Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Favorite restaurants that closed this year
Larry Bly
Larry Bly runs an ad agency and does freelance writing in the Roanoke area.
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A lot of restaurants here open and close in any year. Some never catch on; others don't have the capital to survive lean times, and some are opened by people who don't have clue -- they think a restaurant is license to print money. It isn't. It's hard work and know-how.
But occasionally, even a popular restaurant closes. We lost a few this year, and I'm going to pay homage to four deserving ones:
The Villa Sorrento The Villa was a local favorite for decades when it was on Patterson Avenue. It was in a house in the middle of a neighborhood. We all went there to meet old friends, to have a few laughs, and to enjoy the basic Italian fare. While the restaurant would eventually expand into a large back room, I always preferred the original front room. When possible, I'd grab a darkly-lit back table. Famous for its faux grapes hanging from everywhere (well, heck, they were fake grapes) and the intimate setting, the Villa played host to families, friends, enemies, rich and poor. We all loved The Villa.
The Provenzano family operated the place all those years and I watched the kids grow into adults. I saw their kids' sports trophies fill the corner of the front room. I observed Rosa holding forth at the cash register night after night. I don't think I ever saw her actually use the cash register. Rather, she stood beside it and tabulated your bill with a pencil on the back of some cardboard. It must have been a generational thing: My Aunt Tootsie, who raised me, always wrote her weekly grocery list on the back of a Lipton Tea box. For years I thought that we couldn't afford paper.
There were rumors of some kind of gambling operation upstairs at The Villa. I never believed it for a minute. But sometimes there were a dozen cars on the lot, but only me in the dining room. Wonder what tipped the police? True or not, it was all a part of the restaurant's allure. That and the hanging grapes.
My best friend in the world, forever, Marty Hall, and I would go there frequently, just a few blocks from our ad agency, then on Campbell Avenue. We had some great times. On cold nights we could hardly wait for the bread rolls, made from pizza dough, to arrive piping hot. Sadly, my great pal Marty is gone now and so is the laughter that once filled the rooms at The Villa.
Alas, the move to Williamson Road just didn't work, once Rosa and Joe retired -- though it continued to be family-owned and operated. They kept the family recipes -- and they worked real hard -- but sometimes location IS everything. Turns out The Villa was a neighborhood restaurant. Once that changed, it was never the same.
Cafe Succotash, Vinton A great restaurant in an unlikely location, Cafe Succotash was an instant success story. People were passionate about Chef Drew's menu -- morning, noon or night --and Sunday brunch with its crab Benedict and redeye gravy with cat head biscuits. I ate there a lot. I took plenty of friends along. The menu was varied and interesting; the specials always worth a try.
I'll miss their famous pea cakes and other delicious curiosities they introduced to the Roanoke Valley. No doubt about it, they had quite a following. Another restaurant will soon open there. I wish them well, but they've got mighty big shoes to fill.
What happened? People ask me all the time, but at the risk of hurting wonderful people, we'll just say they came to the same end of other failed restaurants: too many bills, too little money.
My last lunch there was sad. The lunch menu that once ran up to six pages was reduced to a half dozen items. The Muzak was unplugged. The crowds had dwindled. But the Cafe Succotash will long live in my memory as a great little restaurant, even if it did meet an unfortunate and untimely end.
Hunter's Grille, Patrick Henry Hotel, downtown Roanoke -- Long before Frankie Rowland's Steakhouse on Jefferson Street, or the late Great 611 Steakhouse on the City Market, there was Hunter's Grille. The place set a worthy standard for local steakhouses: very upscale and very good. Expensive, but top-notch.
There was the dramatic table-side salad making presentation. Then your wait-person would come around with what I lovingly called "The Meat Wagon," a movable table with each cut of beautiful meat and seafood offered for the evening. The steaks were as thick as a phone book and tender as butter.
Even the room itself, dark and paneled, was to my liking, though the tables were a bit snug. But if you knew other diners it made it easier to converse across the room with them, which I did sometimes.
Next door was the sweet little bar. You could pop in there for a drink, a smoke, or even a sandwich if you didn't want a sit-down meal in the dining room.
Hunter's kept its standards high through thick and thin and a succession of chefs. I was disappointed and sad when it closed. Now Frankie Rowlan's is only one upscale steakhouse downtown -- a class act, no doubt. The Patrick Henry Hotel is now sort of in between being a hotel or an assisted living home; a catering business operates out of the old Hunter's space. Who knows if there will ever be a restaurant in this spot again.
The Little Chef, Williamson Road -- This restaurant was a Roanoke institution for decades. It was a great family place with a lounge and good home-cooked food.
When I came to Roanoke in the '70s, you could pile into the Little Chef any time of the day or night for food. The bar crowd congregated there in the wee hours to wind down before heading home. The waitresses were saucy and savvy. They'd seen and heard it all, yet they managed to treat you nicely and to get the orders right.
The kitchen turned out plates piled high with delicious homemade mashed potatoes, gravy, steak or hamburgers. A grill cook often took pressure off the back kitchen by fixing the eggs and other short-order items out front.
Back in the kitchen, Mabel (I never knew her full name) could cook better food than anyone. The wait staff would yell back to her, "more mashed potatoes, Mabel." Once in a while I'd stick my head through the swinging kitchen doors to kid with her, but only for a second. She was never too busy to smile, but always too busy to linger more than a moment. When she left, the soul went out of the building, the kitchen and the food.
The last operator opened Little Chef II in Vinton. It lasted only a few months. As 2004 wore on, the original Little Chef on Williamson began to look pretty rough around the edges. The crowds disappeared; I often thought it looked closed long before it actually did. Someone's painting the place up again and maybe yet another aspiring operator will give it a try. Who knows, they just might breathe another breath into the old girl yet again. But we'll always miss our Mabel.
Bly for now, and happy new year!
