the tobacco company restaurant

For my second Richmond Restaurant Week adventure, I organized a small group of strangers to join me for dinner at The Tobacco Company Restaurant (1201 E Cary St).

Full Disclosure: I work here as the Director of Marketing, so I played a role in the restaurant becoming a participant in Richmond Restaurant Week and had previewed some of the menu items before having the dinner.

That being said, this dinner was an experience like no other. It was a dinner with a random group of people that turned out to be some of the most interesting folks I have ever met. My guests were a recently registered nurse who had done many many things before settling on that occupation, a tenured English professor at VCU and a political research analyst from Texas. The dinner conversation was not lacking in the least.

I had the coconut curry soup, the Wagyu burger and a mini butter cake. All but the butter cake, I had never had before. I planned it that way so that I would be as new to the food as the diners I was with. Part of the fun of Restaurant Week is trying something you have never tried before or going somewhere you have never been. It was important to try to at least keep a little of that in mind when dining at the place that I work.

Side note: I have no idea why the Wagyu burger is not on the menu and will be lobbying for it extensively. For those who do not know what Wagyu is (which was me a few months ago) it is the American version of Kobe beef. Kobe is like Champagne meaning that you cannot call Wagyu cattle raised outside of the Kobe region of Japan, Kobe beef, it must be called Wagyu or Kobe Style.

One of the other diners in my party had the burger and agreed that it was amazing. All of my guests were not the type to tell a person what they want to hear and seemed to really enjoy their dinner. The barbecue shrimp and crawfish were a big hit as well as the beet risotto.

It was my second dinner of Spring 2012 Richmond Restaurant Week and my second time being more than satisfied at the end of a great meal.