Acacia Mid-town owners Aline and Dale Reitzer at the restaurant's former location at 2601 W. Cary St. (Photo by Jay Paul)
Timing is everything. Especially for restaurateurs Aline and Dale Reitzer, the husband-and-wife team behind Acacia Mid-town. After closing their seminal Cary Street restaurant in January 2020, months shy of pandemic-related shutdowns, the duo are reentering the industry and reintroducing their acclaimed eatery.
“We’ve looked in our crystal ball,” jokes Aline, who is also the founder of Richmond Restaurant Week, of their plans.
Though the Reitzers, who have served as mentors to many in the dining community over their tenure, always intended to reopen Acacia, Aline says, “We found ourselves in a very fortunate position because we could wait, and we feel that now the time is right.”
Expected to open this fall, Acacia will be located at 2363 Roux St., joining the growing Libbie Mill - Midtown development that is currently home to Shagbark, Crafted and The Stables Market.
About 1,000 square feet smaller than their former Cary Street space, the dining room will feature 80 seats, in addition to a patio that Aline describes as “just the right size.”
The latest iteration of Acacia will give a nod to its past, but it marks a fresh chapter in the culinary biography of both the restaurant and its owners.
“There will be some old-style Acacia, and [we'll be] looking forward to doing some new stuff, fresher flavors, lighter dishes, more eccentric items,” says Dale, who has earned numerous accolades over the years, from a Best New Chefs in America recognition from Food & Wine magazine a year after opening to multiple James Beard Award nominations. “It’s always exciting when you get a little breath of fresh air and can show some new stuff, and hopefully get people excited about it.”
And while the Reitzers, who opened the original Acacia in February of 1998 at 3325 W. Cary St. in Carytown before relocating in 2008 to their last space at the corner of Cary and Robinson streets, say their break was longer than they had envisioned, the past two years have been rewarding, and perhaps exactly what they needed.
Dale was able to spend time with his father before he died and adds with a laugh that he and Aline completed “10 years of housework in a couple years.”
Along with their two children, who are now 17 and 19, the Reitzers traveled to the Florida Keys and Mexico, eating fresh seafood, gaining inspiration and reawakening their palates. They were able to enjoy meals together for the first time in ages — “We would be all over the world just sitting at our dinner table with our children,” Aline says.
They ordered takeout from places they have wanted to try, dined at restaurants owned by friends and had just enough time away to remember why they embarked on this journey in the first place.
“When you work your business as hard as both of us, you miss out on a lot of things of life, and it was also just a fresh breath,” Dale says.
Known for being meticulous and methodical, celebrating seasonality, and maintaining the “lost art” of high-level service, the Reitzers say they plan to deliver on each of those fronts when Acacia reopens and that, if anything, the break has reignited a passion to offer that type of dining experience to patrons.
“This is the third time around; I call them our 10-year cycles,” Dale says. “After working a business for that long, your eyes don't see everything like they used to, so taking a step back and being able to discharge that and go into something new, your eyes can see things again, and that attention to detail, whether food or service, you refresh on it and go back. Those are critical points to going out to eat.”
Last week, the restaurateurs caught a glimpse of excitement from diners after selling out tickets in under an hour to a multicourse pop-up event at Yellow Umbrella Provisions. For fans of Acacia's beloved crab cakes who have read to this point, yes, they will be on the menu at the Libbie Mill location.
As for the restaurant's revival, Aline says, “It’s very exciting. We are thrilled to get back in the business; we’ve definitely missed it. We think the [Libbie Mill] development is amazing and what they are creating, and we can’t wait to be a part of that.”
