Richmond Magazine’s Best and Worst of Richmond issue gets to be the default voice of the people every year, but after another year of seeing results overrun with chain restaurants, national stores, and strange interpretation of statistics (I swear there was a blurb about how Ukrop’s “must” make the best cake around because they make a bajillion per year - are you going to tell me Budweiser is the best beer, next?), we had the realization that maybe this forum is outdated. After all, who reads print anymore? The people who have moved out to the Far West End and no longer patronize local businesses that really contribute to the flavor of Richmond?
So, in order to include an audience that spends their time online reading and writing blogs about Richmond, we ordered a recount and posted our own survey of Richmond’s Best and Worst on RVABlogs based on the nominations of Richmond bloggers and blog-readers. As you can see below, the takers of our survey had quite a different view on what’s really the best and worst in our city.
Best desserts: Comfort, which possibly won just because of its signature dessert, which one commenter described as: “Banana pudding? OMG.” Bev’s was a very close second.
Worst desserts:tie – Ukrops/Coldstone. “Other than [Ukrop's] rainbow cookies,” someone said.
Best Thai: Thai Diner II, all of the comments on this one just suggested one thousand other Thai restaurants that hadn’t been nominated originally, making the case, yet again, that we have a Thai restaurant surplus problem. Close second - Mom’s Siam.
Worst Thai – Tara Thai, the results between this question and the one above it were so scattered and varied with claims against these restaurants’ authenticity, that I think we can safely conclude that none of us really know what Thai is supposed to taste like. Close seconds – Mom’s Siam, Ginger, and Beauregard’s Thai Room
Best burger: Carytown Burgers & Fries, although all the comments asked us for 821 Cafe. We did urge people very loudly to submit as many nominations as they liked (although we did dismiss some of the ones that were obviously either way out of town or way hilarious jokes). Close second – Five Guys.
Worst burger: McDonald’s, We probably should have left that off the list because it skewed the results and also maybe revealed a wee bit of dishonesty. Didn’t it? A little? Oh, come off it! McDonald’s is delicious and you know it.
Best Sushi: Akida, with very little competition. Best comment by someone who voted for Kobe - “I don’t eat sushi, but Kobe Bryant is cool i guess?”
Worst Sushi: Sticky Rice, “No matter how many tater tots you give me, your sushi still bites it - and i don’t mean the tater tot.”
Best Mexican: tie - La Casita/Cielito, The results were really scattered for this one, unlike its Worst Mexican counterpart. Although we did have some who elected to leave this question unanswered, except for comments like: “Zip. Nada. There isn’t any.”
Worst Mexican: Taco Bell, I tried to leave chains off the list but Ross was all “No no no, someone nominated it.” So now we’re left with boring, predictable results like this one when we could have started a heated debate over whether or not Nacho Mama’s should fold immediately.
Best Pizza: Mary Angela’s, This clear winner was a little surprising since Bottom’s Up seems to be Richmond’s little darling. Mary Angela’s, however, is cheap and fast and doesn’t provide an experience akin to eating a fresh ball of dough with every slice.
Worst Pizza: Domino’s, yeah yeah. But most interestingly, Chanello’s is second place. There were a lot of comments that were like “I don’t really eat pizza.” Number one, thanks for sharing. Number two, what is your home planet like?
Best Chinese: Full Kee
Worst Chinese: China Panda
There’s a guy we know who contends that working at P.F.Chang’s has made him a “Chinese food snob,” but I’m not convinced that ol’ Chang’s is anything more than American semi-upscale chain cuisine with some soy sauce drizzled over it. It didn’t impress many of our survey-takers either, scoring solidly average.
Best Southern: Comfort, Has anyone else noticed that they raised the price of the Vegetable Plate like six bucks? This has officially priced Comfort out of my range. I can make my own meatloaf, thank you very much. Not sure I can recreate that banana pudding though. Strong second, Croaker’s Spot.
Worst Southern – Old City Café, but the second place was Weezie’s, which one commenter summed up like this: “Weezies-bad food, staff with ADD, owner who’s clueless and annoyed when given comments on food.” Yikes.
Best Italian: Edo’s Squid, followed by Mamma ‘Zu, which, in case you haven’t noticed, is basically the same restaurant. None of the other contenders even came close.
