I hope you have enjoyed the last few week’s worth of Thoughtful Thursday posts which detailed C & my 10th anniversary vacation to Virginia Beach. This post highlights the neat little restaurants we visited while on the road. I had done quite a bit of research on local Virginia Beach restaurants because I wanted us to get a local taste of the place. Thanks to sites like Tripadvisor, Urbanspoon, Google, and Yahoo travel, I found several local hot spots to try.
On Tuesday of our trip, which was our official anniversary, we ate at two local restaurants which had gotten really good reviews. These eateries are in side-by-side houses and are owned by the same people. One serves breakfast and lunch while the other serves dinner and late night eats.
We ate at Doc Taylor’s for lunch and it was so good!! Here is the exterior…
This is the only advertising that you will see so you have to know where they are.
I think the interior probably looks a lot like it did when someone lived there. The ambience was great!
C ordered the Philly cheesesteak with fries and I got the OBX shredded BBQ sandwich with fries and the absolutely best Cole slaw I have ever had! If you are ever in the Virginia Beach area, go to Doc Taylor’s! It was awesome!
For our anniversary dinner that night, we went to Doc Taylor’s sister restaurant, Tautog’s. This was a Tuesday evening and the place was packed. We had to wait about 45 minutes to get a table. We were seated in the screened-in porch back to back with many other diners. The food here was good but a little too pricey for what you get. I think they should at least throw in a salad or bread to go with the main entrée. C had their Steak au Poivre with roasted potatoes and I had the Wesley’s World Famous crab cakes with roasted potatoes. Good, but expensive.
The next day we headed into Norfolk for some sightseeing and to go to a little drive-in/diner called Doumar’s that I had heard about on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives from the Food Network. This place was famous for their homemade ice cream cones, so we absolutely had to try them. This was a neat little joint that was full of locals there for lunch. I think that is always a good sign!
C had a cheeseburger with fries and I had their shredded BBQ sandwich with slaw and fries. The food was great and the best was yet to come. C & I both ordered a chocolate ice cream cone and it was soooo good!!!!
Here I am trying not to lose a bite.
After a full day of touring, we made it back to our hotel room to decide where to eat supper. I wanted something quick and close because I wanted to head to the beach before sunset. We found a little pizza place just a block or two from our hotel called The Pi-zzeria (as in Pi, or 3.14). Kind of cute, isn’t it? The brick oven gave this pizza a great thin crispy crust and the cheese and homemade sauce were good, too.
On our way home through Virginia, we stopped in Staunton to pick up some supplies and decided to eat there. C has a neat app on his smartphone called Where. You can pick what you are looking for, such as a restaurant, gas station, hotel or store and it will search from your current location. One of the eateries listed was Five Guys Burgers and Fries. I had read about this place but there aren’t any close to where we live so we decided to check it out.
You order at their front counter and then take a seat to wait for your number to be called. They have peanuts in the shell you can snack on while you wait, but don’t eat too many because you get huge portions. I ordered a regular burger and fries and I got a double patty hamburger with enough fries for 3 servings. If I ever get to eat there again, I will definitely order the “little burger”. The food was really good though!
This is ONE serving of fries!! Oh my!
As we headed home through West Virginia on Friday morning, we had a late breakfast at Tudor’s Biscuit World. I had gotten a tip about this restaurant from someone I had met through work and was eager to try it. I think I was expecting something like Cracker Barrel so I was a little disappointed. The Tudor’s we stopped at was in a truck stop/mini mart kind of store, but it was busy. The prices were extremely reasonable and the biscuits were huge, but I have had better. It was ok, but not great.
I hope everyone has enjoyed these glimpses into our first trip to the ocean and all of the sites and tastes along the way!
Picture Perfect Cooking 