THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 21, 1996 TAG: 9607180015
SECTION: FLAVOR PAGE: F1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: MILES TO GO BEFORE I EAT
SOURCE: BY STEPHEN HARRIMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WAKEFIELD, VA. LENGTH: 147 lines
I DON'T COME THIS WAY much any more, but I've had the Virginia Diner on my mind ever since two ladies who work there gave me a bag of peanuts when I saw them back in the spring at the Races at Marengo.
After that, I could no more have resisted a return trip than I could resist a cup of peanut soup once I got here. Both the diner and the soup are something special.
The Virginia Diner, you see, is the Peanut Capital of the World. It says so, right on the logo and the menu and everywhere else they can think of to proclaim it. Virginia's first commercial peanut crop was grown right here in Sussex County in 1844.
Today, the agricultural landscape is dominated by big silver-gray corrugated metal storage barns, warehouses, silos and elevators, from which emerge long silver-gray conveyer pipes. This is where the peanuts go when they come out of the ground. This is peanut country.
If you thought Suffolk was the peanut capital of the world, well, welcome to another aspect of regional pride. . . and jealousy.
It may not be as big a deal as the Norfolk-Virginia Beach factionalism over water, light rail transportation and who's paying what for a stadium, but it ain't peanuts, either.
What the Virginia Diner has done, besides serve really good home-cookin' for 67 years, is start up an international mail-order business.
They sell tins and buckets and baskets and bags of Virginia Jumbo peanuts, peanut brittle, peanut soup mix, peanutty pie, peanutty chocolate rownie, plus a lot of other delicious things like grape jelly, apple butter and honey.
Maybe I've confused you. Maybe you're wondering, what is this place, a diner or a store, or what?
Well, it's not really a diner. Not any more. It's a 125-seat restaurant, bright and airy, with rotating ceiling fans, bentwood chairs, red-and-white checkered tablecloths and space for private dining. But it used to be a diner.
It was just a single refurbished Sussex, Surry and Southampton Railroad car when Mrs. D'Earcy Davis began serving hot biscuits and vegetable soup to hungry travelers back in 1929.
Back then, if you were driving a car like they had in the '20s and you were driving on roads like Virginia had in the '20s - most throughout the U.S. were little more than unpaved horse highways, and Virginia's were worse than most - you didn't need a real big excuse to stop.
Particularly if you were on this road. U.S. 460 runs straight as the railroad track it follows for long stretches, and it's about as boring a road as you'd want to drive.
Before the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel and Interstate 64, this used to be the main road from Richmond to Norfolk and the beach. . . and from Norfolk to the state capital, through places called Zuni and Ivor and Wakefield and on toward Waverly. Wakefield was about halfway, a good place to stop.
Anyway, the reason the Virginia Diner is STILL the place to stop if you happen to be going this way is because - well, yes, because your grandparents stopped here and so did Momma and Daddy - but mostly because the food is still good. Real good.
The Monahan family took over from Mrs. Davis in 1945, and the Galloway clan, proprietors since 1976, have maintained the tradition of down-home country cooking.
Peanut soup. That's a given for a starter. A cup is $1.30. It's made from peanuts pulverized to a powder and mixed with a chicken stock. There's some other stuff in it for seasoning, but that's a secret. It's served, thick as elementary school paste and tan as mud, with a handful of crispy peanuts sprinkled on top.
Virginia Diner peanuts are particularly crispy. I understand they boil them in water, then roast then in a special vegetable oil, which may be secret, too, to make them that way.
Peanut soup, I suppose, is not very pretty, but I think it is delicious. It's a very Virginia thing. Yankees probably wouldn't like it. But then they don't like grits, either, so what do they know.
For an entree, I chose the ham and chicken combo ($8.05) - two pieces of fried chicken, golden and flaky crisp, and very thinly sliced (the only proper way) country ham, salty but not overly so.
The meal came with a choice of two vegetables from a list of 14. I had green beans, which unfortunately were not fresh, and stewed corn, which was excellent, stewed with pigmeat and slightly sweet. I picked spoonbread as a substitute for biscuits. There's no such thing as bad spoonbread, but this was better than most. For the uninitiated, spoonbread is a sophisticated cousin of cornbread, baked sort of soft and mushy so that it has to be dipped out with a spoon.
Ice tea (95 cents), topped off this typical Southern dinner.
Well, not quite.
``I can't let you get out of here without you trying one of our homemade desserts,'' said my attentive waitress, Shannon.
No, of course not.
The list included peanut, apple and lemon or chocolate chess pies, peanut rownie, rownie sundae, cobblers and the usual assortment of ice cream flavors (including peanut ripple). The lemon chess pie ($1.50) was outstanding.
They've had a new dessert for a month or so, Shannon told me. It's called a Virginia Diner ChocoNutterButter cheesecake. Tempting . . . until she told me it was made in New York City.
New York City! I had to say no thank you very much to that.
That's not my cup of peanuts.
Not at the Virginia Diner. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN/The Virginian-Pilot
The 125-seat Virginia Diner began in 1929 as a single refurbished
railroad car where travelers could fill up on biscuits and soup.
Map
VP
Graphic
Many local towns owe their names to books
You know how those Southside Virginia towns got their names? From
books.
Mrs. Billy Mahone named them. She loved books, particularly
English literature.
Her husband, Confederate Maj. Gen. William Mahone of Southampton
County, survived six major battles of the Civil War - Seven Pines,
Malvern Hill, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Wilderness and North
Anna - and became a Virginia immortal when he rallied three brigades
and repulsed a Federal attack after the explosion of the mine at
Petersburg.
After the war, the diminutive ``hero of the Crater'' and post-war
political leader founded what eventually became the Norfolk and
Western Railroad, now part of Norfolk Southern. He let his wife name
some of the whistle stops along the route.
Wakefield was named for Oliver Goldsmith's novel, the ``Vicar of
Wakefield.''
Mrs. Mahone was especially fond of Sir Walter Scott. Zuni, Ivor
and Waverly (the novel is spelled Waverley) are names from works by
Scott, as is Ivanhoe in Wythe County in far southwestern Virginia,
where Gen. Billy's railroad went to pick up coal.
U.S. Highway 460, which follows the railroad most of the way
west, is called, through these parts, the Gen. Mahone Highway.
Getting to The Virginia Diner: From South Hampton Roads, take
Military Highway or Interstates 64 or 264, whichever is most
convenient, to Bowers Hill, and from there U.S. 460 (Gen. Mahone
Highway) west to Wakefield. You can't miss the Diner. It's right on
the road, where all the cars are parked. It's about 45 miles or a
one-hour drive from downtown Norfolk.
Open: Every day except Christmas for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Dress: Casual.
Menu: Southern country.
Prices: Inexpensive to moderate - large breakfast about $7.50,
large lunch or dinner about $13.
Info: For the restaurant, call (800) 399-DINE (3463); for a
brochure on Virginia food products for sale, call (800) 868-NUTS
(6887). They're even on the World Wide Web at
hppt://www.infi.net/vadiner. by CNB