Local dining specials to get you in the door

Welcome!

Table for two? Right this way.

Now for tonight’s specials. We have a lovely loin of kangaroo as an entree. Baked tarantula for dessert. Home-cooked suppers for five bucks each. Or perhaps you’d prefer to dine for free?

Across South Hampton Roads, restaurateurs have cooked up a menu of motivations to lure you to the table and keep you coming back for more. Some promotions, like the hamburgers-for-a-year raffle at Deuce McGee’s in Virginia Beach, are recession-era efforts to bolster restaurants’ bottom lines. Others, like McCormick & Schmick’s gourmet nibbles for fast food prices, have been around for years. All come with a side dish of imagination.

Intrigued? Step right this way.

Freemason Abbey Restaurant and Tavern
209 W. Freemason St., Norfolk, (757) 622-3966, www.freemasonabbey.com

Promotion: Take a Walk on the Wild Side – Market Price
Each Friday night, Executive Chef Steven Kenney gets a little wild cooking up unusual fare for the carnivore set. Could be antelope, alligator, quail, ostrich, caribou or kangaroo. The wildness has been snaring dinner guests for years. Specials this week are elk chops, frogs’ legs and quail.

Get Fresh Cafe at Five Points Community Farm Market
Inside the farm market at 2500 Church St., Norfolk, (757) 640-0300, www.5ptsfarmmarket.org

Promotion: Two dinners – $10

Two dinners for 10 bucks? Make that two dinners made with fresh and often organic produce and meats from the farm market for 10 bucks. It’s all made right there in the cafe’s open kitchen. Choose from five dinners daily. Choices include: 1/4 applewood-smoked chicken and vegetable; Thai vegetarian medley; meat- loaf with mashed potatoes, gravy and a vegetable; chicken and dumplings with garden salad and roll; seared tilapia topped with crabmeat and beurre blanc ; and two applewood-smoked pork ribs with slaw. The eat-in or to-go deals are offered Wednesday through Friday from 4 to 7 p.m.

Deuce McGee’s Grille
2916 Shore Drive, Virginia Beach, (757) 481-1583

Promotion: 365 Hamburgers – Free!
When Deuce McGee’s owner Don Stull was puzzling about how to cultivate regular customers for his newly opened Shore Drive restaurant, he happened upon this idea: Have a raffle for hamburgers for a year. Recently, Stull dumped hundreds of orange entry forms on the bar and picked the winner, plus 10 winners of $100 gift certificates. The promo helped build his customer database, and Stull figures that the gift certificate winners will visit a few times to spend all their winnings. As for the hamburger winner, even if he ate a hamburger every day and lived through the year, he’d still have only $1,000 in food costs in it. A frequent diners program – similar to airline frequent flier programs – is ongoing. And he’s working on a secret handshake for regulars.

Zoës
713 19th St., Virginia Beach, (757) 437-3636, www.zoesvb.com

Promotion: Bubble Bath – $10

The decor at Zoës is plush, sensuous almost. But a bubble bath? This from the mind of house sommelier Marc Sauter, who is putting together a champagne tasting just in time for New Year’s Eve. He’ll offer tastes of 10 bottles of bubbly, and when it’s over customers can purchase bottles of the champagne for their own celebrations. Prices run from $4 to $400 a bottle. But Executive Chef Jerry Weihbrecht would love it if you stayed for dinner. Bubble Bath takes place Dec. 16 from 5 to 7 p.m.

Bardo Edibles & Elixirs
430 W. 21st St., Norfolk, (757) 622-7362, www.bardoeats.com

Promotion:  Bizarre Foods Dinner – $65.70
The first Bizarre Foods Dinner took place in March, and the reservation book brimmed with adventuresome diners. Executive Chef Edward Storey’s menu included spring salad topped with fat, black, leaf-cutter ants, webbed duck feet, pizzle soup and baked tarantula for dessert. Not to be outdone, the bar sent out a steady stream of oddities: cocktails with basil seeds, synthetic bull pee and aloe vera. Owner Karl Dornemann plans another Bizarre Foods Dinner after the new year. There will be plenty of weirdness, but as MC, he’ll also emphasize that fare such as water bugs are nutrition-laden staples in some cultures.

McCormick & Schmick’s Seafood Restaurant
Town Center at 211 Market St., Virginia Beach, (757) 687-8686, www.mccormickandschmicks.com

Promotion:  Half-pound burger with fries – $2.95
“Still cheaper than Burger King,” said McCormick & Schmick’s manager Bill Weakly. This seafood restaurant chain has long offered highbrow bar food for lowbrow prices during weekday happy hours. The burger is a standard, but there’s also a three-tier pricing menu that changes according to the whim of the chef. On a recent visit we sampled a cheese quesadilla with pico de gallo and sherry mayo from the $1.95 offerings; a heap of steamed black mussels from the $3.95 menu; and blackened chicken nachos from the $4.95 menu. The specials are available only in the bar or on the patio Monday through Friday from 4 to 6:30 p.m. $3.50 minimum drink purchase. No takeout. 

Still – Worldly Eclectic Tapas
450 Court St., Portsmouth, (757) 332-7222, www.stilleats.com

Promotion:  End of Prohibition Party - Fridays at 6 p.m.
America’s drought ended 76 years ago Friday, but this speakeasy-like basement bar in Olde Towne Portsmouth that specializes in old-school cocktails, is marking the moment. The way they figure, if it was good enough for the “greatest generation” to celebrate, then it’s good enough for us.

Bartenders will be shaking up fizzes and rickeys and sidecars through the night. Or why not try some “bathtub gin.” There will be music, drink specials, prizes and a midnight toast to what the restaurant calls “one of the most ridiculous laws in our history.”

Burton’s Grill
741 First Colonial Road, Virginia Beach, (757) 422-8970, www.burtonsgrill.com

Promotion: Rockfish & Seafood Risotto – $23.95, or if you’re lucky, free!
Say you ordered this pan-seared rockfish served over a tomato, shrimp and calamari risotto. At the dinner’s end, the waitress appears and asks, “Heads or tails?” She flips a coin. Call it right, and the price for dinner is nada, zip, zero. That’s how it went at Burton’s recent “Take a Chance Tuesday!” a promotion that packed the house and had whole tables whooping and hollering. Customers had so much fun that manager Lauren Cipriani said the promotion may be repeated in the spring.

Lorraine Eaton, (757) 446-2697 or lorraine.eaton@pilotonline.com