Worst Italian: Olive Garden, Well, I guess I’m glad we left chains on, because Olive Garden won something like second or third place in the Richmond Mag survey, I think. OLIVE GARDEN? WHEN YOU’RE HERE, YOU’RE FAMILY? Are you KIDDING ME? As this commenter put it, “Olive garden doesn’t make any of their food in the restaurant…or the country for that matter. All the food is made in Italy, freeze-dried, and shipped over. :(” :( indeed.
Best Bar: Capital Ale House, with Ipanema as a close second and Sticky Rice as a very close third. Best bar is tricky, because we all want different things. A lot of people commented with their own picks, such as: “Um, what? New York Deli isn’t even on this list?” Hell yeah! It was on a list! It was nominated for the Worst list!
Worst Bar : Big Daddy’s, as a commenter said, “I don’t really do bars much, but you called your bar ‘Big Daddy’s’… you lose!” Sorry, but New York Deli was a close second. “Smoke-filled, terrible sound-system, den of sweaty assholes who inevitably knock into me and spill my weak drink all over my shoes. They used to be silghtly good as a restaurant, but now it looks like it’s got American Family Cuisine written all over that new menu. WTF, NY Deli. WTF.”
Best Late Night Fare: 4th Street, with Avalon as a very close second.
Apples to oranges here, which is why I wish it had been a tie. 4th St is the best when you have very little money and you don’t want to be in a bar, but Avalon? Goat cheese pizza at midnight? Bless you, Avalon. Bless you.
Worst Late Night Fare: 3rd St, We’d be a lot more impressed by you, angry waitresses, if you were bringing us decent food.
Best Place to go on a Saturday Night: Byrd Theatre
This category was really created just so we could have a “Worst Place to go on a Saturday Night,” category but it’s cute that the Byrd won so effortlessly. Way to go, Mighty Wurlitzer.
Even so, this category produced a lot of commentary:
“Even if it’s just to people watch; I wish I would have nominated some things here - poor selection. How lame does Richmond look with those as the 4 best things to do Saturday night!?”
“This needs an editor’s pick submission!” – Well, don’t mind if I do. I’m going to say “Byrd Theatre” followed by “Ipanema” followed by “going home and going to bed.” Although, Cous Cous makes the best drinks and is more likely to play They Might Be Giants (awesome????), so I might live dangerously.
Worst place to go on a Saturday night: Shockoe Bottom, now THIS is what we were after. Comments: “I like how you have an entire neighborhood here.” and
“Bring Kevlar.” Also, bring snappy and venomous remarks for the frat boys that will actually come up to your car as you’re trying in vain to find a parking spot. They will say something like “blurrbbjjjhhh HEY where are YOU GUYS going blechhh vomit” and you absolutely MUST say something like “to a place where guys are etc etc [something witty but still understandable by a freshly shaven guy named "Topher" whose brain has turned to mush]”, otherwise they will continue to follow you around forever.
Best drinks: Capital Ale House ,with Commercial Taphouse as a close second.
Ok, people like beer, true, but Cous Cous has POMEGRANATE PEAR SANGRIA that comes in a CARAFE and is beautiful to look at as well as pour directly down your throat. Lots of people commented that we should have added Can Can, though. Can’t say I’ve ever waded through the extremely loud crowd in there to get drinks, but it was so often commented that I though it deserved a mention.
Worst drinks: Big Daddy’s
My favorite comment was on Ipanema: “My favorite bar but the weakest drinks.”
Which is also my sentiment, but this comment was made at 6:08 am in the morning. It makes me feel like someone woke up and was like “I drank thirty gin and tonics last night and NOTHING! Here I am, up at 6am and lucid as all hell! DAMN YOU IPANEMA!”
Best overall shopping experience: For the Love of Chocolate, so cute. I’m so glad that was nominated. It is true that I have found very hard to find Valrhona chocolate for baking there, but I myself voted for the very close second River City Wine, because you can go in there and be like “I am seriously a moron. Please don’t make fun of me, roll your eyes, or otherwise belittle me, because I will basically just buy whatever you tell me to buy and I feel like that should commend me to you.” And they comply, happily and personably. Ukrop’s was a close third. I’m not even going to start.
Worst overall shopping experience: Short Pump Town Center, by far. Maybe we should have left this one out too, since it’s not really a “store” per se, but it really is awful to go there. That one stretch of Broad between the 64 exit and the mall makes me break into hives and clutch the wheel like I have temporarily become my mother. I loved this comment about Plan 9:
“A hard copy of music is no longer the standard get with it.” and Short Pump: “Always get lost here. Always run into people from high school here. Why can’t H&M be a stand-alone store?!” So, so true.
