THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 20, 1996 TAG: 9603200478
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
A revival of the old-fashioned downtown tearoom may not be as remote as we had thought.
A recent column about four tearooms that formerly graced Norfolk caught the eye of Bob Smithwick, Norfolk's director of development.
He sent a copy to The Taubman Co., developer of MacArthur Center mall, and noted that Mary Lucy Nichols, former manager of the Smith and Welton Tearoom, could supply recipes from the menu.
As the mall project moves along, Smithwick said, ``We may be able to get the Taubman people to turn that nostalgia into reality.''
And then the other day, a friend in Baltimore mentioned that she was taking her children to lunch in Nordstrom department store, their favorite place to eat.
With a Nordstrom slated for MacArthur Center, maybe we will again revel in a piquant cheese sandwich. Several readers sent recipes for that famous spread, each of which differed slightly from the others. But Mary Lucy knows how to concoct it in vast quantities for a restaurant.
Among tearoom-minded readers was Sarah Tomlin of Chesapeake, who found Smith and Welton a haven as aromas from the tearoom balcony spread through the store.
She also recalled a Memphis tearoom with red-eye gravy. Now we are talking Southern cooking!
Louise Barnes of the Norfolk Convention and Visitors Bureau writes of Grapenut pudding at Smith and Welton. When it closed, she experimented in vain with a box of Grapenuts and wrote the company. It sent her a booklet without word of Grapenut pudding. If I had to mention that cereal one more time in this paragraph, I'd fall, famished, to the floor.
Jane Byrne remembers Famous Barr's onion soup in St. Louis, chicken salad a la Lazarus in Kansas City and chocolate cake in Richmond, Ind. ``I agree that it is time for their return,'' she writes.
``Here's to grace and style and may good food reign supreme!'' writes Jeanne Olhrich, thinking of treats at Smith and Welton, W.G. Swartz, and Ames and Brownley.
Recent mention of piquant sandwiches made Elizabeth Kunkle so hungry she went into the kitchen ``and fixed one for lunch.''
From Portsmouth, Walter M. Edmunds hopes that city includes a tearoom in revitalizing downtown. He also is seeking a recipe for piquant cheese. Let me go over these varied versions and come up with one with the best of all of them.
Linda Buckingham offers a recipe given her by Edith Gomer. It can be found in Vonnie Edwards' ``Celebrating Our 70th Year,'' available in Williamsburg at the Old Virginia Ham Shoppe on Route 60.
A card from Cheri Patten notes that piquant cheese is on the menu at Abbies, 9619 Granby St., along with other delicacies.
Pamela Hadden recalls yeast rolls so light they ``almost floated.''
On a night flight, she saw downtown aglow with Christmas lights. Coming back to life, it ``will give memories for our grandchildren.'' by CNB