THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 6, 1996 TAG: 9610030070
SECTION: FLAVOR PAGE: F1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: MORSELS
SOURCE: RUTH FANTASIA
LENGTH: 64 lines
YOU WON'T find the Caribbean Cookie Co. store in the mall, in a shop downtown or even along the resort strip. If you look carefully for the little yellow sign on the nondescript building on Central Drive in Virginia Beach, you might see it. But I doubt it.
You'll probably go to the end of the drive, which is in an industrial park near Oceana, realize you must've missed it and turn around and go back. If you're lucky, you'll see the large street numbers on 513 and figure out that 515, the number for the Caribbean Cookie Co., has to be next door.
Once you're there, you may as well have found the gold at the end of the rainbow. For there's gold behind those walls. Golden slabs of butter being shoved into a super-size mixer by head baker Michael Mathews.
Butter is a key ingredient in Caribbean Cookie Co. cookies. You can taste it in every bite of any of the four varieties. There are Island Butter cookies, also flavored with cream cheese, vanilla and a hint of lemon; Pirate's Pleasure, a white chocolate and macadamia nut cookie with a bit of mango and amaretto; Tropical Treasure, which blends pineapple, banana, coconut, chocolate chips, rum and cashews; and Virgin Spice cookies, an almost ginger snap combination of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice and molasses.
Step into the little showroom, which opened to the public on Monday, and you catch the scent of butter and spices. Your eyes dance on the pinks, blues, greens and yellows of a Caribbean store filled with sculptures, prints, teas and cookies. Lots of cookies in colorful little boxes and tins. Even the baking room is bright with its blue floor, yellow walls and pink storage racks.
For a nondescript beige brick building in an industrial park, this store screams FUN.
So stop by and have some fun - and some cookies. They sell freshly baked batches ($6.95 to 7.95 a pound), boxes ($3 to $7.50 depending on size) or collector tins ($14.95 for 17.9 ounces). After you smell them, you won't be able to resist.
The Caribbean Cookie Co. is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays through Fridays at 515 Central Drive, Virginia Beach. If you want to order by phone, call 631-6767 or (800) 326-5200. By fax, call 631-1725. QUICK QUALITY
``Quick doesn't have to mean fast food,'' says David Blackstock, owner of Cracker's at 8821 W. 21st St., Norfolk. The eatery is now open for lunch serving vegetarian, poultry or meat curry with basmati rice, relishes and breads for $5.95. The goal is to get the food on the table fast so you have time to enjoy it before heading back to work. Curry has been one of the restaurant's most popular dinner items, according to a press release.
Take-out and delivery are available, call 640-0200. FOR A GOOD CAUSE
Dine Out to Help Out, the annual program where you eat out and the restaurants donate at least 10 percent of the night's proceeds to the Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia, will be held Oct. 15. More than 70 area restaurants are participating. To find out if your favorite dining spot is among them, call the Foodbank at 624-1333. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
BETH BERGMAN/The Virginian-Pilot
You can taste the large helpings of butter cooked into all Caribbean
Cookie Co. products. by CNB