THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 15, 1996 TAG: 9609120042
SECTION: FLAVOR PAGE: F1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: MILES TO GO BEFORE I EAT
To our readers: This is another in an occasional series on regional
restaurants, plain and fancy, that serve up food in such a special way
that people will drive miles just to eat there. Maybe you know of such
a place. Call us at 446-2949; we'd like to check it out.
SOURCE: BY STEPHEN HARRIMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: STAUNTON, VA. LENGTH: 134 lines
IF I'M HEADED west beyond the Blue Ridge, I always try to leave just after breakfast, or just after lunch. That way I know I'll arrive in Staunton, where Interstate 64 joins Interstate 81, about lunch or dinner time.
In time for a meal at Mrs. Rowe's Family Restaurant and Bakery.
If you've never stopped here, you may think this is just peculiar travel planning, particularly for a guy. Guys don't like to stop anywhere. However, Mrs. Rowe's is a destination. It's imperative to stop. If you have stopped here, you know what I mean. I bet you're smiling right now.
I'm not alone. No, we're not alone, we devotees of Mrs. Rowe (rhymes with Wow!). In recent years, the restaurant has served around 400,000 meals annually, about half to travelers, half to locals.
To put this in some sort of perspective, the four taverns operated by Colonial Williamsburg - maybe you've stood outside one of them waiting your turn - collectively serve about 175,000 meals a year.
These 400,000 meals, of course, are not necessarily all served to different people. Locals, I know, come back again and again. If I lived in the Staunton area, I probably would account for about 361 of those meals (they're closed the other four days of the year).
The numbers alone are testimony to good food. But so is this entry in the guest book:
``We come all the way from the Black Hills to eat here once a year.''
(signed) Rapid City, S.D.
This place dates back to 1947. It wasn't Mrs. Rowe's then. It was a 40-seat roadside barbecue and steakhouse called Perk's owned by Willard Rowe. Mrs. Rowe, Mildred, entered the picture a little later. Willard met her in 1948. She was cooking in a restaurant in Goshen, down near Lexington. He liked her cooking and he liked Mildred. When they were married in 1953, he got both.
When Willard died in 1973, Mildred took over the business and transformed it into a family cooking establishment featuring home cooking, HER cooking.
She'll share it, too - by the plateful, of course, but also in her ``Mrs. Rowe's Favorite Recipes Cookbook'' ($10.95). Some recipes are ``original, some shared by good friends, some from long-lost sources, handed down from generation to generation.''
Since those early days, Mrs. Rowe's has grown by fits and starts - an addition here, a wing there - until there's seating for about 225. The walls of the dining rooms are covered with the works of P. Buckley Moss and other local artists. All seem to be for sale.
Today, the rambling barn-red wood frame restaurant is the centerpiece of a small family enterprise. Sandwiched between U.S. Route 250 and the railroad tracks, the restaurant, managed by son Michael DiGrassie, is bookended by a Virginia Made Shop, owned by British-born son-in-law Terry LeMasurier, and a motel in which the family has an interest.
Mrs. Rowe's is the sort of place where people stop after church before going on a Sunday drive - people still do that in the Shenandoah Valley - although that doesn't quiet explain why the parking lots are full of cars the other six days.
Well, yes, it does, which is the point I'm trying to make: this place serves good food, the same good food, every day of the week.
For instance, for $10.95 I had country ham and baked apples, candied yams, stewed tomatoes, a salad and, as a substitute for ordinary bread, spoonbread. My companion had, for $9.95, the pork chops and baked apples (they're an automatic with almost everything). Two of your basic southern meals.
The large slab of salty country ham is a valley classic. You have to have a taste for it, but if you do, this is as good as it gets. I'm not sure if I've ever ordered anything else.
I also always order spoonbread. To me it is the food of the gods. Mrs. Rowe's is very good (but then all spoonbread is), slightly coarse, something like grits. Maybe you have to be a Southerner to like either one.
I tried the tomatoes because they were recommended by the waitress. ``We used to have them only on certain days,'' she said, ``but our local clientele fussed and fussed, so now we have them every day.''
So do I, whenever I can.
Let me put it this way: I come up with several good ideas a year that could easily make me a millionaire, but I haven't carried through on any of them yet because I like what I'm doing so much. One of them, though, would be to buy this sweet stewed tomatoes recipe, patent it and sell the stuff in big canning jars. It is that delicious.
The risk would be that not everyone in the world would have my discriminating taste. But maybe I would improve the odds if I married the cook like Willard Rowe did.
For my most recent meal at Mrs. Rowe's, my companion and I zeroed in on two special desserts - peanut butter pie and hot apple pie with cinnamon ice cream, both $2.50 and worth it.
For some reason, I was expecting the peanut butter pie to be a pecan pie look-alike. Instead it looked more like a lemon meringue or banana cream pie. If you like peanuts smooth, you'll love this.
As for apple pie, well, what's more down-home America than apple pie? And this one's fresh from apple country. The cinnamon ice cream makes it virtually irresistible. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
STEPHEN HARRIMAN
Map
VP
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ABOUT MRS. ROWE'S
Getting there: From South Hampton Roads take Interstate 64 west
to Staunton, then Interstate 81 north (stay in right-hand lane) to
the first exit (222) for U.S. Route 250. You'll see the barn-red
building - with the full parking lot if it's mealtime - just to the
left across U.S. 250. It's about 200 miles to go before you eat;
figure on close to a four-hour drive.
Open: For breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week except
Christmas, New Year's Day, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July; 6:30
a.m. to 9 p.m. April 1 through Oct. 31, 6:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Nov. 1
through March 31, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sundays all year.
Dress: Casual.
Prices: Complete dinners about $10, desserts about $2.50.
To take away: ``Mrs. Rowe's Favorite Recipes Cookbook'' ($10.95),
plus beef rib sauce, pork barbecue sauce and preserves: peach,
strawberry, blueberry, raspberry and cherry. The bakery offers
bread, rolls, biscuits, cinnamon buns, muffins, pecan sticky buns,
pies, cookies, donuts, eclairs and cream puffs.
Restaurant info: (540) 886-1833.
Staunton (pop. about 25,000) was named in honor of the wife of
Colonial Lt. Gov. Sir William Gooch, Lady Rebecca Staunton, when it
was laid out as a town in 1748. The original pronunciation
apparently was STAWN-t'n, and no one knows why local residents
firmly insist that it be pronounced STAN-t'n. But it's their town.
Staunton is the home of the Museum of American Frontier Culture.
President Woodrow Wilson was born in the Presbyterian manse in 1856;
now a shrine, it is open to the public. The city offers a walking
tour brochure.
Staunton info: (540) 886-2351. Frontier Culture Museum: (540)
337-7850. Woodrow Wilson Birthplace: (540) 885-0897. by CNB