Acacia owners Aline and Dale Reitzer (Photo by Jay Paul)
Since opening Acacia in February 1998, husband-and-wife team Dale and Aline Reitzer have solidified their status as mentors in the dining community, acting as guiding lights for some of Richmond’s top restaurateurs. These culinary veterans have weathered industry changes, grown together and raised a family, yet they remain present in their establishment and have managed to come out on top.
The roots of the Richmond dining community’s family tree are firmly established in Acacia, with numerous chefs, owners and other professionals having branched off from the restaurant. Alumni include chefs such as Lee Gregory of Alewife and Southbound, Kevin Roberts of Perly’s, Andrew Manning of Longoven, and Paul Winston of Stoplight Gelato; restaurant owners Michelle Shriver of Dutch & Co. and Frayser and Melissa Micou of Pomona; co-owner and General Manager Dave Martin of Secco Wine Bar; head cider maker Andy Hannas of Potter’s Craft Cider; and Beverage Director Danny McDermott of Longoven, among others.
“To know where these people have ended up and what we have done to impact them in a certain way and lead them to make those decisions … we always wanted to nurture that kind of work environment,” says Aline, who also founded Richmond Restaurant Week, the 18-year-strong event that has raised more than $800,000 to benefit hunger-relief charities such as Feed More.
The Reitzers first met at The Frog and the Redneck, chef Jimmy Sneed’s nationally acclaimed Shockoe Slip restaurant that closed in 2001. Dale, a Johnson & Wales graduate who grew up in Virginia Beach, worked with Sneed at his Urbanna restaurant, Windows, and then served as the chef de cuisine at The Frog and the Redneck when it opened in 1993. Aline, who had previously worked at The Ryland Inn, a fine-dining establishment in New Jersey, moved here to work under Sneed.
Four years later, Dale and Aline were married, and a year after that, Acacia was born. In 1999, just a year after opening, Dale was named one of the Best New Chefs in America by Food & Wine magazine. Now, after two decades, Dale can still be found cooking on the line, earning multiple James Beard Award nominations along the way, while Aline maintains a tight front-of-house operation.
Gregory, a three-time James Beard Award semifinalist, landed in the original Acacia kitchen on Cary Street in the late ’90s while completing an internship at Johnson & Wales. He had previously worked at a seafood shack in Hampton Roads, and when Dale first introduced him to fresh scallops, the memory stuck with him forever. “When I came to work at Acacia, it was like someone took a blindfold off of me,” he says.
Perly’s Roberts attributes his knowledge of butchery to Dale, with whom he first worked at The Frog and the Redneck in the mid-’90s. He recalls that Dale once threw golf ball-sized clumps of grits at him in the kitchen, a sign that they were too lumpy. “That was one way to let me know, and it worked,” Roberts says, laughing.
Roberts later went on to work at Acacia, and when he set out to open the now-shuttered Black Sheep in 2008, he called on Dale for support and guidance, even receiving Acacia’s old walk-in freezer. But it was Dale’s commitment to leading by example and continually “busting ass” that truly made an impact on Roberts.
“He has that work ethic of hitting the surf and getting pounded by waves and doing it over again — he’s applied it to the craft of cooking,” Roberts says.
Dinner service at Acacia Mid-town (Photo by Julianne Tripp)
Dale says he teaches his staff about fresh fish, sourcing locally and forming relationships with farmers and purveyors. He also educates them on professionalism and reading people. And if they seize it, he provides the foundational knowledge for cooks to transform into chefs.
“My job as a chef is to push you to the next level and teach you how to deal with stress, because life only gets harder,” he says. “I want to show that when you don’t think you can make it through prep and at the end of the day you do, [there's] that sense of ‘I made it, now what can I accomplish?’ ”
On the front-of-house side, Aline is focused on attention to detail and maintaining the “lost art” of high-level service. These are lessons that Shriver, co-owner of Dutch & Co. and also Aline’s sister, soaked up like a sponge.
She worked at Acacia on and off for years, from a summer job to kitchen work to returning from a stint in Chicago to helm their beverage program, which led Shriver to introduce drinks such as the Dill Reitzer before the craft cocktail era hit.
“You can’t get that a lot of places; it was a unique experience,” she says of working various restaurant roles. “They were progressive for back then and definitely changed the game in Richmond.”
Before coming to Acacia for a six-year stint in 2011, Longoven’s beverage director was slinging drinks at dive bars along Bourbon Street in New Orleans. When McDermott moved to Richmond and hoped to elevate his credentials, he applied at Acacia because he wanted to “learn from the best.”
“I wouldn’t be anywhere without them,” he says of the Reitzers. “There’s not just one thing I learned from them; the experience made me who I am today.”
The Reitzers believe that hospitality is more than providing an experience — it’s a craft and a timeless tradition. They travel to other cities in order to spark their own creativity and growth. And, most importantly, they have caused a ripple effect, propagating the highest standard of dining.
“That’s what it’s all about,” Gregory says, “who came from there and how employees go on to represent themselves and you, and that’s the biggest thing they’ve done. To me that is a sign of greatness. … They put people in the community that help push the envelope further.”
