Plate and Goblet: Short Pump beefs up, and fun with cocktail slang
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Short Pump beefs up
Within days of each other, two high-end steakhouses opened in Short Pump this month.
Fogo de Chão, a new Brazilian steakhouse and churrascaria, opened Feb. 12 in the space vacated by Kona Grill in West Broad Village.
What's a churrascaria, you say?
It simply means a place where meat is cooked in churrasco style, which derives from Portuguese and translates loosely to "barbecue."
Fogo's dining room surrounds a peninsula churrasco grill, so guests can enjoy the view of gaucho chefs hand-carving and grilling their cuts over an open flame.
Fogo will donate a portion of its first week of sales to local food bank Feed More. I'll have a report and photos from Fogo de Chão after my upcoming visit. As for Texas-based chain Perry's Steakhouse & Grille (now open in Short Pump Town Center), that visit will have to wait for a Friday – the only day Perry's is open for lunch.
Quick bites
• America’s Best Restaurants will be filming at SB’s Lakeside Love Shack Feb. 26 for its “ABR Roadshow” online program, to be aired at a later date on social media channels. The program, which travels the country to highlight locally owned restaurants, will feature an on-camera interview with owner Sarabeth Hagan.
• Lakeside Tavern made it into a recent shoutout in RIC Today in which readers suggested favorite places to play pool. The Tavern also hosts karaoke nights and weekend live music.
• Richmond Magazine had a nice feature on the owners of Pho Tay Do, and the success the Vietnamese restaurant has enjoyed despite a cash-only policy and its "off-the-beaten-path" location on Rigsby Road. Denzel Lewis describes how he and his wife (who met in the ninth grade at James River H.S.) eventually took over the restaurant from her parents and have gained a loyal following of regulars.
• EAT Restaurant Partners, which owns Wong's Tacos and Red Salt in Short Pump's Greengate, wants to remind patrons during this chilly season that both restaurants have fully covered and heated outdoor spaces. Wong's is also touting its new "Mexinese" fusion dishes, including Fusion Fajitas.
• Ugly Dumpling, a full-service, Jersey-based dumpling restaurant, will open its first Richmond-area location this summer in the Shops at Willow Lawn. Featuring dishes described as Shanghai-street-food-inspired, the restaurant will take over space previously occupied by Legends Grill and American Tap Room, among others.
• Taco Bamba, a fast-casual chain out of D.C., also is expected to open at Willow Lawn in the months to come.
• The Boathouse, Island Shrimp Company and Casa del Barco made the news with their recent announcement that they will no longer charge the automatic 20% service fees that were applied during the pandemic.
• Richmond BizSense reports that the Chef’Store retail chain, which offers wholesale groceries and kitchen supplies to home cooks as well as those in the restaurant industry as well as home cooks, will soon build a location at 7821 Shrader Road. The concept is similar that of the wholesale chain Restaurant Depot, which also markets to restaurants, and has a site near Brook and Parham roads. However, memberships are not required to shop at Chef’Stores as they are at Restaurant Depot.
• Among other specialty grocery stores soon to open on Broad Street in western Henrico include Korean grocer Lotte Plaza Market and Indian grocer Triveni Supermarket.
• The owners of milkshake shop Coco + Hazel plan to close its Tuckahoe location Feb. 25 to focus on the Bon Air shop.
Fun with cocktail slang
Being a word nerd, I was intrigued and amused by an article in this month's Punch highlighting "The New Vocabulary of Cocktails."
Author Emma Janzen describes a "renaissance of bar lingo" that she attributes to a growing crossover between restaurants and bars and the recent resurgence in cocktail culture. Some of the newer slang derives from trends and pop culture, as well. For instance, a "gaudy" cocktail is one that's embellished with lots of eye-catching, decorative elements or Instagram-worthy special effects such as dry-ice smoke.
A few of the newer words also reflect a move toward more sustainable bar practices, such as "close-looping," or the practice of using up all parts of an ingredient to produce a zero-waste drink. Janzen notes that some bartenders are reframing the not-so-new practice of "dirty dumping" as a sustainability initiative, since it reduces a bar's water usage. In a dirty dump, shaken cocktails are poured directly into the glass without straining, so a drink is served with the same ice and any extra ingredients – such as muddled fruit – that it was shaken with.
Many of the colorful expressions to emerge from cocktail culture over the years relate to bartender bonding. For instance, a "staff meeting" is the term for a bar team taking a small shot together before, during or after a shift.
"Barbacking," which traditionally described an entry-level, assistant-bartender position, has taken on a new meaning. When used during a shift, "barback for me" is a coded request to discreetly ask for a bar patron's name.
Among other coded requests are the "club sandwich," which consists of a beer and a shot (known traditionally as a boilermaker.) The club sandwich is a type of "bartender's handshake," which is a shot ordered or offered specifically to identify or acknowledge a fellow bartender.
But as a word nerd, I most enjoyed the Punch piece slang terms that originated as "portmanteau" words, or combined two words to form a new one.
Take, for instance, the 50/50 shot known as the "Maserati" (equal parts mezcal and Ramazzotti) – or the shot that mixes Fernet-Branca and Campari 50/50 to produce a "Ferrari."
And then there's the "sprotini," which is shorthand for an espresso martini.
At the top of my list of clever word combos, however, is the "amaroulette." Originating at the Fifty Fifty Gin Club in Cincinnati, the order was used by guests when they wanted the bartender to pick which shot of amaro they'd drink. Then, a few enterprising staff members at another bar elevated the concept to a game: developing a physical wheel for indecisive guests to spin and determine their order.
Sure enough, I found some photos of amaroulette wheels online (see above).
