Richmond has come a long way since the days when a few Chinese and Mexican restaurants constituted the entirety of our global-food options. Alongside — and often in concert with — the evolution of Richmond’s dining scene, there has been a noticeable expansion of our region’s menu of dishes from different cultures, both in terms of the number of cuisines now being offered and the number of markets catering to those looking to prepare such food at home. Here, we examine just a few of the neighborhoods where you’ll find a rich vein of businesses serving up food that’s anything but ordinary.
Pho Tay Do’s house special pho with meatballs (Photo by Kim Frost)
The Silk-y Road
Real estate barons and the postal service call this area of town Horsepen, but you can’t claim to be a food lover if you don’t know that this pocket of shops west of West Broad constitutes the beating heart of Asian cooking in RVA.
No, it’s not a large heart, but there are treats aplenty — from Full Kee, with its estimable dim sum feasts, to the dependably delicious pho parlors Pho So 1 and Pho Tay Do, to Catina and Le’s Vietnamese Deli, both reliable pit stops for banh mi, that sub sandwich of irresistible brightness, savor and crunch.
If there’s an anchor of this cultural/culinary pocket, it’s Tan-A Supermarket. If you’re a passionate cook, then you need to have Tan-A in your shopping rotation — even if you never dabble in Asian cooking. The produce is a minor miracle: abundant, vibrantly fresh, stunningly cheap. And the fish department regularly hauls in some of the finest product in all of RVA: whole snapper, striped bass, teeming piles of squid, all packed on ice. And — bonus — they’ll clean and scale anything you purchase.
Dosas such as this can be found at Indian Pastry House. (Photo by Thinkstock)
Curry Crossroads
Sitting at the busy intersection of Broad and Parham and staring up at the sign looming above, you may have wondered: What, exactly, is Laxmi Palace?
Well, it’s not a palace, for one thing, but there are innumerable wonders at this all-veg market, including a staggering array of spices; nearly every pickle imaginable, from mango to lime; hard-to-find produce, like long Chinese eggplant and methi leaves (aka Indian cilantro); enormous bags of lentils; even an entire refrigerator case of paneer, a soft farmer’s cheese that’s hard to find in RVA and, alas, much more expensive elsewhere. (If you need a meat fix, turn the corner to find Taj Halal Grocery, where you can stock up on freshly butchered chicken, lamb and — delicious, if often-overlooked in the U.S. — goat.)
Next door you can pop into the Indian Pastry House for salt cookies (a sweet/savory treat, perfect for afternoon tea) or to order a cake for a special occasion — they even make sugar-free and eggless versions. Or you could sit down and grab a dosa, an enormous rolled rice crepe stuffed with, among other options, chicken tikka and onions with hot chili.
Don’t have time to run up to Old Parham for a dosa fresh off the griddle? Kabob House can deliver some tasty biryani or curry right to your front door via GrubHub.
Pupusas from Shelly’s Food, Comida Latina (Photo by Stephanie Brejio)
Latin Quarter
If you think there’s a certain sameness, an almost fast-food quality, to your average south-of-the-border restaurant, then venture on over to Crockett Street, an awkwardly placed feeder road running behind Staples Mill Shopping Center. Here, you’ll find a slew of Latin-owned shops serving up simple, often sensational food in lively settings to hard-working immigrants who gather for a taste of home.
At Shelly’s Food, Comida Latina, the star is the pupusas — hot, griddled corn cakes that ooze beans or cheese when you cut into them, topped with crunchy, tangy curtido. An entire meal for, yes, $1.50.
At the far end of the block is La Cabana, a taqueria that (gently) shames the efforts at trendy, high-end RVA eateries by being not just cheaper, but better.
The tacos — made with two-ply corn tortillas and simply dressed with onion and cilantro — showcase perfectly seasoned fillings. There’s of course beef and chicken, but adventurous souls will find rewards in the tongue (tender, meltingly soft) and cactus.
In the center of the strip, El Paraiso Latino Market stocks everything you need to whip up just about any Central American dish, from tortillas to a dizzying array of hot sauces. They even carry Topo Chico, the trendy mineral water.
The Melting Pot
Not every global food block is quite so defined. Take a look around Tuckernuck Square.
No, not the Chuck E. Cheese. Skip that. Zorba’s, the longtime Greek restaurant? You know that one, too. Ditto Sakura, one of the older Japanese steakhouse-and-sushi bars in RVA.
Beyond that, there’s Bawarchi (go for the lunchtime Indian buffet); Tindahan, a Filipino grocery and café that carries jackfruit and pancit (a popular noodle in the Philippines) and makes a mean chicken adobo for its lunch buffet; and European Deli, which privileges delicacies from the Eastern end of the continent: shelves of canned fishes, pickled mushrooms, bags of buckwheat flour, even bins of hard Russian candies sold by the pound. From the counter you might order the bigos, a hunter’s stew of meats and sauerkraut, or the decadent roladen, in which thin slices of beef are wrapped around pickle spears, onions and bacon.
