Discomforted at Comfort

Hot. Humid. Ovenish. Sauna. Melt.   Thus was last Thursday evening's weather situation in Richmond.  Hooray summer.   Throwing on the coolest clothes possible, I set out in search of air conditioned dining relief, at Comfort.  Comfort, Richmond's famed uptown "southern style" restaurant on Broad Street was a spot I hadn't visited in a few months, and I was craving some simple good food. 

I slogged down Broad Street, slicing through the thick steamy humidity, all the while trying to ignore the sad urban eyesore that spans a majority of that Church Hill-to-Belvidere route.  Why Broad Street, can't you improve?  All the potential for revisted bustling glory!  Progress or not, it's still depressing. And please, do we need that many stop lights?  Insane.    Avoiding Broad Street has become a default for me when driving in RIC.   But, enough of my rant over the pitiful state of Broad.  Comfort-bound I was.  I have no idea why.  Thinking of the "ideal spot" on a non-eventful hot night in Richmond is always tough.  But for me, Comfort needed revisted and I knew it would be lively. 


Normally restaurants Richmonders rave over are good, and there's a reason why our palates weed out the good from the bad.   Since my childhood vacation days down here visiting all the hot  spots with my aunt, like Stellas and Edo's (and hey what about that newest sushi place?!), I've always realized Richmonders have high standards when it comes to food.   

In many respects there are great aspects to Comfort worth raving over.  But Richmonders, I challenge you to respect yourselves a little more.  Comfort has become much less comforting since its founding.   That being said, its location, its wait-staff, and its vibe are all on-par.  I've visited it countless times and have enjoyed the "down-home" feel and the vibrancy of it's location.  It's staff are  "with it" and it's bar is handsome and well-stocked.   But its food quality, I am sorry, is lacking.  Severely. 

After my ramble down Broad, and a ten-minute attempt to find parking amidst the one-way streets, the no U-turns, the bus stops, the fire hydrants, and every other grid-obstruction-to-denizen-peace that the city seems quite gifted at imposing , I finally walked in.  My linen shirt was soaked.  Yuck.   I was meeting S for dinner, but decided to order a much-needed drink and grab a small plate at the bar to start.  I ordered a simple Tom Collins.  Easy & refreshing.   After being greeted by Shawn the bartender, I decided that I was in the right spot.  Lots of folks; several I knew, and my lovely ex wine rep from the Club that sat next to me.   Shawn was more than attentive.  He was brilliant.  He took my order promptly and took care of me.  He even asked my name.  How nice.  I ordered the Pimento Cheese plate.   From the kitchen I could see the cooks and chef snivelling and peering out at the bar crowd.  Chefs and their obvious attitudes,  what can you do?    Nothing, but please, put some decent clothes on your chefs Comfort.  Down home is nice, but not when you have to watch it being crafted by greaseballs with baggy jeans.   

Out came the pimento cheese. I was dissapointed by the lack lustre presentation, of which I will show here.  It looked bad, sloppy, thrown together.  More shocking, however, was the accompaniment of Ritz crackers.  I expect this at a golf club's midway concession stand, but not at an award winning restaurant.  No, this is not charming.  Nor is this down-home comforting.  It's sloppy.   Three years ago when I visited Comfort, they served garlic coated fresh-baked crostinis as the accompaniment to the well-placed cheese.  Now it's Ritz crackers from a box I saw resting on top of the oven.  Dissapointing how standards go awry.  The pimento cheese consisteny was almost like whipped pudding; not the expected texture of grated cheddar you crave when ordering homemade pimento cheese.  Where were the pimentos?  Not enough.  The cheese had a smokey paprika flavor, and the pairing of the pickled onions and cucumber and country ham was nice.  But overall, not that great.  I just expected more.  Attentive Shawn asked how everything was within five minutes of it coming out.  Good work.   

Before taking a table with S, Shawn served up a complimentary Pickled Dill Juice & Smooth Ambler White Whiskey shooter.  Wow!   Nice of him to offer, and a definite way to restructure the palate!  And create a bit of a buzz. Maybe not the best thing to do before eating dinner, but it was a fun drink that I'll remember, and a nice touch from the bar.   

