Feb 19 2010
My new favorite place in Richmond
The long awaited Home Show had arrived and the stress of going and setting up our booth was pressing down on all those involved. It’s at times like these that fate can find an opportunity to smile on the oppressed. In this instance it came in the form of an accidental meal found at the last minute.
Let me explain. It’s a long drive from Charlottesville to Richmond and the road goes from bad to worse the closer one gets to the Convention Center (you wouldn’t want people to congregate easily apparently, and the irony IS lost on the local Gov.). Anyway, the trip fueled by much coffee -and little else – was followed by wandering around and around trying to find the right set of loading docks and entrances. When we finally found the right place to be and had been ushered to the proper unloading point we were told that we had a very short window in which to deploy our gear and move our vehicle out of the way.
We then proceeded to erect a collection of spars, struts and other protuberances, Velcro and magnet backed vinyl and foam panels into what we had a vague idea was our booth.
This of course took far longer than we had anticipated and by the time we were done, lunch time had come and gone and Calorie Deficit had profoundly set in.
My brother Bjorn and I decided we would stop somewhere / anywhere on the way out of town and fuel up. Now it happens that Broad St. at this time of day is crowded and – for a couple of hungry guys from out of town -a bit intimidating so finding a restaurant, near a legal parking space, not fast food and not pizza or Chinese was no easy task.
That’s when fate intervened. An open space on the street and three venues to choose from. As we got out of the car the smallest place caught our eye and our interest – The Jerk Pit. We figured we would go in and if it was too sketchy we would go next door. Instead what greeted us was the wonderful smells of Jamaican spices overlaying hints of pork, chicken and plantains. The menu had all these as well as red beans and rice, ox tails, glazed ribs and fried red snapper.
The combination of choices and smells working on our palpable hunger made making a decision almost impossible. I opted for the jerk pork, red beans and rice, fried plantain and steamed veg dinner knowing that I would be coming back that way the next day. Bjorn decided on the jerk chicken version (so he could stop thinking about it ) and at the last minute I added a cup of the multi-bean soup.
We got our sodas and sat down. Several minutes later we were called to get our foam boxes of food.
Opening the boxes generated a whole array of emotions:
- We scored!!
- Wow! that’s a lot of food.
- Does it taste as good as it smells?
- I wonder what his tastes like?
- I’m coming back here tomorrow.
This all took place in the time it took to unwrap my plastic fork and deploy same as intended. Were my expectations met? I went back the next day for the ox tails and a Jamaican soda and I’ll be back on Sunday when we tear down the show.