Food News: an empire expands, foreign happy hours, and coffee pods

Black magic coffee machines, new fall menus, unpronounceable happy hours, plus more in this week’s Food News.

September 26, 2013; 8:02 AM • by Ross Catrow

Ron Morse, one of Richmond’s restaurant emperors, will open his newest restaurant next week. Morse already owns Baja Bean in the Fan and Station 2 in the Bottom, and now he’ll add Postbellum to his growing restaurant empire. Over the bar hangs a giant pair of moose antlers. I’m not sure what this says about the food, but I dig it!

Richmond BizSense has some more details.

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The (evil?) mad scientists back in the kitchen at Secco have created a new, delicious happy hour snack menu! It’s a menu so delicious (and evil?) that it is unpronounceable by American tongues. The new Pintxos (pronounced PEEN-tchos)¹ happy hour runs from 3:00 – 6:00 PM weekdays with each item costing less than five bucks. Also most of the P-words are served skewered with a stick, which is how I prefer all of my food.

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The Keurig coffee device is either the best or worst thing to happen to waking up since Folger’s in your cup. Using black magic or technology, the little machine turns what appears to be a small container of non-dairy creamer into a full-blown cup of coffee! The downside, other than the potential ill effects of using black magic on the regular, is the total inability to support one of RVA’s extraordinary coffee roasters. But Black Hand Coffee Company will look to change that in the nearish future! Richmond BizSense has more on how the Devil’s Triangle-based roaster is looking to develop their own little Keurig-compatible thingy.

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Casa del Barco has a new Bloody Maria bar–which I too thought was a typo. Turns out, if you take your standard Bloody Mary and replace the vodka with tequila, you end up with a Bloody Maria. This makes me feel a bit racially awkward.

Anyway, available on Sundays from 11:30 AM – 3:00 PM this new Bloody Maria bar has all kinds of mixes, salts, hot sauces, and random chunks of things to throw in your tomato-based brunch-time booze. I just realized that Bloody Marys are the nachos of mixed drinks: put whatever you want in there! It’s fine!

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Summer is great and all; I love tomato and cucumber salad salad as much as the next guy. But fall food is the absolute best! Give me savory, brown meals that stick with me all day as I wear my sweater and scarf.

Almost as if they could read my mind, The Well–which used to be Cous Cous–has rolled out their new fall menu, and dang dudes! Check out the menu here, and just let me know when you want to head over there to try every single thing.

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Richmond’s own, by way of New Zealand, Proper Pie Co. gets the top spot on Food Republic’s list of savory pie joints. Sure they didn’t specify how their list is sorted, but let’s just assume it’s from best to worst. Hey, I don’t need to convince you how Richmond stacks up to backwaters like Brooklyn, Portland, and Austin.

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Photo by: Madison Price

September 26, 2013 8:02 AM 2