THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 28, 1994 TAG: 9408260080
SECTION: FLAVOR PAGE: F3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Restaurant review
SOURCE: BY DONNA REISS RESTAURANT CRITIC
LENGTH: Long : 128 lines
THE DUMBWAITER is idiosyncratic, entertaining and appetizing.
No longer a window on the world as it was in its former corner on College Place in downtown Norfolk, the Dumbwaiter on nearby Tazewell Street has more seats and a two-story space filled with custom chairs, secondhand sofas, recycled objets and bright displays of local art.
Those who know the quirky, eclectic tastes of chef-owner Sydney Meers will not be surprised at the carefully planned big-city anti-decor. Meers still cooks up distinctive new Southern cuisine - inspired by the old Southern styles of his family in Senatobia, Miss. - updated with local and personal touches.
A graduate of Norfolk's Johnson and Wales culinary arts school, Meers foresaw the trend toward lower-priced but still-creative meals by offering lists of small, medium and big courses, and rejecting categories like ``appetizer.''
If you're really hungry, order a steak, chicken or seafood dinner with all the trimmings. If you're less hungry or can't make up your mind, order a couple of small or medium courses, such as grilled portabella mushroom with eggplant-corn ratatouille or a romaine salad with grilled chicken.
Meers also welcomes experimentation with wines. This is among the few local restaurants offering flights, 2-ounce glasses chosen from an extensive by-the-glass listing.
With a small open kitchen committed to making food from scratch, the menu is appropriately selective, usually handwritten and peppered with misspellings. Recited up-to-the-minute additions bring further variety.
Breads usually are baked on site, and include whole-wheat biscuits and fruit breads. Meers smokes tomatoes and roasts turkeys. Some dishes have become local favorites, such as the meatloaf lunch, yellow-hued Yukon gold mashed potatoes, home fries from white and sweet potatoes, and variations on grits.
We like to start with an assortment of small and medium courses. The salad of mixed greens typically is garnished with seasonal fruits or vegetables (blueberries recently) and lightly dressed. Corn and eggplant were the backdrop for a slice of meaty portabella mushroom. And a splendid chunk of tuna lightly charred around the edges and still pale pink within came with roasted garlic, warm spinach and smoked tomatoes. The latter was a bargain at $4.50.
Meers calls his individual pizzas ``tarts''; the combination of grilled chicken with goat cheese and roasted peppers would have made a splendid supper with a salad, but we split it four ways as a starter.
For our main courses, we chose from the menu and from the specials. The most surprising offering was a generous portion of rabbit in a barley mustard sauce lightly spiced with chilies. Surrounded by still-crisp haricots verts, this plate, the most complex of the evening, was well-received.
Local seasonal fare was celebrated with two soft-shell crabs simply sauteed. Salmon also benefited from a simple presentation. An enormous New York strip steak special - an acceptable hunk of beef well suited to the purple-skinned potatoes on the side - was subtly seasoned with bourbon-leek butter.
Side dishes for the evening were crisp snow peas, corn relish dotted with peppers and heaps of mashed Yukon gold potatoes. When we saw a plate of fries delivered to another table, we ordered some for ourselves so we could munch on crunchy browned white and sweet potatoes.
Meers is not reticent about his own favorites. His ``soon to be world-famous chocolate chocolate pecan torte'' is worth the puffery. Dense, with a slim layer of white chocolate ganache and a thicker top of semisweet chocolate ganache and served in a pool of fudgy sauce, this sweet is lush and luscious.
The Dumbcake tasted salty, but lemon chess and Senatobia fruit-nut pies were pleasing Southern favorites. Best was the blueberry-pear cobbler, a beautifully balanced blend of seasonal fruits with a homemade pastry crust.
Other choices for the evening included burgers, turkey and apple sandwich, chicken breast on angel-hair pasta, another steak, colossal shrimp on onion-basil cream, and creamy crabcakes. The menu changes frequently but always features fresh variety and several vegetarian options.
Lunches are sandwiches (sometimes served with packaged potato chips), salads and lunch-size portions of steaks, poultry and seafood. Sweets always include fruit tarts and Mississippi mud pie.
A big wine list for a small place has a couple of dozen selections for tasting by the glass or flight. And excellent espresso and dessert wines top off the evening.
One of these days we'll spring for the Graham vintage port at $17.50 a glass; meanwhile, we enjoy the moderately priced St. Francis muscat and the Malvaxia from Virginia's Barboursville vineyards.
First-timers to the Dumbwaiter may be disconcerted by the calculated dishevelment of exposed brick and wood; Meers likes to give new life to old furnishings and fabrics. But patrons no doubt will leave comforted by the home-cooked updated bistro fare at reasonable prices.
Eating at the Dumbwaiter is as fundamental as the structure of a venerable building, as good-naturedly aesthetic as the diverse art work decorating nooks and walls.
The icon behind the shower curtains on the second floor says it all. A radiant Madonna framed in plastic fruit is hand-labeled ``our lady of perpetual kitsch.'' MEMO: Reviews are based on a single, unannounced visit by a party of four,
unless otherwise noted. The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star pay for
the reviewer's meal and those of the guests. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
ROY A. BAHLS
The new Dumbwaiter in downtown Norfolk employs a calculated
dishevelment of exposed brick and wood.
Graphic
BILL OF FARE
The Dumbwaiter
117 Tazewell St., Norfolk
623-3663
Cuisine: New Southern home cooking with personal touches.
Atmosphere: Idiosyncratic melange of uptown chic and
bargain-basement practicality spiced with local art and artifacts.
Park on Tazewell Street or at the d'Art Center metered lot at
Tazewell and Boush streets.
Prices: Lunches from $4.50 to $7.50; dinner, small and medium
courses, from $3.50 to $7.50; big courses from $7.75 to $15.75;
desserts from $2.80 to $3.50.
Hours: Lunch from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday;
dinner from 5 to 10:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday and from 5 to
11:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday; kitchen open until midnight on
Virginia Symphony, Virginia Opera and Virginia Stage Company
weekends.
Reservations: Not accepted, except for eight or more.
Smoking: about 20 percent downstairs, and in the Americana Room
upstairs.
by CNB