THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 1, 1996 TAG: 9512300299
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 8 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, BUSINESS WEEKLY
DATELINE: WILLIAMSBURG LENGTH: Long : 113 lines
Restaurants abound in Hampton Raods. More than 2,200 were open at last count. But only one carries AAA's highest rating - the Five Diamond. Here's how Ford's Colony near Williamsburg obtained tthe crowning gem.
The Dining Room at Ford's Colony is your basic American restaurant serving short ribs, pork roast, salmon and the like.
Well OK , the salmon comes ``wrapped in potato lattice with tiny french beans and parmesan sauce,'' the short ribs are accompanied by ``white truffle potatoes, roasted root vegetables and veal braising reduction.''
The pork roast? Hang on. That comes filled with ``mushrooms, herbs and confit in a pastry ring with vegetables, whipped Yukon potatoes and a natural reduction.''
Maybe this isn't an average American restaurant after all, or at least that's what the American Automobile Association concluded in November when it awarded Ford's Colony its Five Diamond rating for the first time.
The Dining Room at Ford's Colony joined eight other restaurants in receiving the award for the first time, and became one of only 34 restaurants in the country to make the list.
After attending to all the details necessary to win the rating, Ford's Colony's staff had to keep the award quiet from August - when AAA told them - until late November, after the award ceremony at the St. Regis Hotel in New York.
``I think everybody who's involved in the club, when we first got it, wanted to call everybody they knew,'' said Richard Ford Jr., president of Realtec, the Atlanta company that developed the restaurant and resort complex. ``You felt like a kid at Christmastime waiting to open the presents.''
Now that the Five-Diamond rating is official, Ford's Colony is reprinting its stationary to trumpet the achievement. For Chef David Everett, the award is a crowning gem only made possible through years of incremental, minute improvements to The Dining Room - an unpretentious name for an exquisite restaurant.
Seemingly insignificant flaws like the noise a wine or water glass makes when someone sits it back down on a table often mean the difference between a Four Diamond restaurant and a Five Diamond one. Ford's Colony was rated Four Diamonds the three years preceding 1995.
The 35-year-old Everett came to Ford's Colony five and a half years ago, when the restaurant had been open only two and a half years. Everett didn't learn to serve fancy meals from a highbrow culinary school. He was introduced to the business growing up in Florida when he took a summer job at what turned out to be a good restaurant.
Even after college, though, he didn't become a chef right away - he worked as a high school history teacher - but found that he missed the restaurant business.
By the time he got the job of running the food side of Ford's Colony Country Club, part of a 2,500-acre resort golfing community in Williamsburg, his marching orders were simple: take The Dining Room to the next level.
Everett knew the restaurant was already very good, but there's no proven recipe for creating a dining room comparable to just a few dozen others in the country. Fewer than half of 1 percent of the 31,000 places listed in AAA tourbooks get the Five Diamond rating.
``They're not too concerned about helping you get the award,'' Everett said. ``They don't go a long way in educating you. No one's telling you how to do it.''
Everett and a staff of 50 had a hurdle that many other top-notch restaurants don't: while operating The Dining Room, they also cook and serve food at the country club's cafe, Men's Grille, Grille Room and banquet facilities.
``Usually, you have one staff that does just this dining room,'' Everett said of other Five Diamond restaurants, ``but we do all the rooms. That is very unusual for this industry.''
The award is as much about how the food is served and the waitstaff's knowledge of the food and wine as it is about the taste of the food, Everett said. Ford's Colony holds wine tastings so the staff can become familiar with the list, advertised as the largest selection in the state.
The staff learns that ashtrays are for ashes - not cigarette butts - and should be emptied as soon as a cigarette is extinguished. Silver is chilled for cold desserts, at room temperature for hot desserts. Dining tables are padded, so when a patron sits down a wine glass it doesn't make a sound.
A poor silver selection, the wrong glass for red or white wine, the lack of fresh flowers. . . any of those things could keep a restaurant from achieving Five Diamond status.
``It's tough,'' Everett said. ``In this area there's a lot of young waiters, college students, not professional waiters like New York. But that's our problem - it's not the public's problem.''
Another difficulty is pricing. Ford's Colony generally buys its ingredients, silver and crystal from the same places as a Five Diamond restaurant in New York, but can't charge the same, Everett said.
The most expensive item on The Dining Room's menu is ``Seared Jumbo Ocean Scallops'' at $25, but he said most items would be $10 higher - or more - at comparable restaurants in New York or Philadelphia. Competitive pressures of the local market just won't let Ford's Colony charge that much.
The cuisine at The Dining Room is ``American regional,'' which Everett says essentially means the menu is eclectic.
Under the restaurant's first chef, a friend of Everett's who recommended him for the job, the cuisine was Continental European. That wasn't Everett's specialty, and he thought American cuisine gave the restaurant more flexibility.
``We use a lot of Asian influence, Italian, French - that's what makes up American,'' he said. ``We try to buy the product locally, and if that quality level doesn't reach what we want, then we start looking elsewhere.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo on cover by Jim Walker, The Virginian-Pilot
David Everett...
Color photos by Jim Walker, The Virginian-Pilot
Ford's Colony...
Chef David Everett...in dining room...
by CNB