Best Farmer’s Market: 17th St, “I voted 17th the best, but unfortunately, it’s pretty piss poor compared to other cities . . .”
Well, it’s hard to do anything with big old Ukrop’s lumbering over everyone, edging them out, I imagine. Even the soccer moms in the town where my parents are from outside of Philadelphia go to farmer’s markets – I think we’re just really into grocery stores here. Which is why we didn’t include a worst farmer’s market option. We’d rather encourage farmer’s markets then say crappy things about them. However, I don’t feel bad reporting that there was a comment strongly encouraging us to award Tom Leonard’s with the Worst award, and since that’s a chain, I’m ok with it.
Best grocery: Ellwood Thompson, “Best yes, can I afford the high prices? NO.”
Fair enough, I looked longingly at it the other day as I drove by on my way to Kroger. When I’m rich though, ET, I am coming back your way. Get ready. Also: “Wow, look at the Carytown bias here!? Snore. I guess it’s my fault for not nominating…”
Yeah, especially since the Ukrop’s in Carytown blows. The Kroger Carytown is leaps and bounds ahead of other Krogers though which is why someone (me) nominated it.
Worst grocery: Wal-Mart, Snakes on a plane, do people hate that place! How can you blame them though, the grocery only carries the largest of brands, kids are screaming down the aisles, and nothing is where it’s supposed to be.
Best comment about Ukrop’s (which was nowhere near close to winning this category, but was definitely nominated) - “Sorry, I’m not paying 80x more just so some WWII vet can struggle to carry my stuff out to my car. I just want food and I want it cheap.”
Best clothier: H&M – sigh, yes, they are cheap and plentiful but not quite local. Then again, our local clothiers are few and far between. Need, you won second place, but don’t feel encouraged to raise your prices.
Best mall: Stony Point, distant second, Short Pump. One day I went to Stony Point and saw seven (SEVEN) corgis. I asked one of the owners if it was corgi day or something, and he looked at me like I was crazy. There just happen to be a lot of the Queen’s favorite dog at Stony Point. They favor quality and class. And so do we, apparently.
Worst mall: Southpark, distant second, Short Pump! Well, Short Pump is the worst overall retail experience, but it does have some cool stores…this is a perfect venue to demonstrate how the struggle to support local awesome stuff is undermined by how nice and cheap other things are. Ah well, you’re toast Southpark.
Best bookstore: Barnes & Noble won over Chop Suey by only one vote. None of the others on the list even came close. Chop Suey rules and has a lot of good used stuff to peruse, but as one commenter said: “I buy everything on the Internets, but if I didn’t, I’d probably go to the largest place with the best chance of having what i wanted.”
Worst bookstore: Books-A-Million, very distant second, Chop Suey Tuey.
Best park: Maymont, No other contenders, it basically swept the entire thing. I mean, it has goats and Victorians. WTF else is there to want from a park. Or from anything, for that matter.
Worst park: Monroe, This was no shocker.
Best corner store: Strawberry St. Market, Second place – Shield’s Market, which didn’t help it from going out of business while this survey was happening.
Worst corner store: 7-11 Devil’s Triangle, Not really a corner store, but so terrible that we kept it as an option. Devil’s Triangle in general should just have a police helicopter hovering over it with its floodlights on at all times. One commenter said: “This is a loaded question. It isn’t that it’s in the (former) Devil’s Triangle — it’s a 7-11.”
Oh isn’t it? I used to live near the (current) Triangle, and I have feared for my life at that 7-11 more than once. Can’t say that about the Main St. Sev, can you?
Best place to take out-of-towners: We know, it’s a vague question, but it was nice to sit around and think of all the nice places we have to offer our guests, wasn’t it? Carytown won, but there were lots of contenders. Plus, most of the comments said “All of them!” Oh, Richmonders. So posi.
Best large scale innovation project: VCU, “Most of these are not what i call ‘large scale’. I think VCU has had the most impact.” Look, we don’t exactly have the Washington Monument to refurbish, do we? This is pretty large scale for us!
Best place to live: The Fan, with West of the Boulevard as a close second. One nice thing is that Church Hill wasn’t far down the list at all – could we have said the same ten years ago? Surely not!
