Some Tidewater dining suggestions for Guy Fieri

Today, we have an esteemed visitor coming to dinner. Actually, celebrity chef Guy Fieri will be in town right around dinnertime . . . he’ll start cookin’ at Chrysler Hall at around 7:30 p.m.

It wouldn’t be polite to invite him to actual dinner because, well, I know he cannot accept. Instead, I thought we should offer him some diners, dives and drive-in possibilities from our Tidewater region.

Guy has already sampled a couple of local spots for his Food Network show, “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives” including Captain Chuck-a-Muck’s in Rescue and Doumar’s in Norfolk. But I’m thinking right now that there are scores of cooks stirring up grits, chop, chop, chopping up onions for the lunch special and wipin’ down the counters.

So let’s give Guy really good gift . . . . a tempting list of all the Tidewater and Outer Banks eateries that fall into his “Triple D” category.

I have not had my first sip of coffee, but even in this fog I can still think of a few right off. Add one or seven yourself . . . and if you have a favorite thing to eat there, note that, too.

Chesapeake: Grill at Great Bridge – Philly Cheese steaks! Wicker’s Crab Pot (haven’t eaten there myself, but it’s on my bucket list!) Norfolk: Manny’s Donut Dinette French Bakery – Orange juice donuts!

Virginia Beach: Malbon Bros. BBQ – Piglet with slaw, please!

Eastern Shore: Exmore Diner – fried fish-of-the-day sandwich Stingray’s – any, anything!

Portsmouth: Clayton’s – Fried soft shells!

OBX: Kill Devil Grill – Fried chicken on Fridays, French fries, Key Lime Pie John’s Drive In – Tuna boat, chocolate-banana-peanut butter milkshake

Please add on with impunity!

PS – Maria, welcome to my blog! You won the jewelry box last night! Now you must come to cooking club!

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Delicious dinnerware tonite at Serendip

Italian food is so delicioso, but so is Italian dinnerware.

Check out some of both tonight at Serendip, a cool little home décor store in the Freemason section of Norfolk. Center stage is the Vietri line of dinnerware.

Serendip’s “Home for the Holidays” event got gobbled up by last week’s nor’easter. When the store rescheduled the event for tonight, it turned out (rather serendipitously!) that the founder of Vietri, Susan Gravely, and one of the Italian artists, Allessandro Teddai, were in town and will be honored as special guests. In addition, Alessandro will do a painting demo.

The show, benefiting the Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia, will feature dinnerware (some of which does look good enough to eat) and home décor by the Italian company, as well as new artwork by Norfolk’s Anne McNally (her oil on canvas titled Pomegranates is below).

The event will include hors d’oeuvres and drinks and a drawing. Bring a bag of nonperishable food for donation to the food bank and receive a 10 percent discount on Vietri merchandise. The event runs from 5:30 to 8 p.m.

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Kluckr seeks the best wings in town

A while back, we featured chicken wings in our monthly taste test. That day, six highly-qualified readers spent hours sampling chicken wings from Tidewater restaurants most nominated by other readers.

One spry, old tester described the winning wings – spicy garlic flavored from Buffalo Beach in Virginia Beach – as “spicy, tangy and hot. Like a good-looking divorcee.”

I’d been having vague thoughts lately that it’s time to have a chicken wing rematch. Then I received this breaking news alert from the Kluckr people in New York City:

Kluckr Communications announces today the launch of an iPhone app that will appeal to the tastes of chicken wing connoisseurs nationwide. . . . the hot new app that rates, reviews, and locates wing joints based upon the consumers’ demands is off to a spicy start.

For $.99, Kluckr can find the closest wing location and allows aficionados to rate and review their favorite wing joints. The wing-crazed inventor and his team put over 20,000 locations on the map to get things started. Now the brotherhood of wing eaters must unite to get all the good joints on the map.

From the Kluckr website, we’ve deduced that lots of Va. Tech types have weighted in on this weighty issue. Awful Arthur’s in Blacksburg is rated as the No. 1 overall spot in the nation and the No. 2 hottest spot.

Which brings out my competitive bent. I mean, there are some mighty fine wing purveyors right here. No?

I think we’ll have a full-fledged chicken wing rematch come January. So stay posted for details and be thinking about why you'd be the best tester ever. Just in time for the Super Bowl.

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Guess what I've been doing: Part Deux

I don’t think you’ll be able to guess this one, unless you’ve been trailing me. But I’ll send a cookbook to whoever comes closest to the right answer!

Here's a hint: the season just started.

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Cool weather plan: Try 20 types of chili this weekend!

Don't fear the frat boys.

That's the message from Marty Williamson, the Pi Kappa Alpha brother who is helping to organize this weekend's fundraiser for the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation.

On Saturday, the PIKES will host a score of teams that will prepare vats of chili for the competition. The public is invited to come out to Old Dominion University and test the chili and vote on their favorite. It's all free, but donations to the foundation are greatly appreciated.

"I think that one problem we have had was when people see the word fraternity they immediately shy away," Marty said in an e-mail. "But we have 20 teams signed up to compete! That’s around over 50 gallons of chili we need help getting rid of!!! Not a bad problem to have."

He promises no Animal House antics. The PIKES are just a bunch of good guys raising money for a cause.

It all takes place Saturday, Nov. 14 from noon to 4:30 p.m. at ODU's Batten Arts & Letters building parking lot (that’s the tall building right on Hampton Boulevard.) The event is rain or shine. People can park in any of the open lots around the event, like parking garage “C” across from the TED on 43rd street or the Perry library lot off of 45th street.

For more information, click here.

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Perfect weather for planning a gingerbread house

Let’s see. Driving rain. Wind gusts that could knock down a gas grill. Tunnels closed. Roadways flooded. Kids home from school.

