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(From left) Dave Michelow and Matt Tarpey of The Veil Brewing Co. and Andrew Manning, co-owner of Longoven (Photo by Eileen Mellon)
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The Veil's new flagship location in Richmond will be located at 1509 Belleville St. (Image courtesy The Veil Brewing Co.)
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The new space is three times the size of The Veil’s current taproom on Roseneath Road. (Image courtesy The Veil Brewing Co.)
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In-house food concept Nokoribi will be operated by the team behind Longoven. (Image courtesy The Veil Brewing Co.)
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Japanese-inspired Nokoribi will feature dishes prepared over wood-fired coals. (Image courtesy The Veil Brewing Co.)
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Image courtesy The Veil Brewing Co.
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Image courtesy The Veil Brewing Co.
Two Richmond food and beverage powerhouses are joining forces in a collaboration for the ages. In the coming months, The Veil Brewing Co. will introduce a new flagship taproom complete with an in-house food concept from Longoven restaurant called Nokoribi.
Set for a spring opening at 1509 Belleville St. in Scott’s Addition, the brand-new, nearly 8,300-square-foot taproom will feature an event space, enormous open kitchen, gift shop and 40-tap bar also serving wine, sake, cider, seltzer, spirits and nonalcoholic beer.
The Veil team originally planned to debut a food hall in the space with D.C.-based development group NRG but scrapped the project in June of 2020 due to the pandemic. In early 2021, they returned to the drawing board.
“We started look at it again,” says Matt Tarpey, co-founder of the brewery along with partners Dave Michelow and Dustin Durrance. “We thought, all right, let’s revisit this and see how we can reshape the space to be ours, and include a food concept.”
Since its inception in 2016, The Veil has become internationally renowned for its super-fruited goses, hop-forward IPAS and a taste for pushing boundaries. Following a similar approach, also garnering glowing press but in the kitchen, Longoven was an ideal choice for a partnership.
“We’re a brewery and can operate taprooms, but we don’t mess with the food, so we went to the professionals on that and our good friends at Longoven,” says Tarpey, who recalls initially connecting with Manning at one of Longoven’s first-ever pop-ups.
The collaboration between the two Scott’s Addition businesses marks an organic alliance of professionalism, attention to detail and creativity. Considered essential stops for visitors to Richmond — The Veil for its offbeat and heady brews, and Longoven for its imaginative seasonal tasting menu — both share a passion for their crafts. While Longoven may be known for out-of-the-box dishes from hay-roasted onion to sturgeon bacon, The Veil team has turned heads by brewing with everything from Hi-C to fried chicken and marshmallows.
Manning says that while exploring culinary possibilities for the in-house venture, his mind kept returning to the flames — specifically Brasa, a Portuguese wood-fired pop-up he once operated with Steve Farr, now of The Veil, that was also a favorite of Tarpey’s.
“One of my favorite things to eat is yakitori, kushiyaki [chicken and beef] skewers, grilled foods,” says Manning, co-owner of Longoven along with Patrick Phelan and Megan Fitzroy Phelan. “It’s charred and fatty and salty and the perfect food for beer.”
Fire is also one of his favorite, and most frequent, ways to cook: “95% of things prepared at Longoven come off of one of those grills,” Manning says, “so we’ve been doing it forever. It’s just this beautiful heat and smokiness, and there’s nothing else like it.”
Nokoribi, whose name translates to “embers,” will serve as the focal point of the taproom — slow-roasting birds dangling from grates, a mother charcoal station and seats surrounding the open kitchen that one day will be designated for diners looking to enjoy an omakase, aka chef’s choice, dining experience.
Skewered selections at Nokoribi will range from chicken thighs and duck meatballs to scallops, spicy lobster and king trumpet mushrooms. Drawing on Japanese pub fare, other menu highlights will feature a katsu sandwich, noodle dishes and, adding a dash of Korean influence, kimchi fries.
With Y Tu Mama at The Veil’s South Side outpost, and Little ’Za housed at its Norfolk location, the brewery has already grasped the importance of curating a welcoming environment — one including food — that looks beyond the beer drinker and encourages guests to stay a while.
“We’re talking about approachability and price- and family-friendly,” Michelow says. “It will be a beautiful space, and also a really cool, nontraditional kind of event space … with opportunities to do nice dinners and table service.”
Tarpey says that while draft cocktails have not yet been confirmed, the idea is that they will focus on classics such the mai tai or paloma, along with seasonal rotating options. Highballs will also be available. He adds that they hope to dabble in different styles of nonalcoholic beers, and even tap into vintage and cellared kegs.
“We have hundreds and hundreds of wild beers, stouts, barleywine, all that kind of stuff, all the way back to 2016 and 2017, and we want to tap them for special events,” he says. “Or maybe it’s a Wednesday, and it’s like, let’s tap a 2018 Sleeping Forever imperial stout.”
Modern and progressive, the forthcoming taproom designed by Fultz & Singh Architects represents a step up from The Veil’s starter space in Richmond to a sleek “forever home.” It will also be the first and only Veil location projected to be open for lunch and dinner seven days a week.
A former candy factory, the Belleville building is co-owned by partner and developers Charles Bice and Birck Turnbull. The building will also be shared by Richmond Capital Management. After the new taproom opens, the original Roseneath Road location will become the brewery’s dedicated production facility.
While The Veil has become a destination for beer fanatics, its partnership with a venture once named among the best new restaurants in the country by Bon Appetit, even before it had a brick-and-mortar space, will be a boon for dining devotees as well.
“It’s more of a mini food hall concept with two operators operating in unison in one building; I haven’t really seen anything like this,” Tarpey says. “We have a similar mind with beer [as the Longoven team does with food], and it’s a super natural communion. We have a great relationship and friendship, and we just want to elevate, and we want to elevate the city, too. We want to do our part to contribute something cool and different to Richmond.”