Worst place to live: Chesterfield. The West End was a close second. One commenter on the West End: “With its traffic congestion, unattractive strip shopping centers, and zoning that mandates a car culture, the West End is a nightmare. I don’t know how they live like that.” They live like that because they are close to Olive Garden, the best Italian restaurant in the world.
Best movie theatre: The Byrd just scraped by over Westhampton. I am so happy about this. Commonwealth 20 actually placed in “the other contest.”
One comment about Westhampton that made me kiss my computer screen: “Selection. Selection. Selection.”
Westhampton is basically solely responsible for bringing any even vaguely independent film to Richmond, which is a terrible and embarrassing shame. That theater must be supported at all costs. Richmond is more oblivious to good films than any other decent-sized city. We have art and music pretty well figured out, what is the hold up with film?
Worst movie theatre: West Tower, second place tie between Carmike and Virginia Center Commons (which I love despite its grit because it has stadium seating and shows fairly good movies and isn’t filled with middle schoolers doing that weird “who sits where” thing that determines which guy gets to show off in front of which girl). But the Carmike, as one commenter puts it, is just “so random.”
Best local band: Page Wilson and Reckless Abandon, This is a hard “apples to oranges” thing too, since do you rate on talent? Personal taste? What they have done for Richmond? The second place results were prettily spread out and evenly distributed, and there are a million other bands that probably could/should have been nominated, but we just took what people cared enough to give us.
Worst local band/musician: Elliott Yamin, followed by The Lady Who Plays Guitar Outside of The Byrd, about whom one commenter said: “I like that lady; her voice reminds me of my grandma.” She SINGS, too????
Best music venue: Ashland Coffee & Tea, which is not quite Richmond, but still ok. Lots of people commented with their own picks, including Nanci Raygun and Hole in the Wall. Hey, if those places were still around (and therefore eligible for this survey), things would be a lot different.
Worst music venue: Alley Katz closely followed by The Camel. Not a good start for you, The Camel. Maybe it’s the name.
Best community blog: West of the Boulevard News followed closely by Church Hill People’s News. I have a strong suspicion that people vote for their own neighborhood here, but seeing as how I’m loosely involved with WotBN, I’m not complaining.
Worst community blog: Petersburg People’s News, Before you freak out, Petersburg, I’m almost positive people voted for this because they find it irrelevant to Richmond (as one commenter said, “How is this even in a who’s who of Richmond?”. The second place winner(?) was Near West End News, which actually came with some helpful tips:
“Needs more editorial and less news clipping, cutting, and pasting.” Don’t be afraid to say how you feel, NWEN. Goodness knows the rest of us do.
Best website: rvablogs.com by a mile. Ahh, the website that features the posts of all of us bloggers on a regular basis! That wasn’t really a fair question maybe, it was kinda like asking the cast of “Everybody Loves Raymond” to vote on “Best Sitcom.”
Worst website: Richmond.com, However there were tons of comments yelling at us for leaving inRich.com off.
Best blog: River City Rapids followed very closely by Buttermilk and Molasses.
Hooray, what a good turnout! Some commenters made valid points: “Best for what, exactly? I read all of these, and they are all very different - hard to choose 1, but RcR is best for Richmond news you can’t find elsewhere, closely followed by Buttermilk and Molasses”
We also got: “Much love. Where’s Worst Blog?” We thought about it, but decided we’d save everyone from burning any bridges. Bloggers, like farmer’s markets, need all the help they can get.
Best festival: Greek with the Monument 10K as a distant second.
Worst festival: Watermelon! Oh man, I think we were all just waiting for a forum to express how we all just dutifully attend this every year even though it is horribly uncomfortable. Make it an apple pie festival and put it in October. Carytown in August is no longer desirable.
Best live performance venue: Landmark, followed by the Modlin Center for the Arts (which is at University of Richmond, in case you didn’t know).
As a comment said, “Go Nutcracker?” The audience of this survey, I suspect, isn’t comprised of the wealthy, fifty-somethings that actually attend works of theatre in Richmond, so it makes sense that the Landmark, being the most visible performing arts center, won. The Modlin Center is more involved with the community and has a steady stream of great bookings (they’re responsible for David Sedaris this year, even though it was at the Landmark), but, unfortunately for them, they’ll never book the Nutcracker, so second place it is.
Things we have learned from the 2007 Richmond Best/Worst Recount:
Richmond Magazine clearly didn’t ask the Internet.
Comments/suggestions for next year?
