THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 29, 1996 TAG: 9601290155
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
Let us hope that when the MacArthur Center opens in 1998, it will have a nook with an old-time tearoom.
For nearly a century, most cities had at least one tearoom, and downtown Norfolk reveled in four fine mid-sized department stores, each with a distinctive tearoom with mouth-watering menus and modest prices.
Those of us who knew tearooms from childhood would be fanatical patrons today, as would our offspring and their children.
Mothers once took daughters to the tearooms to rehearse their manners. Fathers introduced sons early to the tasty dishes.
Norfolk's longest-surviving tearoom at Smith and Welton (1917-1988) served lemon chess pies, a pure delight, and, during Christmas holidays, sold them to take out.
Picking up a dozen, I remarked, ``Nobody else buys this many, I guess.''
``A young man bought 22 an hour ago,'' said the waitress.
``Who was that?'' I asked, amazed.
``Your son,'' she said.
At Plume and Bank streets was W.G. Swartz (1896-1964), where one could feast on Southern ambrosia and palm-size sea-fresh fish, Ocean View spot.
One of three department stores on Granby Street was Ames and Brownley (1898-1973), which created a confection, Mary Anne, a cake topped by ice cream, topped by whipped cream, topped by a cherry and laced with chocolate sauce.
Rice's tearoom (1918-1985) offered Grapenuts pudding, a subtle flavor one mulled over even as one ate. The vegetable soup was bracing.
Smith and Welton opened at nights on Friday, and one often saw in the evening the same smiling faces one had seen at lunch.
Calling us back was chicken salad with homemade mayonnaise, gravy-smothered roasted chicken, thick-seamed coconut cake with icing bristling with fresh shredded coconut and a sandwich of ``piquante'' cheese that haunts me to this minute.
Pronounced peekwent or even pickwick, depending on the waitress, it had an unmatched tang. I weep as I write of it.
During a four-day convention of Baptists at Scope, their leaders were so enthralled with Smith and Welton that they arranged to have the tearoom opened every night, as well as for lunch. They couldn't believe the prices or the food.
The shapers of the MacArthur Center would do well to replicate the old-fashioned tearoom that people throughout the United States adored.
At hand to advise them is Mary Lucy Nichols, the guiding spirit of Smith and Welton's Tearoom for 43 years. She has the menus, the recipes and the know-how to revive our memory into reality.
Why, a fellow called me from San Francisco once, begging me for the recipe of the peekwent pickwick cheese sandwich! by CNB