Marleigh came down from Brooklyn to drop her car off. She really had no need for it with New York Metro system taking you wherever you need to go. It was also a pain to have to move the car every other day due to the street sweeper schedule. It was nice having her home for the weekend! On the Sunday we took her up to Richmond to catch the train back to New York.
After we dropped her off we figured we'd hit The Veil for a pint and I also wanted to see if they had any cans left from earlier in the week.
Yeah, yeah I know they wouldn't. Doesn't hurt to try though!
Walking in we saw Carling behind the bar which was nice. I bump into her all the time in Virginia Beach. I asked if they had any cans left, which they didn't, but she said she might be able to dig up something in the back. Score! Carling came out with a couple of cans of their collab with Cloudwater - a brewery out of Manchester, England - called Cat and Taco. See it doesn't hurt to try :P Thank you Carling and The Veil for the hook-up, I brought back a Jester King sour for the brewery after a trip I took to Texas.
Of course Shelby and I ordered beers while the can thing was getting worked out. I sipped on our beers and investigated the food pop-ups happening outside the brewery. I was feeling like we would score again on some great food because when we pulled up earlier I smelled some woodfire cooking happening around the block somewhere. We we rounded the corner to enter the tasting room we found the source of that smoke and it was right there at the brewery.
Yes!
There was not just one, but two pop-ups at the brewery that day. One was Brasa food stand, which was the source of the smoke, and another was a oyster stand by Virginia Oyster Shell Recycling Program. Walking up to the Brasa table you were greeted not only by the wonderful wood smoke but a huge Serrano Ham! Take a look at the shop above to see the menu, this is a pop-up that cooks its food on embers. We had a hard time picking what we wanted on the menu (everything!) because there are only two of us and we have to eat oysters too. We picked the Oysters Mushrooms and the Ham plates.
Since we were ordering from both pop-ups we grabbed two small servings of the oysters, plus a few "extra" that ended up on our plates...thanks guys! When sat down with all our food and dove in. It was so good! I mean we're at a brewery eating some high-end stuff in the parking lot. You can't beat it! I forgot to mention that we were meeting someone there too, I mean I was just really going for the beer but Shelby was chatting with a guy named Scott on Insta about dropping off some Distinction Magazines that just came out. He's friends with Todd Wright, whose work regularly appears in the magazine. We also messaged our friend Gerrell to meet up with us. Shelby and him used to work together in Virginia Beach till he moved to Richmond, so we try to get together whenever we're in town.
Shout out to the guys in the pic above, great job with all the food. It was amazing! I ended up with an invite to an event called the Shell-Raiser's Shindig happening later that month that included Brasa and a ton of other restaurants, the guy in the pink shirt is Todd Janeski and he is the director of the oyster shell recycling program I linked at the the beginning of the post. Great guy doing good things put together the event and The Veil was going to be there too in addition to oysters from 7 of the 8 regions. Sounds like heaven.
Gerrell and Shelby
Sorry didn't mean to carry on, the gist of it was we stopped by The Veil and ended up experiencing a lot more than we thought we would and it was wonderful. Love ya Richmond!