Food News: Restaurants for sale, rebooting, and opening

The summer of restaurant reboots continues! Plus a new restaurants opens (soon), one goes up for sale, and Hardywood gets into a kerfuffle with the tax collectors.

August 8, 2013; 7:43 AM • by Ross Catrow

Hey! The first Carytown Dishcrawl is next Tuesday, August 13th! If you’re stuck in a rut visiting the same ol’ Carytown spots for dinner, spice things up with this mystery tour of four Carytown restaurants, $45 for a ticket (booze sold separately).

And, hey, check this out! We’ve got one single ticket to give away to you fine folks. Enter to win here.

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After closing in June, the Nile returns! They took a couple of weeks off to retool the concept a bit and rework the menu to make it more (financially) friendly to students. They’re open for dinner right this very minute, and will be opening for weekend lunch starting August 9th with weekday lunch to follow.

The Nile is located at 309 N. Laurel Street.

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Constantine Giavos, son of local restaurateurs Johnny and Katrina Giavos, tweeted last week that Lamplighter coffee might be coming to Crossroads, located near the VCU campus. Crossroads currently serves coffee made by Rostov and Blanchard’s.

However, Lamplighter’s owner, Noelle Archibald, countered the claim.

“I can really only tell you that we are exploring our options and we are considering ways to make Lamplighter coffee available in the campus area, but we don’t have a firm plan on anything yet.”

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Richmond Bizsense is reporting that EAT Oregon Hill is now for sale. Co-owner Bob Windsor said “I’m 62 years old. I don’t want to be coming down here six nights a week.” This echoes the sentiment of Bogart’s owner Jim Bacas who earlier this summer told Style Weekly “I’m going on 70 years old. I don’t need this shit.”

You can read our profile of EAT Oregon Hill here.

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Richmond.com has some details on the possible arrival of a maybe new restaurant in the old Republic spot.

Not just a BBQ spot but a veritable pork palace.

— The Pig and Pearl (@thepigandpearl) August 6, 2013

I dunno.

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Style Weekly has word that Southern Railway Taphouse is opening up pretty darn soon down in Shockoe Bottom at the former Southern Railway Deli spot. The focus will be, can you guess? Brews!–they’ll feature 40 taps. The Taphouse is a new project from the owners of Off the Hooka which is just around the block.

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For the past year Hardywood (and the handful of breweries that have popped up in the mean time) has been selling beer by the glass. They called up the city, asked if they needed to be charging meals tax on their beer, and were told they did not. But then last month, BOOM! Not only did they need to start charging the tax, but they’d need to pay back taxes. The Richmond City meals tax is 6%. Work It, Richmond has the full story.

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Prepare yourself, RVA, you may want to sit down for this news: Sunday, August 11th is your last chance to get vegan / gluten-free doughnuts at Sugar Shack Donuts. From their Facebook:

This Sunday, August 11 will be our last Vegan Gluten Free Sunday…We have decided that these special Sundays have caused more stress than joy. We’d like to apologize to those of you that have been gracious fans of our efforts to provide vegan/gluten free desserts, you have been amazing and we hope you understand our decision.

After the 11th Sugar Shack will be closed on Sundays until after Labor Day weekend at which point we will begin new, extended store hours. At that point Sundays will become a part of the regular week.

So for those vegan-GFers among us, a moment of silence. For the rest of us: I can’t recommend the apple fritter enough.

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Oh! One final thing: The Blue Goat which is one of the half dozen or so restaurants rebooting this summer, will reopen its doors today. As they say on their Facebook: “new menu, new chef, new vibe.”