Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 14, 1992 TAG: 9202140134
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LELIA ALBRECHT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
OLD FAVORITE STILL HAS THE HOMEY TOUCH
How in the world to describe the Family Reunion? To say that it looks like somebody's pleasant family room where it's OK to have food? To say that the ladies who smile benignly at you and bring you good food look like almost everybody's idea of someone's nice aunt or mother? To say that the food they bring you tastes like it came from a grandmother's old-fashioned kitchen stove?I have been going there for years. Back in the 1950s, I would pick up the proofs of my column for this newspaper, "Showcase," and drive to Vinton to have lunch, hidden in a comfortable, dark booth.
On the latest breakfast visit, I was accompanied by my active and hungry 2-year-old grandson. His special delight were the tiny baby cinnamon doughnuts. Mine too, and we ran a race: He ate the most.
We managed to get him out of there before they changed over to the lunch menu. Before that, you might have plowed through a choice of bacon and eggs ($2.49); sausage and eggs ($2.49); ham (salt cured) and eggs ($3.99); or steak (5-ounce sirloin) and eggs ($4.95). With each of these come very tasty, surprisingly non-greasy home fries, toast or a biscuit about the size of Elmwood Park.
Or, still at breakfast, you can take your pick from the opposite side of the menu-placemat: two or four pancakes ($1.25/$2.50), light enough to fly away, to which you can add sausage or bacon (dry and crisp), either for $1.20, and anything from a Danish through apples, potatoes or grits for 89 cents each.
Be outlandishly greedy and meander over to the breakfast bar itself and add on $2.99 and lots of irresistible choices like the tiny cinnamon doughnuts, soft, just-sweet-enough French toast, individual boxes of dry cereals, or mixed chopped fresh fruits, pretty pink grapefruit halves (sections cut), more home fries or sauteed apples.
When I've ordered from the "Hearty Breakfast" side, and the breakfast bar as well, my eggs, ordered scrambled soft, have been exactly firm and exactly soft enough. I can't manage to get mine that way at home, even with my best efforts.
With no bustle and flurry at all, breakfast meanders on into lunch and different table mats. If you were overwhelmed by breakfast, prepare to be more so - but also notice the thoughtful attention to one's weight: a daily diet plate of chopped lean steak with a chopped salad bowl ($2.99) is boxed off on the table mat.
There's always a blackboard just outside the Family Reunion's entrance listing specials, which upon asking you find are the "specials of the month." One lunchtime, I tried the crab cakes and they were $5.49. When I ordered another time, two big, fat cakes were $4 because they were a "special." Deliciously seasoned, I wasn't sure whether they were really crabmeat or surimi. But they plummeted in my estimation the way they did in my stomach because of the cement-like crumb coating hard-fried on the outside.
My companion had ordered another special - a hot country ham sandwich. Sandwich should have been in quotation marks on the menu because it was that in name only. Two of the thickest slices of "store-bought" white bread I've ever seen - the square-cut kind - were open-face on a plate with generous slabs of dark red ham on one side and the other side more or less swimming in what is known in Southern lexicon as red-eye gravy.
Looking at it in dismay (she'd expected a dainty little thing), my friend took a fork to it. It needed a knife and a fork - and perhaps a foot would have helped - to extract a bite-size piece. My several tastes of it were tasty, if unchewable. Definitely country ham and appropriately salty, it was simply mislabeled.
Other lunch specials that day were beef liver deliciously smothered in onions ($4.25). Also on the menu was a plate for $4.25 of two ocean whiting fillets.
For these amazing prices, soup, vegetables and potato, salad and dessert from the salad and dessert bars are all included. On the other side of the menu, Delmonico steak or seafood platter ($7.49 each) or a prime rib steak plate ($9.95) all include the salad, vegetable and dessert bar.
On weekends, breakfast becomes dinner for the rest of the day with pretty much the same plate specials already mentioned. Sometimes on Sundays, there's a prime rib special, with all the vegetable trimmings, for $7.99.
Just about the time your mouth is watering, and you're thinking, "It can't get any better than this," on Sundays you'll find nestled in among the other goodies on the dinner bar, the best chicken and dumplings these old taste buds have ever tasted.
The only way that can get any better is with a slice of that apple pie - better than most moms ever turn out.
Dining Out's evaluations of restaurant accessibility to the handicapped are conducted by the Center for Independence for the Disabled, a non-profit organization.
\ FAMILY REUNION RESTAURANT\ Lake Drive Plaza Vinton 343-2072\ HOURS: Open daily. Breakfast, 7-11 a.m.; lunch, 11 a.m.-3 p.m.; dinner,\ 3-9 p.m.\ BEVERAGES: Milk, hot chocolate, coffee, tea, lemonade, soft drinks, beer.\ PRICE RANGE: $1.69-$9.95.\ CREDIT CARDS: None accepted.\ RESERVATIONS? For large groups.\ NON-SMOKING SECTION? Yes\ HANDICAPPED ACCESSIBLE: No.
Lelia Albrecht, lived in Paris seven years, dining, cooking and writing on Western Europe for The New York Times, The Washington Post and numerous magazines.