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Cape Charles Harbor Grille and
Take-Out Market A welcome addition to the Cape Charles restaurant scene is Julie Delsignore’s gourmet shop, market and bakery that happily expanded from breakfast and lunch to full dinner service. The big, high-ceilinged space looks like a bistro in black, white and silver, with tables placed around the perimeter. Julie’s extensive and creative lunch menu features shrimp quesadillas, apricot-almond chicken salad, spinach salad topped with bronzed chicken or tuna, and a signature crab cake sandwich. Her sesame-coated seared rare tuna carpaccio with wasabi mayonnaise and pickled ginger is to die for. We would have gladly sampled everything on her inspired dinner menu, except the place was closed the night we were there. The menu changes weekly, but might start with scallops on crispy prosciutto crisps topped with crushed peanuts and spicy peanut sauce, hot crab and spinach dip with toast points, and grilled mahi mahi skewers encrusted with sesame seeds and served with black pepper tartar sauce. Oyster shooters with beer or vodka are offered from the raw bar. Typical entrées are peppercorn-encrusted tuna on a bed of black beans topped with homemade fruit salsa, potato chip-encrusted baked cornish game hen topped with hot pepper-peach preserves, and angus sirloin strip steak served with crème de cassis-glazed wild mushrooms and bermuda onions, accompanied by yukon gold crawfish-mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli. Desserts include a signature coconut cream pie, a favorite from Julie’s days in Virginia Beach, as well as key lime and bumbleberry pies and bread pudding with rum sauce. (757) 331-3005. Entrées, $15 to $19. Lunch,
Tuesday-Saturday 11 to 3:30. Dinner, Wednesday-Saturday 5 to 9, Friday
and Saturday only in winter.
They dub it “Chez Exxon,” this semi-gourmet restaurant that Ray Haynie built from a twenty-seat truck stop and gasoline station he bought in 1985. With a background in food retailing, he expanded the rear restaurant with an open kitchen into more than 100 seats in three usually packed dining areas. “I’m Sting-Ray,” he said when introduced, having taken the name when he entered chili cook-offs in which his version was honored for its deep, smoky flavor that stings on the palate. “We make everything from scratch,” said Ray, who sold the business but remains as a consultant and still greets customers out front. The kitchen features fresh seafood and angus beef, plus Southern-style side vegetables and inspired homemade desserts that keep regulars coming back. The fare is truck stop by day, upscale at night. Decor is basic: bright lighting and bare booths and tables, each dressed with a ketchup bottle, salt and pepper shakers, an ashtray and packages of artificial sweeteners. You order from a blackboard menu at the counter, and waitresses bring the meal. At our visit, the menu offered a staggering 22 entrées (after a couple had been erased because they’d sold out by 5:30). They ranged in price from fried oysters or pan-fried pork chops to shrimp or flounder stuffed with crab imperial. The salmon is to die for, according to one fan. So is the Smithfield crab imperial, layered with Smithfield ham and topped with cheese. It’s almost everybody’s favorite, except for old-timers who disdain the fancy choices and opt for pork ribs, delmonico steak or the dinner platter of roast beef with gravy. Our party was thoroughly impressed with the fried oyster platter, the soft-shell crab platter, the broiled trout and the broiled rockfish, which our guest called “the biggest and freshest” slab ever after it arrived nearly spilling off the plate. These came with tossed salads with blue cheese dressing and sides of sugar snap peas, spinach or green bean casserole. With a bottle and a half of wine, the dinner tab for four came to a mere $66. Creamy crab soup is the starter of choice, although with the amount of food offered most don’t need it. Sweet potato pie and Tennessee bread pudding are among the desserts. An extensive selection of wine is displayed on racks as you enter the restaurant area from the service station/convenience store. Customers so inclined pick out their choices, pay the retail price and there’s no corkage fee. Wine imbibers might feel conspicuous among all the beer-guzzling and iced-tea sipping locals, but no one seems to care. (757) 331-2505. Entrées, $8.95 to $21.95. Open
daily from 5:30 a.m. Dinner, 4:30 to 9 or 9:30.
Commanding a choice location next to the reborn Palace Theater complex is this seafood bistro and wine bar opened in late 2002 by Robbin Smith, a longtime chef from Washington, D.C. Relocating here from Boulder, Colo., he bought an abandoned restaurant and undertook extensive renovations to seat 50 diners at well-spaced tables dressed in beige and green cloths. Crab dishes are Robbin’s specialty, enhanced by recipes from his African American heritage. Look for his signature crab cakes, crab imperial with a hint of rémoulade sauce and lemon, crab fettuccine alfredo and flounder stuffed with crab imperial. Pan-fried catfish, poached salmon with dill sauce, dijon chicken and a few pasta dishes also were on the opening menu. He planned to add slow-roasted pork tenderloin with orange-cranberry glaze, New York strip steak with peppercorn-béarnaise sauce and grilled lamb with rosemary sauce. Appetizers include nachos chesapeake (topped with shrimp and crab meat), stuffed potato skins and mussels in a spicy garlic cream broth. Billed as dinner salads are catfish caesar and smoked oyster. Desserts run to chocolate cheesecake with raspberry coulis, bread pudding with a toasted butter pecan and vanilla sauce, and mixed berry sorbet with ginger-lime sauce. (757) 331-3123. www.the-chesapeake.com. Dinner,
Wednesday-Sunday from 5. Saturday lunch, noon to 2:30. Sunday brunch,
noon to 2.
Lunch and dinner are served seasonally in this multi-purpose café and gift shop with a new ice cream parlor in front. The rear section has high-backed booths from New Orleans set beside white bead-board walls and trellis work that conveys a garden effect. Out back is a courtyard garden with umbrella-topped tables. Two couples, Mike and Sharon Dunnagan and Larry and Joyce Butler, joined forces to deliver typical small-town Southern fare. For dinner, expect such starters as shrimp cocktail, mozzarella cheese sticks, fried calamari and “poppers” – stuffed jalapeño peppers with cheese and dipping sauce. Entrées include fresh bread and choice of two sides, from vegetable of the day to applesauce. Typical are baked salmon with dill sauce, steamed snow crab legs, baked chicken breasts, meat loaf, prime rib au jus and “roast beef hot shot,” thinly sliced roast beef served over bread and mashed potatoes and covered with gravy. A couple of pasta dishes, shrimp scampi and linguini marinara, come with a house salad. (757) 331-1600. Entrées, $7.95 to $14.95. Open
daily in summer from 11, Sunday from noon. Dinner, 5 to 9 or 10, Sunday
to 6. Closed in winter.
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