Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 12, 1994 TAG: 9410140021
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY STAFF WRITER LEXINGTON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
And how long have owner/cook Frances Goodbar and her two cousins been sitting in the last booth by the window, gossiping, arguing and smoking cigarettes?
"Don't ask," says Goodbar, who at 67 has been baking biscuits and cooking casseroles at the Virginia House Restaurant since she married into the family in 1950.
Even the coffee-stained menu shows little signs of change. "HAVE A CHILLED BEER WITH YOUR LUNCHEON," the typed lunch offerings suggest, inviting diners to salute the days when calories didn't count, the lunch hour stretched into two and those '60s postcards by the counter were white instead of yellow.
"An idealized, depopulated, post-linen postcard from the '40s" is how syndicated food writers Jane and Michael Stern described the Virginia House in "Roadfood," their guide to the country's best diners and roadside cafes. "We are amazed and delighted every time we stop there to see that nothing ever changes," they wrote.
Goodbar puts it less analytically: "We're not a lot in style and class," she says of the decor.
Of her fingernail-thin seafood batter, she adds: "It's tempura, or whatever you call it. I don't know the lingo; I just do it."
And of her practice of parking her Dodge Aries K car behind the building - so customers will think she's closed: "In a sense I like bad business."
It gives her and her two cousins time to "hang out and discuss," as cousin Josephine McCown puts it. "The Virginia Gang," they call themselves as they laugh and argue about current events, the distant past and the perfect way to season a fried green tomato:
"You add a little brown sugar, don't you?" cousin Gertrude Hotinger asks.
"No. I do that on my baked apples. With tomatoes I add a little white sugar, plus a little salt and pepper," Frances explains.
"I think brown sugar is better."
"Well, you're here eating them, aren't you?"
The Goodbars' copy of "Roadfood," kept under a glass counter by the register, is inscribed by a Willimantic, Conn., couple who passed through last summer and left the book with this note: "Nickie, our charming 'Southern Belle' waitress, was like a refreshing Southern breeze."
We didn't feel any refreshing Southern breezes during our visit - the cousins were more like a grumpier version of "The Golden Girls," with Southern accents and a New York edge. While they hold court in the dining room, Goodbar's husband, Edward, handles the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on his trademark Virginia hams.
The local Kiwanis club likes the food so much they meet here every Thursday night, keeping their flag permanently perched in the meeting room. And Edward is so well-known for his ham that during the holidays a dozen people a day bring them to him to cook, bone and slice .
"I don't let people from the North order Virginia ham," Frances says. "I tell people it's like beer: You have to acquire a taste for it."
But the real draw to the Goodbars' cooking is the daily vegetables that Frances cooks: broccoli casserole, baked squash with cheese and eggs, to-die-for corn pudding with a crunchy brown-sugar crust. Vegetables are served in the Southern tradition - meaning, in plentiful portions, with butter welling up around the edge of the bowl.
"Her homemade biscuits, they're a drawing card," adds Gertrude, a retired Washington & Lee nurse (``I wasn't over there when they had girls, thank God"). Cooked in a gas oven that befits the '30s-style kitchen cabinetry, the biscuits are small and gold-topped with a buttermilk tang.
"Her chocolate-pecan pies go over real well, but they're too much for me," Gertrude offers. The pie is a regular pecan pie with a sliver of chocolate in the middle - served warm, a la mode optional - and is almost as popular as her lemon chess pie with its elegant, fragile crust.
Lunches sell for around $5, while dinners range from $5 to $10. The Sterns, those cultural arbiters of kitsch and cholesterol, were attracted most by the Virginia House's decor: white cloths on tables, the velveteen painting of a barefoot Spanish maid leaning to get a drink by a fountain.
But for this Conspicuous Consumer, the food comes first, followed by the fodder of the three cousins, who bring reading materials to share when they meet each Monday, Thursday and Saturday afternoon.
Recent discussions centered around a Guideposts magazine, a 1932 picture of a Kerrs Creek-area mill that Josephine wanted to identify and Frances' 1944 Buchanan High School yearbook.
"Her 50th reunion was this past weekend, and her son took her because her husband had to work," Gertrude explains. The cousins laugh, pointing to Frances' senior picture and remembering days past.
Then, while Frances is out of ear shot in the kitchen, Gertrude pays her a rare compliment: "She didn't even need to lose weight for the reunion. She cuts a right good figure right now."
The Virginia House Restaurant, at 722 S. Main St. in Lexington, is open 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 to 8:30 p.m. seven days a week. 463-3643.
Conspicuous Consumption is an occasional column that spotlights the way Southwest Virginians eat, drink and cook.
by CNB