Plate and Goblet: Post-turkey treats and trends

Another Turkey Day is in the books, but the holiday season – and the year yet to come – still hold plenty of possibilities for new flavors and foods. 

Eat Restaurant Partners recently announced, for instance, that two new restaurants will open in Henrico in 2026.  Civita Italia, a brand-new concept, will open across from Red Salt and Wong's Tacos in Short Pump (two other restaurants in the group, which also includes Fat Dragon, Boulevard Burger & Brew, and more). In addition, Lucky AF (Lucky Asian Fusion) will open a location in the former Baker's Crust site at Short Pump Town Center. 

Another opening on the horizon is Graze Craze, a national chain focusing on charcuterie boards.  According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the restaurant will open in January in the Gayton Crossing Shopping Center. 

In October, the Venezuelan restaurant Arepa Station opened in a spot recently vacated by another Venezuelan restaurant, Bocata (10170 West Broad Street).   Sabrina Moreno of Axios Richmond describes the new place as comparable to a Venezuelan Chipotle – with an emphasis on the arepas (cornmeal pockets stuffed with fillings and crowned with various toppings). 

Diners can choose between bowls and arepas, then pick their fillings and toppings.  I checked out Arepa Station in November, and rated my chicken bowl to be comparable in quality and size to Chipotle's. But Arepa Station topped Chipotle with its outstanding service – not to mention a free cup of coffee with my meal – and I hope to return soon to give the arepas a try. 

Suzka's Cakes & Cookies is open inside the Lakeside Farmers' Market and at the Twisted Carrot Farm and Market.  With specialties that include a European nut roll, poppyseed cakes, and German Linzer Torte, Suzka's sounds like a good place to pick up some bakery treats for holiday meals.  In the future, the owners hope to open a bricks-and-mortar location – preferably in the Lakeside Avenue area. 

Also in Lakeside, Final Gravity brewery has changed ownership – but don't look for any earth-shaking changes at the popular brewpub. The husband-wife team that has owned Final Gravity for the last decade, Tony Ammendolia and Jessica Harris, are stepping back from the business to spend time with family and pursue other projects, according to the Times-Dispatch.  Timmy and Erin Miller, employees at Final Gravity and Vasen Brewing, respectively, will take over the business – which got its start as a home-brewer supply store (Original Gravity, located next store to the brewery on Lakeside Avenue).

Kudos to:

• the loyal customers at SB's Lakeside Love Shack, who rescued the restaurant from its impending demise with generous donations to a Go Fund Me campaign.

• MPM Tiki $ Sports bar, which won the Times-Dispatch's  "Best Asian inspired restaurant" title in September. 

• Victor Albisu, the James Beard Award-nominated chef who founded Taco Bamba, a favorite taqueria of mine.  He was spotlighted in Richmond Magazine, where he describes stopping often in Richmond while in the process of opening a location in Raleigh. It didn't take him long to become enamored of the Richmond restaurant scene and to want to be a part of it – so he opened the Willow Lawn Taco Bamba in the summer of 2024. 

Farewell to:

• La Doña Cocina Mexicana on Horsepen Road, which closed its doors in November, according to the Times-Dispatch.  

• Amigos Family Restaurant on Staples Mill Road, which closed recently after a decade in business. 

• TGI Fridays in the White Oake Village shopping center in Eastern Henrico, which closed in October, as noted by Richmond BizSense. The closure came just months after the West Broad Street TGI Fridays (near Glenside Drive) also closed.

• Strangeways Brewing, which closed its original location on Dabney Road in Henrico, where it was founded in 2013. The Strangeways taproom in the city's Scotts Addition neighborhood is still open.  

Trends

The downsizing of Strangeways is just one example of the ways that local brewers are adapting to trends in the craft beer industry – the subject of a recent article in Style Weekly.

Last year, for the first time since 2010, more breweries nationwide closed than opened, and Style reporter Mary Scott Hardaway documented a variety of factors that have led to the downswing – from rising rents and the pandemic to tariffs, Gen Z drinking habits, and competition from hard seltzers and other canned cocktails.  

An Bui, the beer guru who founded The Answer Brewery adjacent to Mekong Restaurant in Henrico, is among the brewers featured in the story – which ends by assuring beer lovers that the breweries may be changing and adapting to the times, but they are not going away. 

"The craft beer industry," experts agree, "still has a strong pulse."

• Another story about national trends in the food and beverage industry ran recently in Food & Wine, and explored events of the last quarter-century regarding such topics as cocktails, wine, restaurant menus and even kitchen design and kitchen gadgets.  Among trends of the past 25 years highlighted in the story are the rise of plant-based meats and Sriracha sauce, the explosion in food truck cuisine, the use of voice assistants like Alexa for recipe help, and the "normalization of the $30 fine-dining burger."  

Food for thought 

I recently came across a 2013 interview with Michael Pollan in New York Magazine, and found that many of Pollan's comments about the ethical eating and food sourcing movement still ring true – maybe even truer – today.   

One comment that really struck me was Pollan's response to interviewer Adam Platt's question about the popularity of the food movement, which Platt said "has taken on an almost fanatical urgency."  

Why, Platt asked Pollan in 2013, is the "philosophy of food" suddenly so important to people?

Pollan replied that he believed the food movement grew out of the enjoyment and gratification people get from food, and claimed that such pleasures were "things that they aren't getting elsewhere in their lives."  

He noted that the interest in food culture "coincides with our progressively more mediated, digitized life. We spend our time in front of screens.  We don't exercise our other senses very much.  And food is this complete sensory experience. It engages all five senses. It's a sensual pleasure. And it also – and I think this is a very important part of the food movement – really a communitarian movement.  What's driving people to food in many, many places is the kind of experience you can have at a farmers' market.  It's really a new public square."

A dozen years after Pollan spoke those words, our lives are more digitized and screen-dominated than ever. 

As we move from Thanksgiving into the December holiday rush, making our trips to farmers' markets and family gatherings, it's worth keeping Pollan's words in mind. Here's to a holiday season that's focused on the simple pleasures of food and community – and all the other joys and satisfactions that will never be found on a screen.