L’Opossum
Richmond, Va.
Richmond’s deeply original mixture of serious food and campy fun.
I don’t much care for eating out in New York. It’s a pain. Every time a restaurant gets a little attention, it’s swarmed with foodies and financiers—and who wouldn’t like to see a 300-style showdown there—and scoring a reservation becomes a process of ritual humiliation. Prices are at the point where you could eat a meal or make a car payment. The restaurant spaces are so small, with tables crammed so close together to generate enough revenue to pay exorbitant rents, it’s not just that you overhear other people’s conversations, you’re practically compelled to join in.
I find it more fun to seek out great restaurants at up-and-coming cities around the country, and Richmond’s L’Opossum is one of the best of them. This restaurant—small, dark and cozy, mostly filled with banquettes—simply could not exist in New York. Looking like the scion of a dive bar and a tag sale, it is unpretentiously decorated with cheesy retro paintings and a mish-mash of knick-knacks, each with its own story and all carefully curated by (James Beard-nominee) chef and owner David Shannon. Unpretentious, but not un-wicked; in honor of, well, himself, Shannon populates the room with replica statues of Michelangelo’s David.
The food is persistently ambitious and astonishingly good. You could call it a mixture of French and American, but the operating theme seems to be, basically, decadence. There’s a ham biscuit with escargots on top; seared Hudson Valley foie gras, served with “a pair of salmon and ginger influenced persimmon pleasures and brown butter toasted pecans;” and “a searing paradox of pork belly and sea scallops, reveling in a key party of blood orange drenched radicchio.” These innuendo-laden, over the top menu descriptions are part of the fun at L’Opossum. The night I ate there, the drink special was a “dark and stormy Daniels.” A chocolate dessert is dubbed “hot black bottom a la mode.” You cannot order this and take yourself too seriously at the same time.
In Manhattan, all these things would cost about twice what they do in Richmond, and that’s a real shame—after all, you can’t make jokes about $75 entrees. Go to L’Opossum instead. lopossum.com
