County.
Even its name suggests an era long ago, when travelers could find a comforting repast and a bit of cheer along a country road. It is believed to be one of the largest commercial buildings constructed from logs in America, and it’s listed on both the Virginia and National Register of Historic Places.
Tanglewood, as described by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, “ranks as one of the best remaining examples of Rustic Style vernacular architecture in Virginia, a style that dates from the late 1800s in New York State in the Adirondack Mountains and spread in the early 1900s across the West.
“Tanglewood was clearly a part of this national and very American architectural movement,” the citation says.
The property opened about 1928-29 as a service station and sandwich bar. It was later enlarged to accommodate everything from wedding parties and high school reunions to weekend dances.
Today, Tanglewood Ordinary has evolved into what most early taverns and ordinaries always aspired to be: a comforting spot for locals and travelers looking for a sit-down meal and warm hospitality.
Owned by Anne and Jim Hardwick since 1986, Tanglewood also could be classified as a destination restaurant, one that’s well worth the drive.
You have to want to go there, though the development of modern highways, such as Route 288, and the replacement of dirt roads — which Route 6 once was — have made it easier to reach.
Tanglewood Ordinary owners Anne and Jim Hardwick
The Hardwicks conceived the idea for the restaurant, in which patrons pass around bowls and platters heaped with Southern comfort food — stewed tomatoes, mashed potatoes, special-recipe fried chicken — after a visit to The Homeplace Restaurant in Catawba, north of Roanoke.
Jim Hardwick, who holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in accounting from Virginia Tech, has done everything from teaching at Virginia Commonwealth University to being a player in commercial investment real estate, and he’s the one who thought starting a family-style restaurant would be a good idea.
Anne Hardwick, who was a pioneering female field photographer for WTVR and later retired from the Virginia Information Technologies Agency, had to be persuaded to open the restaurant, “dragging and kicking.”
The couple, who have been been married for 36 years, say that before they were a couple, they were just friends, and they spent a lot of time cooking together.
“We thought we were just spending time with each other as friends. But I think what we were actually doing is getting to know each other really well, based on cooking,” Anne says. “But if anyone had ever told me I was going to go into the hospitality business, I would have said, ‘No way.’ ”
Built in the late 1920s, Tanglewood Ordinary was originally a sandwich shop and service station. (Photo courtesy Anne Hardwick)
A Colorful History
Despite today’s comforting image as a welcoming tavern, Tanglewood Ordinary once had a wild side, too.
“Apparently, there have been two murders on the premises,” Jim Hardwick says, recalling stories that locals have told him over the years.
He’s had good reason to believe them.
“Once a man showed me his tongue — there was an obvious wound on the bottom,” Hardwick recalls.
“He said, ‘I got this in your parking lot. A guy stuck a screwdriver through my tongue.’ ”
A look of displeasure crosses Anne Hardwick’s face.
“Every time he’d come in here, he’d stick out his tongue and tell the story again. His daughter said it embarrassed her to death,” Anne says. “But this was one of those kick-up-your-heels kind of places. It had quite a reputation.”
One story she was told concerned a country music concert that went amok when drunk patrons attacked the band, later taking away the sheriff’s gun when he arrived to settle things down. State police had to be summoned.
Of course, there are more pleasant stories, too, about the tavern’s early days. For many years, it was the site of weekly dances, as well as Goochland High School’s senior prom.
Melinda Gammon, a local writer and historian, says her favorite story about Tanglewood involves William Tuck, Virginia’s governor from 1946 to 1950.
“Gov. Tuck would get his chauffeur to drive him out to Tanglewood, and he would get a cheese sandwich and drink his beer,” Gammon says. “There’s a little rail fence outside, and that’s where he would eat.”
She says she heard the story from a member of Goochland’s Barret family, who built the service station and later two additions, which created space for a dance hall and living quarters.
Gammon, whose parents frequented Tanglewood in the ’40s and ’50s, says that many local residents considered it a popular gathering spot for dancing and good times, while others shied away because of its reputation for sometimes attracting the wrong crowd.
