Congratulations to Jason Alley!

A huge and heartfelt congratulations to our good friend Jason Alley today. Jason took home the Lifetime Achievement Award last night at the 2016 Elby Awards, a celebration of the Richmond dining scene, presented by Richmond Magazine.

Hailing from Appalachia, VA, Jason Alley spent his early years surrounded by the simple lifestyle of Southwest Virginia, enjoying comforting home-cooked southern food and helping out in the family kitchen. Inspired by his surroundings and family meals, cooking quickly turned into a calling for Alley. Alley began his culinary career in the kitchen of Harrisburg Country Club. Later, Alley travelled to work as a sous chef position in Illinois and later in Atlanta at the 1848 House, Blue Ridge Grill, and ENO. The ultimate career move brought Alley to Richmond, where he met his restaurant partner and eventually opened his renowned restaurants Comfort and Pasture, two of the most influential restaurants in Richmond. 

Comfort, which ranked as one of Southern Living’s Best Restaurants, is an award-winning restaurant with a refined take on comfort and soul food. Alley’s second restaurant, Pasture, has a southern-modern vibe and uses traditional Virginia ingredients on a menu of artful small plates and refreshing cocktails. Pasture also has a unique focus on local Virginia beers and wines. 

Alley is a celebrated chef in Richmond and beyond. He has represented the 2015 Chefs of the James Beard House nationwide tour, National Pork Board, and his restaurants and recipes have been featured in numerous national publications such as Food & Wine, Bon Appetit, Southern Living, Garden & Gun, New York Times, Eater, Tasting Table, and the Washington Post. Also, Alley has been repeatedly invited as Key Chef for many national festivals including, Nantucket Food & Wine Festival, Aspen Food & Wine Festival, Feast, Charleston Wine & Food Festival, and Terra Vita Festival, and has won Style Weekly’s Best Chef in Richmond four years running. In 2014, Alley represented Virginia in Chefs for Equality in Washington, DC and at the Democratic Gov’s Association Gala with No Kid Hungry in 2015.  

 We congratulate him on this well-deserved award!

Comfort - Richmond, VA

The good folks at Comfort in Richmond spent all Labor Day canning 14 cases of odds and ends so you don't have to:

Comfort Restaurant On Chefs A' Field

See a preview of this season's Chefs A' Field, featuring Jason Alley of Comfort (the one inhaling an oyster):

Factors Playing into How I Spend Money on Restaurant Experiences

Lately I have been thinking about what makes a restaurant really special to me. It is intensely personal as I am sure it is for you. We are so tired of talking about the economy, the stock market, the job losses -- but they are a reality. So, thinking about where I want to spend my money these days has become much more important. I live in Atlanta, travel regularly to Charleston, Nashville, Savannah, western North Carolina, northwest Florida and New York. I travel a lot. Wherever I go, I research where I want to eat. A number of factors come into play:

--Who is cooking my food? Where did they come from? What kind of influences have they had? I don't care so much about the pedigree in terms of school (although if you know nothing else and cannot find anything on the web, school is at least a benchmark of sorts - UNTIL I find out more) I won't lie and say that the character of the person making my food is indeed an element I have truly taken into account in the past. Maybe I am a little extreme but hey, it is my dime right?

--Where are the chefs procuring the food? Okay so first, it is important to buy local, cook seasonally, think sustainably but shouldn't these things be a given by now? What I like is to hear about the people growing the food - maybe something special about them. One of our clients, Chef Jason Alley of Comfort in Richmond, Virginia buys a good deal of his meat from Gryffon's Aerie, a farm outside of Charlottesville. I have no problem paying a bit more for what is essentially the makings of a "meat & three" because I now have a connection to the people that raised the animals. Some of our clients do buy commodity meats and food stuffs - I get it. I still eat at their places and the food is indeed fabulous BUT the service or the relationship to the owners or the design of the space has attracted me so that I can, to a certain degree, feel that my money is well spent and the experience is welcomed.

--The Service Staff. I go to Cakes & Ale in Decatur a lot. It is walking distance from my son's school, the owners are good to my family (yes, they are clients as well) but who keeps me coming back is Corina, the barkeep. She moved to Atlanta nearly a year ago from Seattle, knows a thing or two about beer ( a rarity in fine-dining in Atlanta) and challenges me to order something new. She is a sounding board for a rough day, a sincere smile, and patient as hell with my son who orders apple juice after apple juice. I recently had dinner at Valenza in the Brookhaven neughborhood of Atlanta and connected with a server named Peter. My favorite server in Charleston is the barkeep at McCrady's - Matt. Another favorite server is Jennifer at JOEL. After 11 years in this business, I can literally name dozens of servers who have had a lasting impact on me and my family. Anyone know where Tommy is from the now shuttered Harvest? Troy of NYC's Tailor (owned by a friend of ours Sam Mason) is someone we have known for 10 years. He was with WD50 (Wylie Dufresne's NYC place) and I think he might have been at Siberia Bar (now shuttered) prior to that -- I called him at Tailor a few weeks ago to see if he would "take care" of my sister and found out he actually had our phone number saved on his cell. Whenever in NYC, regardless of the business agenda, I visit him -- I feel good about handing this guy my money. I think you get the point.

--Design. Fair is fair. Yes, I own a design shop for restaurants so of course the design of a place, the identity, the website...is going to be important. I don't need fancy, I need thought put into the design. If it is absent, I am thinking that shortcuts were taken. I remember in 1998 when Jeff were to Fountainhead Lounge in East Atlanta and saw the menu. The place was before its time. The interior clever. The menu was pathetic. He took it home, designed it, and brought it back the next day. The owners were scratching their heads. It just bothered him so much that he had to fix it before we could keep spending money there.

I will continue on this topic but would love to hear your thoughts. Why do you go to certain restaurants time and time again? What attracts you to a restaurant?

NY Eats

We're in NYC for the James Beard dinner tonight featuring the chefs from 101 Concepts. Also on tap is a lecture at the French Culinary Institute from Jason Alley of Comfort. What we've eaten so far:

All sorts of barbecue from Blue Smoke

Burgers at The E.U.

Eggs and toasts at Blue Ribbon

More burgers at BLT Burger

Pizza at Lombardi's

A ridiculous amount of food at Momofuku

'Smoked Cola' at Tailor

Monkfish liver, bone marrow, eggs with kale, and lamb sausages at Prune

Burger and fries at The E.U.:

Getting Comfortable With Jason Alley

We could just kiss the editors of Food & Wine Magazine smack on the mouth for featuring Chef Jason Alley's fabulous comfort cuisine in the July issue. Jason almost did last week when he cooked for a couple of F&W folks at the James Beard House. Instead, he sent them home with a belly full of, well, pork belly, and some pickled watermelon rinds.

COMFORT
200 W. Broad St.
Richmond, VA
804-780-0004

"I got my barbecue fix with a perfect vinegar-spiked pulled-pork sandwich at Jason Alley’s five-year-old Comfort. At press time, a spin-off was about to open in Portsmouth, an hour outside the city (725 High St.; 757-393-3322).
--Kristin Donnelly, Food & Wine, July 2007