Café Misfit

Photo by Jim Naureckas

Beauty is the sole ambition, the exclusive goal of Taste.

—Baudelaire

Suddenly one summer Joe and Oscar appeared in the Fan neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia, with the idea that they could open a bistro on the ground floor of the old Windsor Building, an aged apartment building situated mere yards from the humanities compound at Virginia Commonwealth University. Oscar and Joe believed they could attract wealthy academics, administrators with refined palates and deep pockets, visiting professors of modern art. They hired a fleet of waitresses and released colored balloons for their grand opening. They hired a chef of reputation and a passable sommelier fluent in Portuguese. They had thought of almost everything. But what they didn’t know was that professors are the worst kind of customers in the world, the very bottom. They don’t tip for squat, and they don’t socialize as much as you’d think.

They called their bistro Old Virginia Café. Oscar, already betraying a vision conflicting with Joe’s, campaigned for Black Stocking Café or Zingers. But Joe had more money invested, and he insisted on the understated Old Virginia. They were Italians from Philly; there was no hiding it. They drove imposing black sedans with tinted windows. They wore the tight mustaches of card dealers and circus barkers. Even their shirts, silk and buttoned low enough to let their wiry chest hair escape, told a story of strange migration. One of the first things they did was to stroll with their lady friends along Monument Avenue to take pictures of the old Southern generals. I saw them halted under the gaze of Jefferson Davis, snapping photos like mad of a statue aged by passing traffic.

No one knew how they had decided on Richmond. They had run several lucrative businesses up North. There was mention of a limousine service, a dry cleaning supply business. Joe owned a Cessna and taught private lessons. Oscar co-owned a concrete outfit. Out of thin air, with no prior experience, they had decided to open a restaurant. Ripening in their late fifties, they said they had always wanted to have their own place. They loved to cook and drink, so the obvious next step was to open a restaurant. But they didn’t need a restaurant, and that would prove to be a problem. The only good restaurateur is a desperate one.

I kept my eye on Old Virginia for a year without going in. I locked my bike to the rack across the street on my way to literature classes. Frequently, I spotted Joe placing menu boards on the sidewalk, advertising the daily specials: fried shad roe, calamari salad, ribeye sandwiches. His café was empty save for a few pairs of lunching ladies and a disquieting number of ferns he had spread around the windows for charm. Ferns like that, they won’t survive the winter, I wanted to say. And your prices are too high. No one is going to pay $10.95 for a stuffed flounder.

But I didn’t say anything; I just watched, expecting any day to see him close down like the ones before him.

The Fan, in 1993, was in ruins. Bricks were loose and falling from buildings. Roots buckled the sidewalks from underneath. Warehouses were shuttered. Over on Grace Street, where I lived, roofs were water-damaged and leavened. There was a handful of underemployed prostitutes who worked the corner of Broad Street and Boulevard. Rude bands played in some of the old bars that still thrummed with life. But on most nights, as I pedaled my bike back toward my rented room, the Fan seemed permanently vacant, a failed experiment, an apology.

How Joe and Oscar thought they could waltz down South and take our money I never fully grasped. I was infuriated to see Joe emerge one spring with his menu board: Virginia ham with peanut gravy, beer-battered rockfish nuggets, braised split quail and spring greens. I’d thought the last ice storm had cleared him out. I had not...