For dinner S and I ordered an appetizer of Fried Green Tomatoes. For the main we ordered braised lamb with sides of mixed greens, mashed potatoes, and fried Okra.   Comfort food overload here we come!     Out came the corn bread.  It had a nice flavor, but it was super dry.  I go back and forth on corn bread and how it "should" be.  My standard of "good" cornbread in RIC is Croaker Spot's.  Moist, fresh-tasting, and slightly crusty on the outside, with real corn chunks on the inside.   Comfort's cornbread is low on the totem pole in terms of its texture.  Just so dry.  When did they make it, I wondered.   I was dissapointed to see that the butter was served in foil packets.  Really?   Gosh, as every minute passed, my expectations had to be re-adjusted.   

The fried green tomatoes were done nicely.  Tart, crunchy, perfectly breaded and fried.  The only thing I wished was for more flavor; a little more salt n' pepper, or something.   They weren't wowing, but they also weren't bad.  They were nice.  



A load of braised lamb, mashed potatoes
& fried okra



Out came the braised lamb with the aforementioned sides.   Here is a photo of everything but the greens (which were served on a side plate).   Again, the presentation wasn't pleasing.  Everything was jumbled on the plate.  Hardly photo worthy.  I expect this kind of thing at a wayside country diner, but wasn't expecting it at Comfort on Broad.  To their credit, the waitstaff, were incredibly attentive, and checked back in to see if everything was OK.  It was a great team effort and they were more than pleasant.   Sadly, the braised lamb was not OK.  It was tough (even stringy), definitely not braised long enough, and seemed insufferably bitter and too dry.  Alongside it were the mashed potatoes, creamy and delightful.  The Fried Okra, was, quite frankly inedible.  I'm not an expert on the art of Fried Okra, but have had enough at other places to know that this Okra was not right.  Over-fried, bland, fibrous and stringy.   Then the the icing on the cake were the greens.  Comfort:  if you wish to serve leafy collard greens the right way, you may wish to simmer them longer.  Collards need a slow simmer with something more flavorful than the bland stew the chefs at Comfort whipped together.  Maybe something with heat?  Like red pepper flakes, at the minimum.   The greens served to me were so, tough (for lack of a better word), so much so that the stalks (see my picture) nearly gagged me.   Not pleasant.  Not southern.  Not comforting.



A thick crunchy stalk in the greens. 



The wait staff, throughout the conclusion of the disatrous attempt of serving up good southern food, kept pushing their famed banana pudding, mainly I felt because it might be the only thing they could actually be proud of that evening.    The last time I had the famous banana pudding at Comfort, I was mildly annoyed.  Vanilla wafers that tasted stale and possessed a weird spongeyness (probably because the dish was  assembled long before I ordered).   Not a chance I wanted to be bothered with again after such a dissapointing dinner.   Check please!    



Will I go back?  Probably not for a while. The excuse that it's just good old basic comfort food, is just not good enough. It'd be far more appealing if Comfort spent time actually plating its dishes creatively rather than slopping it down and expecting the patron to just accept it because, well, it's "down home good."  To me it's down-home laziness and it looks, well, bad and tastes bland.   That aside, the food quality, from my experience, is just not that great.   At best, it's hit or miss.  I have had some dishes, like their meatloaf, which are quite mouth-watering.    But how can you go wrong on basics like cornbread or fried Okra?  The expression, "blah" sums it up quite well.



Richmonders, let's stop being so enamoured just because it has a nice name, cool location, and we're "supposed" to like it.  Let's be a little more discerning.    It may have once been good, but southerners (and us others) desserve better.    Enjoy the bar, and the amazing  staff, but if it's good flavorful, properly cooked comfort food you seek, best look elsewhere.   Hopefully, though, they'll improve, particularly before they open their new restaurant, "Pasture" on Grace Street. 

I humbly, restlessly, rest my opinion.  

Have a great weekend.  Coming up, some lobster exploration in Maine. 

Austin