Richmond, VA's Best Restaurants, Bars And Foodie Travel Ideas | Tasting Table City Guide

Neither as bucolic as Charleston nor as glitzy as Atlanta, Richmond, Virginia, is a Southern city with lofty but earnest culinary aspirations. Surrounded by America's original wine country, RVA (as it's affectionately known to locals) once juxtaposed stuffy haute-French restaurants amid the crusty vegan cafés of Oregon Hill and the dingy (and often-insipid) barbecue and "Southern" joints on the outskirts of town. Now a new small but passionate group of chefs, bakers and brewers is serving upmarket food and drinks in laid-back settings, while also reviving long-neglected neighborhoods. Sure, you'll find Southern staples on menus around town (thanks to chef Jason Alley, nearly every bar now serves a decent pimento cheese with Ritz crackers), but there's also some seriously delicious food coming out of restaurants like The Roosevelt, Lemaire and Peter Chang China Café. Here's where to eat, drink and stock up in Virginia's newly thriving capital city.