THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 29, 1996 TAG: 9609260041
SECTION: FLAVOR PAGE: F1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: MILES TO GO BEFORE I EAT
This is another in a series on regional restaurants that serve up food
in such a special way that people will drive miles just to eat there.
If 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: SURRY, VA. LENGTH: 185 lines
YOU COULD EASILY drive right by the Surrey House Restaurant and never give it a passing thought. That would be a pity. Maybe, if you took notice at all, you'd think, ``There's another one of those 1950s-vintage restaurants adjoining a small motel that are hallmarks along roads less traveled.''
Which is sort of what it is.
Surrey House is a low, white frame building with a green shingle roof and a cupola on top and a fading sign out front with a clock that seems to have a mind of its own, tick-tocking away in some other time zone.
Come to think of it, this little courthouse village is, in a way, in another time zone, if not another era. It's quiet, tranquil, light years away from the urban rat race. You can hear birds singing in the big white oak trees.
You could drive right by this place and never know what you're missing - a staggeringly filling meal of fine Southern cooking, for instance - UNLESS . .
That's always a good sign.
All the parking places out front are full. So is the lot in the back. I found a place across the road in the Baptist church lot, where you're welcome to park except during services.
The Surrey House Restaurant has been packing 'em in - there's room for 120 in two pine-paneled dining rooms - since Owen Gwaltney opened the doors in 1954. People who come here tend to come back. So do their children, and their children's children. And they tell their friends.
Mike Stevens, a Newport News restaurateur, bought the place in 1993 from Helen Gwaltney Lenox, the widow of the founder, who died in 1989.
Stevens, 36, has been in the restaurant business since he was 14. He instinctively knew not to mettle with a good thing. They best thing the Surrey House had going was the people who prepare and serve the food.
``Long-term employees are not the norm in the restaurant business,'' Stevens says. ``Here, it's different. Miss Elsie (Evens) has been in the kitchen since the place opened, and Miss Ann (Mavin) has been here more than 30 years. We have several more who have been here more than 10 years.''
Miss Elsie . . . Miss Ann. That's pure Old South.
What Stevens has done is ``lighten'' the menu a bit.
``We have a lot of senior citizens who are regulars,'' he says. ``You can't be serving a menu heavy on ham hocks these days. We've added a number of low-cholesterol items.''
Oh, my goodness. I should have read the menu more carefully. No, that wouldn't have mattered. My eyes went immediately to the special, and I would have ordered it no matter what. My cholesterol reading may hit four figures, but I'll take that news with a smile on my face.
Thank you, Mike Stevens, for not messing with the old stand-bys.
The special - the Surrey House Sampler priced at $15.95 - is special indeed: a buttery, flavorful, fresh-baked ham roll, a fried Chesapeake Bay crabcake with just enough fixins to hold the succulent meat together, a golden fried ham croquette and a tangy rack of barbecued ribs. That comes with two vegetables (I chose stewed tomatoes and baked apples, both excellent) and a choice of a cup of soup (vegetable or peanut) or a salad.
The salad bar was inviting, but when peanut soup is on the menu the decision is not difficult.
Peanut soup is a Virginia thing, and it's something you should understand if you're going to live here. It's made from peanuts pulverized to a powder and mixed with a chicken stock . . . in just the right proportions.
The Surrey House interpretation - people have been raving about it for years - is smooth, not too thick, with crumbled peanuts on top, and there is no hint of chicken stock. The raves are deserved. This may be as good as it gets.
The ham comes from just down the road at S. Wallace Edwards and Sons smokehouse, where they've been curing some of Virginia's finest hams - hand rubbing and dry curing with hickory smoke - for three generations.
The other little brown round things that come with the meal without your asking for them are hush puppies. If you're not from the South, maybe you need to be told: they are sort of little balls of deep-fried cornbread. They are quite good as they are; they are better buttered.
What makes eating at the Surrey House such a staggeringly fulfilling experience is the irresistible homemade desserts available to top off such a meal as this.
The choices include cobbler (apple or cherry) a la mode (French vanilla), peanut-raisin pie, lemon chess or coconut custard pie, peanut sundae and a Surrey House brownie supreme.