Sounds like a perfect day to cook! I’ll be preparing Thanksgiving dinner today. No, I’m not having a blonde moment; it’s for a photo shoot later this afternoon. Such is the advance-deadline life of the staff epicure!

But if my oven’s dance card wasn’t already full, I’d think about making an award-winning gingerbread house for this local competition.

The people over at The Chamberlain – that grand old building that sits on the eastern horizon as you cross over the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel – have announced a gingerbread house contest for all kinds of cooks.

Categories include: (1) Amateur Cooks; (2) Culinary Professionals, defined as any member of the American Culinary Federation or other trade associations, professional chef, etc.; (3) Junior Chef, defined as any chef 18 or younger who is substantially able to prepare dishes following proper sanitation techniques but with limited parental assistance.

To enter the contest, pre-registration forms must be completed by Monday, Nov. 16 with a $10 check made payable to Hampton Roads Magazine.

If you don’t feel up to a bout of culinary construction, all of the gingerbread houses entered into the competition will be on display, beginning Nov. 24 at The Chamberlin between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. The Gingerbread Houses will remain on display through the first two weeks in December.

For more information and entry forms, click here.

And just to get you started, click here and here for a coupla websites with directions for making some swell looking gingerbread houses as well as some amazing pictures to get your construction juices flowing.

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Tidewater Community College's dining pleasures

I once knew a man whose eyes would actually roll back in his head with pleasure while eating a plate of food that had been set before him. Even people like us who love to cook love being cooked for.

So imagine how happy The Baby Girl and I were the other night when we had 14 people cooking for us all at once! We peeked in the kitchen beforehand and no less than 10 gas burners were lit, pans sizzling and scraping across the cooktop all to the beat of shiny knives going chop, chop, chop.

Once we were seated, the Tidewater Community College culinary arts students began a procession in pairs, each presenting their best dishes. We started with Angelo Perry’s hand-made mushroom-and-cheese stuffed ravioli with meat sauce (Chef and Instructor Emi Ostrander warned The Baby Girl not to eat it all, but in moments she was smiling like a Cheshire cat). We moved on to Mike Lambert’s pork enchilada, then Karen Fletcher’s champagne mushroom risotto. Alvin Carter served a plate of pepper steak with perfectly caramelized onions. Then followed Thai fried rice, pan seared beef tenderloin with sautéed mushrooms and more.

Then, to top it all off, the baking class in the next kitchen over sent out a tray of gorgeous desserts – pumpkin pie, bread pudding, the prettiest red velvet cupcakes and the most amazing pineapple upside-down cake made by Brandi Brooks, a young baker who has just gone public with B & G Bakery in Virginia Beach.

Anyway, a big thank you to all of the students – Mike Lambert, Karen Fletcher, Felicia Jenkins, Angelo Perry, Robert Skinner, Robert Weber, Barbara Hutcheson, Theresa Morse, Dennis Ange, Katina Richardson, Adlyne Joseph, Alvin Carter, Brittany Richardson and Mark Aliff. It was a truly “yummy” night, as The Baby Girl so succinctly put it.

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Fortifying our troops with chocolate

See all that?

That's The Baby Girl's Halloween Haul. Full-size candy bars, gum, lollipops. It just goes on and on.

I admit it, I'm a chocolate snob. I have lost my taste for milk chocolate, and I've already confiscated the precious few pieces of dark. As you see, there's still plenty left. But in a couple of weeks, The Baby Girl will lose interest and I'll be tossing candy in the trash, which is just wrong.

Enter: my colleague Kate Wiltrout and her story in today's Pilot about how our military men and women overseas in Afghanistan are often jonesing for chocolate with no fix in sight.

In case you missed the story, Senior Master Sgt. Kimberlee Keller is organizing a drive, with help from stateside veterans groups, to make sure our troops have access to chocolate when they need it. And really, don't you think they need chocolate to get through the day over there?

So I'll be prying some of that Halloween Haul away from The Baby Girl and doing some good by mailing it to the troops.  "This small token would mean so much to everyone," Keller told my colleague.

She recommends using the U.S. Postal Service's priority mail option, which allows you to ship up to 70 pounds for $11.95. Mail it to: SMSgt. Kimberlee Keller, 455 AEW/JA, APO AE 09354.

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Duh! I was corning spot

So what was I doing with a fish and a tootbrush?

Corning spot, of course! Corning is an old-fashioned way of preserving fish. It's a dying art that Jim Merritt over at The Catch Seafood in Norfolk is passing on through  classes at his market. Jim's next class is Sunday at 5:30 p.m.

In fact, Jim, a Norfolk native with OBX roots, will give lessons on anything seafood . . . how to clean it, how to cook it, how to select it. He pan fried a corned spot for me and I couldn't help but think that the simplest food is often the best food.

Anyway, I'll be writing about corning spot in the wood pulp edition of The Pilot on Wednesday, and online, of course.

But for now, you just need to know that Jim used the toothbrush to clean every bit of guts from the belly of the fish. Apparently, if you don't do that you are doomed. I, of course, did not clean the fish myself (although I can clean fish myself).

I'm awarding two cookbooks, one to Bill Mitchell, who guessed correctly, and one to kandc, who had such a great imagination --really, making hair pins from fish bones!

Anyway, y'all send your mailing address to lorraine.eaton@pilotonline.com and I'll put a cookbook in the mail to you. Oh, and let me know what flavor cookbook you'd like -- Italian, grilling, desserts, healthy stuff . . . . we got 'em all.

Have a great weekend!

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Guess what I've been doing today

So. What do y'all think I've  been up to today?

Figure it out and I'll mail you a brand new cookbook!

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