With all the shopping and eating opportunities crammed into Carytown’s multiple blocks, I’ve done my fair share of traversing its sidewalks in fits of retail and restaurant therapy. 

Whether you like Les Paul or less vermouth, there’s a new Gibson to add to your repertoire: Gibson’s Grill, the new restaurant/lounge attached to The National that oozes big-city sexiness from every intimate corner of its bilevel space. 

What a difference two years, three chefs and a few interior upgrades can make. At the end of 2006, when I first wrote about Zed Café, the oddly placed, organically focused restaurant in Lakeside, my biggest complaint was that lowered lighting and votive candles couldn’t turn this chic, daytime café into a high-end dinner destination.

Aurora, the new bakery-restaurant-lounge on the corner of Grace and Fourth streets, has impressively high ceilings. And for that I’m glad, because all the potential swirling around this Euro-chic, open-air, are-we-really-in-Richmond? establishment needs plenty of room to keep on growing.

I wish I had studied Rivers Ridge’s logo a little more carefully before plunking down quite a bit of cash on two meals I’d rather forget. If I had, maybe I would have been warned of this new western Henrico County eatery’s bipolar personality.

The food at Kuba Kuba was good enough that we’ll vacation there again

From gussied-up comfort food to an over-the-top chain, 2008 had it all.  Dana Craig picks her favorite 10 restaurants of 2008.

Maybe I’ve been watching too many marathons of “A Christmas Story,“ but for some reason, I’ve been craving Chinese food.  But not the “Hey, let’s grab some takeout containers and set up shop on the couch” type of Chinese food you can get from any brightly lighted, picture-menu-ed establishment.

As a former waitress at a barbecue restaurant while in college, I don’t have the best memories of smoked-meat dining. Paper-covered tables, faux-wood-paneled walls, neon pigs and a general aura of stickiness are the unsettling images that usually permeate my mind when someone mentions ribs.  Thank goodness for Q Barbecue.

Davis & Main is one of those restaurants where one minute you’re at the bar chatting up Mayor-elect Dwight Clinton Jones (a rumored regular), and the next minute, you’re reminiscing about the junior prom date you took here years before.  Hey, it could happen. Davis & Main is a Fan District institution, serving grilled American cuisine in all its tried-and-true glory since 1987.

The Beach House Bar & Grill is Innsbrook’s attempt at re-creating Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville in Richmond—the same style of subpar food exists merely as a background for the entertainment. 

Sushi O, the new sushi spot from Osaka, serves up spectacular sushi in a gorgeous setting, but the service could use some work.

Hot dogs are the edible icons of American leisure. Ballgames and backyard barbecues simply aren’t right without them. So why do we typically limit the hot dog’s glory to acting as a simple accessory to sporting events? Why not make it an integral part of a fun-filled night out on the town? Perhaps that’s what Travis Irby was thinking when he opened City Dogs in Shockoe Slip this June.

Mama Cucina, tucked between Dairy Queen and Capital Ale House in Glen Allen, serves gargantuan portions of authentic Italian fare and impresses our critic.