Brunch at Kitchen 64 and Ice Cream at Sweet 95

The portmanteau of breakfast and lunch is one of the most loathsome words in the industry, the word sweeter than Nutella and ice cream. We love it. Chefs hate us for it. Richmond, and every place else, is crazy for brunch.

Brunch, the marriage of java eye-openers, grilled meats, griddled cakes and poached eggs, polished off with a Bloody Mary and a thick Sunday edition, is money. It’s a Sunday morning indulgence that makes us forget how the kitchen feels about the shift. Most cooks hate a.m. shifts, especially on the weekends, especially brunch. After a busy weekend and a night that ended with cocktails and war stories, there they are, back again poaching, scrambling and frying eggs for a hundred or so guests.

I’m late to this discovery, but Kitchen 64 makes a mean brunch. And they do it with smiles.

At 9:28 a.m., we weren’t the first to arrive. Another lady met us at the door, Saturday Metro section in hand and told us they were getting ready to turn the key. She appeared to be so old hat at the brunch thing here, I almost expected her to have a key in her pocket. Kitchen 64 opens at 9:30 sharp; host-at-the door, bacon piled in the kitchen window, dining room freshly scrubbed, ready.

The smell of coffee streaming into glass pots and frying potatoes filled the cavernous dining room. The hostess welcomed us in and asked a couple of difficult questions right off the bat — patio or dining room? table or booth? — we stuttered and stumbled with the decision as if playing Password. Everything looked so good. How could we decide?

But decide we did and planted ourselves inside. The spacious wooden booth afforded privacy, even with the children’s birthday party that came in later and sat in the next booth.

Our group stuck to the bennies and ordered three, Fried Green Tomato Eggs Benedict, Prime Rib Benedict and Crab Cake Benedict, each under 10 dollars and served with hash browns, which were a testimonial to simplicity. They were — what is the word? — perfect. Perfect little browned potatoes, bevel cut and crisply faceted nuggets, each exposed surface hot, with the steam held under its skin until bitten and released. We are still talking about these suckers.

The prime rib Benedict, tallowy and cooked to our temperature request of medium-rare without a hitch, arrived by the second cup of coffee. The plate held two English muffins, topped with slabs of beef supporting two poached eggs, cooked firm with rivulets of golden runniness, and a pile of those potatoes. Heavenly Sundays, this was a great plate.

I could go on and on about the lemon scented crab cakes that dissolved on my tongue like sea foam, or rave about the fried green tomatoes, but I won’t. I’ll just leave it with two words: Go there. Take a cook on his day off. Enjoy a pitcher of mimosas if you like. And don’t fret about wrecking someone else’s Sunday, I got the impression that the staff doesn’t mind working brunch at Kitchen 64.

Ice cream at Sweet 95

A sister property to Kitchen 64 is the adjacent boardwalk-style, outdoor ice cream parlor, Sweet 95. Conceived by Constantine Giavos and the rest of the Giavos clan, Katrina, Johnny and Maria, this little shack of ices, shakes and scoops is a sweet retreat. I stopped by last Sunday. When I noticed that the ice cream was from Homestead Creamery, I wished I hadn’t.

Homestead Creamery in Wirtz, Va., is a mom-n-pop creamery near Smith Mountain Lake, the Booker T. Washington National Monument and my family’s cabin where we meet during the summer to skeet shoot and cook out. Stopping at Homestead Creamery on the way is mandatory.

It is, without question, some of the best ice cream I’ve ever had. It tastes more like custard than ice cream, and the milk used to make the frozen dessert is hormone and antibiotic free and comes from humanely treated cows, raised on four neighboring farms.

Sweet 95’s chalk board menu lists about 10 flavors of Homestead Creamery ice cream, along with water ices, sundaes, floats, dips and sweetly old-fashioned toppings, such as confetti sprinkles and animal crackers. The whipped cream is real whipped cream. The cherries are jarred maraschino from childhood.

Water ices include mango and the nostalgic cotton candy and range from $3 -$5. I tried a "Gridlock," a root beer water ice topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, $4, and loved the frozen soda, firmer than a Slurpee, smacked up with custardy vanilla.

The "S’mores Pileup," $6.50, is insanely rich and addictive. Vowing to only "have a bite" and instead slurping the melting chocolate ice cream, graham crackers and marshmallow fluff from the bottom of the cup like it was the last thing I’d ever eat, was plain embarrassing. If you’ve ever seen the chicken eating scene in "Bullets Over Broadway," that’s the visual. As I finished the treat, I saw Johnny Giavos pull up on his bike to check on the freezer temperatures and give a pep talk to the girl scooping. It was 11:30 a.m. and I was sucking sundae dribbles from my shirt tail.

Try Stella’s Baklava sundae, $6. That is, you guessed it, Stella’s famous honey and nut spiked heaven layered between filo dough and served over two scoops of rich vanilla ice cream. Or an RC float on the way to a Squirrels game — the Diamond is just across the road.

For now, Sweet 95 is cash only and still on training wheels. Since they only use ice cream from Homestead Creamery, sometimes they run out. It isn’t like they can pick up more at Food Lion.

Note to the Giavos clan: I love the birthday cake and peanut butter & chocolate flavored ice cream from Homestead Creamery.

Hint. Hint.

Kitchen 64 ***

3336 N. Blvd.

(804) 358-0064

What’s in the Stars:

0—don’t go

*-average

** above average

*** very good

**** excellent dining experience

Imagine learning to process caviar in Russia after a childhood of Cup-a-Soup. Needless to say, Varmit Pickeral was inspired. Thus began 20 years of restaurant gypsy-hood, beginning with Varmit’s first job as a dishwasher in an institutional kitchen and then trying out most any job Varmit could get in the hospitality industry, including; NC BBQ pit line-cook, cheese steward at Artisanal in Manhattan, grape picker, and specialty buyer for Balducci’s Food Lover’s Market in Northern Virginia.