THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 17, 1995 TAG: 9509140069
SECTION: FLAVOR PAGE: F1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL RUEHLMANN SPECIAL TO FLAVOR
LENGTH: Long : 171 lines
A WEEK BEFORE Bobbywood - the exuberant, eye-bursting, lime-and-lemon-colored confection of an eatery - opened at Wards Corner in Norfolk, chef Bobby Huber slumped against the wall, sneezing.
Dust was thick in the air from ripsaws applying themselves vigorously to various surfaces. Electricity periodically came on and went off to an alternating whizz and wind-down of power tools. Open cans of foam sealant and wood finish sat on stacks of boards and boxes and little piles of light bulbs.
As if in protest against all this functional but nonculinary disarray, a solitary tin of sliced pineapple reposed decorously upon the fireplace, like an old bowling trophy.
``Finally,'' sighed Huber, blowing his embattled nose, ``it's mine.''
The establishment, in shape and attitude, had at last recognizably crossed the line from what it was - Jerry's beer bar, a bakery and an ice cream outlet - to what it would become, Huber's place, with the wild red-and-white neon star and the sturdy tables and the wall-long upholstered banquette, plus the open kitchen and the recessed cigar room and the massy cartoon mural almost as big as his aspirations.
Hooray for Bobbywood!
``It is,'' Huber reported, ``everything I ever wanted in a restaurant.''
The chef, only 28 and just seven years out of the Navy, was homing in on his dream, a restaurant with his own stamp on it where he could cook himself into a coma for adoring customers.
Call him the Horatio Alger of the Wood-Burning Pizza Oven.
``Bobby will do anything to be in a restaurant,'' said mentor and veteran Hampton Roads superchef Monroe Duncan. ``He loves it. Bobby will go in at 4 or 5 in the morning and make his famous cinnamon rolls, the food will be fabulous, he will work himself to death. He doesn't care as long as somebody can say to him at the end of the evening, `Dinner was delicious.' ''
Duncan, space-age chic in aviator shades and box-hedge beard, appears on the Bobbywood mural by whimsical Portsmouth painter Adam Fell. So does King Kong, gesturing hypnotically over a mock-up Wards Corner skyline. Duncan, of course, looms larger than Kong.
Also present in the picture is Blue Crab Raw Bar & Grille co-owner Patty Perry.
``Bobby likes what he does and he does it well,'' Perry said. ``He set goals early in life. He put in a lot of long hours.''
Portrayed, too, on Huber's wall is Dumbwaiter owner Sydney Meers.
``Bobby's a very hard worker,'' Meers said. ``He likes to please you and wants to make you happy when you eat with him. And he's very cool in the kitchen.'' RUMPLED AND READY
Showtime.
Now Bobbywood is open. The white chairs are in place, the kitchen is humming, the clientele is providing requisite purrs. But Huber, though unsneezing this night in the dustless air-conditioning, appears precisely as he did amid the construction, rumpled but blissful in a once-white apron beneath a dark crewcut and bristling Van Dyke.
At 5-foot-7, the 240-pound chef sports a gold earring and a grin, presenting the appearance of a raffishly piratical snowman.
``Even in the military I got ragged for my uniform,'' concedes Huber. ``I was always more concerned about getting the job done than how I looked. Consequently, I was the one with my head in the grease pit.''
It was ever so. Huber's earliest culinary memory is of wandering back into one of his father's Florida kitchens and spilling a pot of spaghetti water all over himself. He has spent the years since similarly, throwing himself into his work.
``My dad was a chef and restaurant person big time,'' Hurber recalls, ``Italian, French, German, American. He wasn't a great chef or a great businessman, but he was a good all-around person, and he taught me to work very, very hard. That was my biggest influence.''
Huber grew up on Merritt Island, Fla., near Cocoa Beach, and was scrubbing kitchens before he was 10. At 12 he washed dishes at the local Red Lobster - 1,700 dinners on a steamy Friday night. His ambition: One day he would not be washing dishes.
One day he would have his own place.
Huber moved up to prep cook at 14, turning out sheet pan after sheet pan of garlic bread and baked potatoes. He worked all the way through his junior and senior high school years, rising to kitchen manager at Capt. Ed's Seafood and lunch chef at The Mango Tree. Graduating at 17, he enlisted in the Navy, insisting on becoming a cook.
