Review: The Southerly at the Southern Season

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One of the perks of running a blog is you get approached to cover cool things. This happened recently when Southern Season reached out to Sara and I to attend a tasting tour at their Richmond location. Now I, whose foodie enthusiasm is limited to Starbucks and McDonald’s iced coffee, had never heard of Southern Season, but Sara, a Northerner with a fascination for southern things (she likes biscuits and gravy more than my late grandpa), could not reply yes fast enough. She had previously shopped there and had been wanting to go back.

I was further proved to be in the dark when my friend, Sandra Tran, decided to visit me the day of the tasting tour. Sandra owns an ice cream store in Arlington, VA (you should really stop by Nicecream Factory if you’re in the area – it’s quite the tasty show), so I brought her along. As we pull up, Sandra exclaims, “You didn’t tell me it was Southern Season! Ohmigawd, I love this place!”

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Review: Southern Season

Southern Season
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A few weeks ago, Cazey and I were invited to celebrate Southern Season’s first year in business in the Richmond area. The event included learning more about the store and restaurant, while also getting to sample some of their food.

My prior knowledge of Southern Season up until the event was mildly passable: I’d been there, made a few purchases and even went to a cooking class. I didn’t know about the restaurant at all, and couldn’t have even identified that there was one. What’s interesting was listening to the manager’s speak about Southern Season, and that seems often to be the case: if you know of Southern Season, you either enjoy the restaurant or the store and hardly know about the other.

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Brunch Review: 3 Monkeys

3 Monkeys
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One of the first places I ever brunched in Richmond was 3 Monkeys. We selected it for brunch only because we had drank there the night before. We gathered ourselves, neighbors and friends to try out the brunch scene.

When we went that first time, we ordered 4 different mimosa pitchers for the entire table in various flavors. Turned out, only me and a few people were planning on drinking. Before you knew it, we were all a pitcher in, and then I offered to dog sit and decided to take the dog home with me. Then I passed out for most of the day. It was a good day.

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Brunch Review: The Hill Cafe

The Hill Cafe
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Last weekend, I was tasked with picking a brunch place for my (now) ex- roommate and myself, so like any good brunch review blogger, I just googled, "brunch in Richmond," and went from there. The first few, I had been to (like Helens), so I kept scrolling until I found one that seemed interesting. The Hill Cafe caught my attention, mainly because of a scenic picture it displayed. 

Once I clicked through to their menu, I was impressed by the options, and was also surprised to see that it didn't open until 11:30am. My roommate and I settled for it, since it had sandwiches (she likes sandwiches more than standard breakfast foods), was in Church Hill (a neighborhood we don't frequent) and was a place we'd never been.

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Brunch Review: Lamplighter Roasting Company

Lamplighter Roasting Company
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Sometimes I wonder how many times I’ve tweeted about coffee. It’s probably enough that Starbucks is considering hiring me as a brand ambassador. Except maybe not Starbucks, since I don’t have a lot of horribly nice things to say about their Flat White. But anyways, my veins are composed of the usual stuff, like blood, but probably also infused with either alcohol or coffee in a rotating pattern depending on day of the week and time of day.

There’s almost no point whatsoever talking to me before drinking coffee – just ask my roommate. Or my boss, who kicked off a Monday morning with, “Tell me what you learned last week at the training,” before my daily cup of joe. For that matter, before my bag was even shrugged off my shoulder. However, not the point.

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Brunch Review: Tupelo Honey Cafe

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Several (maybe more than several) months ago, my roommate and I went to visit my sister in Charlotte, North Carolina. While down there, my sister took up to a really great brunch spot. So great, that I have sporadically tweeted about that one time I ate there months ago since then. I have been waiting my fair turn to get to go back. And then Jesus – or a person named Avery, who is basically a brunch Jesus – answered my prayers/tweets.

The restaurant of my brunch dreams was opening about an hour and a half away from me, and they wanted me to come up for brunch. Praise be. My immediate response was, “Do you need me right now? I can be there right now. I’ll just come now and wait outside,” but was able to gather myself and articulate my excitement in a way that (hopefully) didn’t make me seem obsessed.

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Brunch Review: F.W. Sullivans

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I have a hit list of places I want to brunch at in Richmond, and F.W. Sullivan's has been one since following them on Instagram. Not only do they appear to have a variety of types of meals, ranging from steak to burgers to pasta dishes and flatbreads, but they deliver (except not for brunch, which I think would be beyond clever). I used that delivery option once for dinner, and felt a bit bad about it, as it was one of the coldest days of the year and the poor bastard biked our food to us. Anyways, not the point of this post. Back to brunch.

In all honesty, we were trying to go to Sidewalk, but then it was unreasonably busy, so we went to Sully's. It was perfectly not swamped, and we got right to a table. Before ordering, a waitress brought us a mimosa that we didn't order, then realized we were new here. She then came back to take our drink order -- just coffee and water (too tired/hungover for some mimosas, who knew that was possible).

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