“The truth is probably halfway between,” Gammon says. “Obviously, it wasn’t a place back then where you got dressed up and went. You kind of went to Tanglewood to do what kids say now is ’hang out’ and meet with your friends.”
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Meals at Tanglewood Ordinary are served family-style.
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Family Ties
In its application for the National Register of Historic Places, the site on which Tanglewood was built traces back to a larger tract known in the early 1800s as Kameschatka. The Barret family of Goochland entered the picture when William Nelson Barret married Ann Morriss, the daughter of Kameschatka’s owner.
In 1890, their son, Dr. Morriss Barret, married a Hungarian royal, Princess Helen Barbara Nestorowitch, according to the National Register application. And the couple’s son, Syme Barret, built Tanglewood for his sister, Helene Barret Quick. As the number of automobiles increased on rural roads, Tanglewood’s first incarnation as a service station and sandwich shop came into being.
For some Goochland residents, such as Grace and Steven Creasey, it’s become not only a restaurant but a second home of sorts. Steven, who is now in law enforcement, worked there when he was in high school, and Grace began her regular visits to Tanglewood in her preteen years.
“We moved to Goochland when I was 9 years old, and ever since, we would go every Sunday after church,” Grace recalls. “It was my father’s favorite restaurant. My grandparents lived in Columbia, South Carolina, and my father said that Jim’s fried chicken was the closest he could get to my grandmother’s fried chicken, if you can imagine how good that is.”
“It’s a unique experience. It’s not just the food, it’s the the building, our friendliness — it’s everything.” —Anne Hardwick
Today, the Creaseys take their 7-year-old daughter, Ellie, to Tanglewood, carrying on a long association with the tavern.
“Nobody sits down with all the different dishes on the table anymore, passing them around to each other. That’s what’s so special to me,” says Grace Creasey. “It’s sort of like stepping back where we used to be when we were growing up.”
Richmond resident Tim Timberlake, a music impresario who helps coordinate the Richmond Folk Festival and other music events in the region, says his family made Tanglewood a regular stop after church services.
He and his wife, Deveron, were regulars when their children were growing up. They lived in Rockville, and Timberlake was a morning host on radio station WRVA.
“We just enjoyed their hospitality and the quality of that great family-style food that they made out there,” Timberlake says. “The chicken and especially the stewed tomatoes were so amazing.”
Patrick Willis, executive chef at Lemaire, the restaurant at the luxury Jefferson Hotel, has other reasons to remember Tanglewood Ordinary. The 42-year-old chef and Goochland County native worked there part-time as a teenager, and the experience influenced his career path.
Washing dishes and peeling potatoes was his primary work as a 16-year-old at Tanglewood, but one day, he was pressed into service to make biscuits.
“I guess I sort of had the knack for it,” Willis recalls. “I ended up making some really nice biscuits, and the customers in the dining room noticed. I think it was Jim who asked me to come out into the dining room for a minute.”
He walked in and received a standing ovation from pleased customers. “I feel like that was a moment when I started to gain confidence as a cook, and I knew that I could actually do this for a living and feel some gratification,” Willis says.
For the Hardwicks, owning Tanglewood has been a whirlwind of building relationships with customers and employees who, in many instances, also became friends.
“There aren’t many places like this,” Anne Hardwick says.
She says new customers always begin the same way — by looking around, hearing about the history of the building, eyeing its original dance floor and admiring the hand-cut, hand-hewn logs and beams.
“It’s a unique experience,” she says. “It’s not just the food, it’s the the building, our friendliness — it’s everything.”
If You Go
Getting there: Tanglewood Ordinary is about a 20-minute drive west of Richmond. Take Patterson Avenue (state Route 6), which changes to River Road West a few miles into Goochland County.
Hours: 5 to 9 p.m. Thursday to Saturday and noon to 8 p.m. Sunday
Cost: Prices vary, according to age and whether you are with a group or dining privately. There’s no charge for diners age 3 and younger. Check with the restaurant for pricing. Reservations are encouraged. 804-556-3284 or ordinary.com.
