The second installment in our series exploring the many restaurants to call a space home; this article has been edited since it first appeared in print.
Images courtesy City of Richmond
2051-2053 W. Broad St.
Present: The Boiling Crab, opened 2020
Previously: Moriconi’s (1912-68, 1972-75), The Bearded Brothers (1969-70), Fifth Avenue (1978-82), Benjamin’s (1983-94), Vitello’s (1994-97), Cabo’s (1998-08), The Republic (2009-13), The Pig & Pearl (2013-17), and The Cornerstone Cigar Bar & Restaurant (2017-20)
Restaurants and bars occupy a third space between home and work; they are a social fulcrum. People gather there, connect with each other and build memories. This building at the corner of West Broad and Allison streets is one of Richmond’s storied spaces.
Around 1912, the Moriconi family began to operate a namesake confectionery at what is now 2051 W. Broad St. A restaurant followed in 1936; the Richmond Times-Dispatch described its offerings as “delectable seafood and Italian spaghetti,” and “anything in the wine line, from the finest grades of Champagne to the best of imported and domestic vintages.”
Italian immigrants Louis and Tranquilla Moriconi lived in the apartment above the business during the 1920s and ’30s. The corner spot was in a busy industrial block, with the L.H. Jenkins Bookbindery across the street and Sauer’s spices and other factories nearby. By 1955, future restaurateur Howard Awad is listed in the city directory as manager of Moriconi’s.
During the late 1960s, Awad and sibling Fred reintroduced the building as The Bearded Brothers. Cultural chronicler Terry Rea describes the place’s evolution into “a Fan dive.” During the day the clientele was blue collar, by night, students and hangers out, which resulted in cultural clashes.
“This was part of the problem that closed the place,” Rea recently recalled.
Awad left — he’d go on to start the notorious Grace Street bar Hababa’s and the often-moving but well-remembered Vitello’s. Rea stepped in as bartender and manager, as something of an adventure.
“Fred and I dreamt up the idea of turning it into a nightclub,” Rea says.
Soon the front windows were filled with Day-Glo portraits, and for a brief time, Rea decorated dancers with psychedelic paint. He cites The Bearded Brothers as one of first places in the Fan that featured live music — and topless entertainment. At one point, he designed an ad asking for go-go dancers, and two were hired, but on the night of the show none arrived.
“With the crowd clamoring for the promoted dancing aspect of the show to get underway,” Rea wrote in a 2019 memoir, “a woman with a sculpted hairdo, wearing shades (at night), waved to get my attention.” Turned out, she’d recently alighted from a Greyhound bus and seen the advertisement in a discarded newspaper. She claimed to have danced in Baltimore and showed up with a sequined costume.
“That night’s experience gave me new faith in the power of advertising,” Rea muses.
Bruce Springsteen stopped by The Bearded Brothers a few times after hours to drink a cold one, strum tunes and play the miniature Skee-Ball machine, but even the Boss wasn’t enough to keep The Bearded Brothers in business. The short-lived concept shuttered in 1970. The Moriconis eventually resumed ownership of the building before a fire around 1975 would render it vacant for a few years.
After, the space welcomed energetic restaurateur Chris Gibbs, whose resume included nightlife concepts; Gatsby’s in Shockoe Slip, boothed, mirrored and ferned; and the jazz-oriented 1302. Gibbs, wrote a critic, “puts on a show better than any Benihana chef.” He also prepared the namesake meal eaten in the 1981 film “My Dinner With André,” lensed in the then-dormant Jefferson Hotel posing as a fancy New York restaurant.
On Broad Street, Gibbs introduced Fifth Avenue, the name alluding to posh New York dining. A doorman in top hat and tails greeted patrons, and the mahogany walls were illuminated by sconces from the old Plaza Hotel. Times-Dispatch critic Nita Jones praised the prime rib and lamb chops and said, “Waiters and waitresses, in a constantly changing kaleidoscope of former black-and-white motion, refill glasses, change ashtrays and plates, and recommend wines from $5.75 to $100 a bottle.”
It was like Paris.
—Rebecca Elizabeth Jones on working at Benjamin’s
Gibbs eventually went on to other venues, including well-liked restaurants Winston Churchill’s at 17th Street in Shockoe and The Mirror on the southeast corner of Harrison and Broad streets.
Enter Gary Fielden Edwards, who was no stranger to the block. In 1977, he and partners opened the city’s first after-hours club, Fielden’s, located right down the street. The former University of Richmond football player and Vietnam War veteran flipped Fifth Avenue into Richmond’s premier jazz club, Benjamin’s.
Writer Rebecca Elizabeth Jones, now with the publications department of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, waited tables at Benjamin’s and was at first leery of the jazz club repute, but came to love the environment. “It was like Paris,” she says.
Benjamin’s was divided into a dining room and a smoky, dim performance space. For a decade, it hosted renowned players such as guitarists Herb Ellis, Barney Kessel, Virginian Charlie Byrd and the Mississippi Delta blues/jazz singer Mose Allison, along with homegrown talent.
Although Benjamin’s jazz stopped in 1994, a familiar name returned. Howard Awad, now a tuxedo-wearing chef, moved his peripatetic Vitello’s from Harrison and Broad to this corner, and music continued. He doubled the seating capacity, installed a copper-hooded cooking bar onto the Allison Street side and added the Vitello’s-style New York strip, veal and frog legs on the dinner-only menu. After a few years, Vitello’s moved yet again.
Next came Bill and Amy Cabaniss, who in 1998 transplanted their successful Cabo’s restaurant from Main and Meadow streets. They continued the supper-club tradition of the space’s predecessors with live music and excellent fare. The separate formal dining room was smoke free, while the livelier entertainment side maintained its cloudy atmosphere. The regional performers who appeared there included Janet Martin, Terry Garland, Steve Bassett, Roger Carroll, and Li’l Ronnie and The Grand Dukes. Cabo’s ran for a decade, during which the Cabanisses also opened Julep’s New Southern Cuisine.
In 2009, The Republic moved in with flags of many nations flying, and two stoic stone lions out front as a nod to partner and chef Rick Lyons, who planned a rotating menu of global dishes. Developer Justin French owned the building with business partner Mathew Appleget. The space underwent a makeover using, as French proudly demonstrated, reused wood and solar power.
The Republic continued the divide between the smoking section, with new exhaust fans, and the smoke-free bar, now festooned with televisions. The place bustled, and from a tiny stage, the yacht rock band Three Sheets to the Wind packed in audiences.
But it all ended in operatic fashion in 2013 due to French’s failing fortunes, including legal problems, back taxes and bankruptcy. Appleget ordered the eviction of the restaurant when it was unable to pay rent.
Following were further legal tangles, construction of the Pulse bus line and the debut of the also short-lived venture The Pig & Pearl. After, The Cornerstone Cigar Bar & Restaurant entered the space, bringing seafood, burgers and DJ nights.
In 2020, franchise ownership came to the corner when West Coast-based The Boiling Crab, with dozens of other outposts across the country and around the world, purchased the building for $2 million, according to Richmond BizSense.
At this writing, there’ve been no sightings of psychedelic painted go-go dancers.