He served four years on subs, among them the USS Atlanta, based in Norfolk. His plan: to get a little discipline and a sense of responsibility. And then to get out.
``You can't get rich in the Navy,'' Huber explains.
He mustered out as a second-class petty officer and went to work at a Ramada Inn in Virginia Beach, then moved to the now-defunct Crusoe's Cellar in Norfolk. Huber wanted to improve himself as a culinary artist. Who could help him?
``Chefs in the area told me Monroe Duncan was the guy to get with,'' Huber says. ``He knew everything. So I started to bug him.''
Like a battalion of bees.
``He had such a yearning, such a drive, such a motivation to be a chef,'' Duncan remembers.
Duncan took Huber under his wing at the Blue Crab in Ocean View. He encouraged him to study culinary arts at Johnson & Wales University. Duncan was a pyrotechnic taskmaster.
After one particularly animated altercation, Huber sprayed his instructor thoroughly with Pam. There was a dramatic pause. Then Duncan, impassive, dribbled a full quart of half-and-half atop Huber's short-haired skull.
They remained friends; and when Duncan departed the Blue Crab, he left Huber in charge of the kitchen.
``I've never seen such drive and motivation in a person,'' Duncan testifies.
Huber remained at the Blue Crab for two years and opened Sweet Bird of Youth in Norfolk. He next went to Fire & Ice in Hampton. Huber and owner Michael Toepper began Victoria's Fire in Williamsburg, which Huber now calls ``kind of a mistake.''
``We were close to Kingsmill,'' Huber says. ``We watched the traffic going into Busch Gardens and the traffic coming out. Nobody stopped.''
But he continued to string his associations into an unbroken chain of relentless self-improvement.
Huber last worked at the Ships Cabin for two years, then left to establish Bobbywood.
``It's here,'' he exults. His wife, Anita, who shares his outward-bound enthusiasm, runs the office and the front of the house. She admires her husband's steadiness.
``When everything is going crazy in the kitchen,'' Anita Huber notes, ``Bobby is a rock.''
Mary Onderdonk, dining editor of Port Folio magazine, pronounces Huber ``tireless.''
``He's got the biggest heart in the world,'' she says. ``Bobby has a particular flair for pairing foods and wines. He has an exceptional palate.'' A TASTE OF THE MENU
Which brings us to the eats, an interesting melange of styles and ingredients the chef calls ``creative American fusion.''
Huber's signature dish is a savory onion-crusted salmon fillet with spinach potato cakes and sage cream. He's also particularly proud of his pizzas, notably the roast garlic puree, wild mushroom and four-cheese version. But let's move through a menu, which changes at least weekly.
Soup: chilled cream of avocado with Casey's lump crabmeat.
Salad: spinach, romaine and arugala tossed with walnuts, dried tomatoes, Danish blue cheese and herb croutons, topped with fresh grated Asiago cheese.
Sandwich: panini stuffed with rosemary-scented chicken, fontina cheese, spinach, portabella salad and chili oil.
Lunch: tuna, scallops and Prince Edward Island mussels in sherry cream, with bow-tie pasta and fresh spinach.
Dinner: grilled lump crabcakes with garlic grits, grilled summer squash and papaya cocktail sauce.
Dessert: chocolate and amaretto ``sin pie'' with Oreo cookie crust, served with a drizzle of raspberry sauce and creme anglaise.
``I've always dreamed of being in the limelight and being successful,'' Huber says.
He has certainly accomplished the first part. The bright emerald shout of Bobbywood has emphatically changed the face of Wards Corner. Miss Eve, 72, the regal lady who first served beer over the bar at Jerry's on this site in 1956, continues to work for Huber. He is, she reports, ``nice to people.'' When they cut three windows through the formerly solid front wall, Miss Eve smiled:
``I felt like I was getting out of jail.''
She is not one for nostalgia.
``It might be for the best,'' Miss Eve said. ``So many liquor bars are going in, people had been drifting away. Most of my old customers are in Forest Lawn.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MARK MITCHELL/Staff
``I've always dreamed of being in the limelight and being
successful,'' says Bobby Huber. The mural in his new restaurant,
Bobbywood, features caricatures of his culinary pals.
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