The latter ($3.50) consists of a hot brownie, topped with about a pint of ice cream and a generous sprinkling of crushed peanuts. I'd be inclined to declare it downright sinful, except I saw a nun at the next table eating one, so that couldn't be so.
I usually seek the advise of the waitress in making such decisions. Patricia, who had been particularly attentive throughout the meal, said that the peanut-raisin pie ($1.95) was the best seller. I'll go along with the crowd, particularly with this crowd of regulars.
It appeared much like a traditional pecan pie, with the peanuts and raisins held together with a thick, ultra-sweet filling that must have been made of sorghum molasses or brown sugar or caramel, or maybe all three. It was not unlike eating a candy bar.
If this meal seems a bit gargantuan, you could try the seafood combo dinner ($14.95), the crabcakes dinner ($14.95), the crabcake sandwich ($7.25), the Carolina-style barbecue plate ($7.50) or the barbecue sandwich ($3.95). They also have Southern fried chicken. But of course.
I'll try them all myself eventually, when I think up enough excuses to come back to this place, which, if it isn't exactly in the middle of nowhere, certainly it is not on the way to anywhere in particular.
What you have to do is think of it as a destination. It's worth the trip. A meal at the Surrey House makes it so.
If you want to make a day of it, also in the area are Chippokes Plantation State Park, Bacon's Castle and Smith Fort Plantation as well as the Edwards Smoke House, where you can take a ``taste of Surry'' home with you. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
STEPHEN HARRIMAN
Surrey House Restaurant
Map
VP
Photo
The Surrey House logo has a surrey with fringe on top.
Graphic
GETTING THERE
From South Hampton Roads, follow U.S. 17 west to Virginia 32 south
to Virginia 10 west to downtown Surry, then south on Virginia 31 for
a block.
How spellings came to differ
SURREY HOUSE Restaurant in Surry County. Do we have a spelling
problem here?
Sort of.
The Virginia county of Surry and its courthouse village of the
same name, were named, except for a spelling error, for the English
county of Surrey on the south side of the River Thames opposite
London.
In early Colonial times, back when rivers were highways, the land
on both the south and north sides of the James in this area were
part of James City County. Early on, the area on the south side of
the James was referred to as the ``Surrey side'' - Jamestown being
the crude and diminutive equivalent of London.
When the present county was formed in 1652, it took that name
officially, but it was spelled without the ``e'' through some
clerical error which no one has bothered to correct to this day.
The restaurant got it right.
Also named for Surrey, England, where it first appeared, was the
light, horse-drawn carriage that was a popular means of conveyance
in the 19th century and into this century. It had four wheels, two
seats and usually a flat top - often fringed, as immortalized in the
Rodgers and Hammerstein song ``The Surrey With the Fringe on Top.''
Such a surrey is part of the restaurant logo.
That misplaced ``e'' may have floated around the Colonial
clerical land for a year until the formation of Westmoreland County
on the Northern Neck, which was named (but also misspelled) for the
English county of Westmorland, no longer in existence.
In defense of Colonial clerks, uniform spelling of English words
is a relatively recent occurence. Dr. Samuel Johnson's landmark
``Dictionary'' did not appear until 1756.
There was, however, at least one earlier effort by Robert
Cawdray, published in 1604 under the title ``A Table
Alphebeticall,'' of ``hard vsuall English wordes'' compiled, he
said, ``for Ladies . . . or any other unskilled persons.''
- Stephen Harriman
THE SURREY HOUSE
Getting there: From South Hampton Roads, follow U.S. Route 17
west to Virginia Route 32 south to Virginia Route 10 west, past
Smithfield and through Bacon's Castle to the town of Surry, about 50
miles from downtown Norfolk. The Surrey House is on Virginia 31
about a block south of its intersection with Virginia 10 in
downtown Surry, and about 4 miles south of the Jamestown-Scotland
ferry ($4 toll).
Open: Seven days a week for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They
open at 5:30 a.m. weekdays for the farmers, 7:30 on weekends, and
close at 9 p.m.
Dress: Casual.
Bill of fare: Inexpensive to moderate.
Credit cards: All major cards accepted.
Libations: Domestic and imported beers and a selected wines from
Williamsburg Winery, by the glass or bottle.
Phone: (804) 294-3389.
The Surrey House logo has a surrey with fringe on top. by CNB