Stove Restaurant - Fine Dining

Stove, the restaurant

2622 Detroit Street

Portsmouth, VA 23707

757.397.0900

hello everyone, welcome 2 Stove, the restaurant in sunny PoNo, the historic part of Port Norfolk which is in the historic city of Portsmouth in, this is crazy, historic Virginia.

I'm sydney meers, to the left are shots of stove inside and out. I do a kind of neo-southern style of cooking. Being from Mississippi you'll see a touch of my home state of Mississippi and a bit of what I've learned along the way in my writing and cooking style. my grandmother really taught me cooking and then I added some education from Johnson and Wales university culinary arts program and I studied under some real and good Chefs along the way like Hans Shadler, Marcel Desaunier plus a few others and voila, here I am a few years later.

we use great local produce, fish and meats that I get not to far from the restaurant, I grow food for here, make my smoochie bear ham as well as my sausage and my PoNo city cured hams. With global warming I'm even able to get fresh root veggies from my farmers in winter as well as summer. Some friends of mine make what i call a real Smithfield ham. It's a salt cured ham near by from Tommy and Dee Dee Darden's farm just southwest of Smithfield, I get some great yellow, blue and brown oyster mushrooms from Dave and Dee out in Sedley va plus my ole frin, Judy Clark of Clarke's farm in Chesapeake and a hole host more so you can count on fresh, local and very good foods here at stove. I'm surrounded by water so fish is the best and I mostly cook fish but in autumn and winter I do a bunch of meat, wild game and pig, love pork bellies, oh my, and I cure my lardo, cure and slow roast the belles, make my sausage and ham as I mentioned and we dry age our meat. I'm getting ready to hang my hams so you can see we really make most all things here, I just can't grow fish or meat right now, not enough room. Anyway you can see we are devoted to preparing real good and healthy foods for our clientele. We support local farmers and fisherman, are a part of the southern food ways alliance as well. u can join and support them by joining on the web.

so, call and make a reservation, it's a nice 32 seat restaurant with great art, food and all of this in a quaint setting and in a quaint neighborhood, join us, want u.

NEWS: OMGordon, my good ole home state of Mississippi has a great magazine which somehow found me and did a little meniton on me and Stove in the April/May issue of 'Eat.Drink.Mississippi' and it's a dam good mag, check it out by hitting this link: http://www.eatdrinkmississippi.com/ and then touch the square that says 'in the magazine' and you'll see it, and then scroll up and down the pages but hurry it'll change in June. If you get a chance go to http://southernfoodways.org/ and check it out, join it even. They are devoted to the preservation of the southern foods, history and documenting every part of it. I am a member and it just happens to be about 45 minutes from my house when I lived in Mississippi. It's location is Oxford Mississippi at Ole Miss University. Anyway, check it out and get involved. Another good group is your local chapter of 'Buy Fresh, Buy Local' . They are good at getting the word out to support local farmers, farmer markets, bee honeys and fish, everything. They have seminars for educating the public about facts of small farms and the benefits they offer. Here's a link to our local chapter. http://www.buylocalhamptonroads.org/

I've just posted the 2013 Cooking Class schedule so check it out and come cook with me on Sundays. For more info go to the 'stove cooking class' page

Going into our 6th year now and working towards our big 7th we are having fun with our farms that are still growing some really nice produce. I'm just beginning my garden, building a smoked house for my country cured hams, got my honey bees and hives in place and planting my first crops of many to come this year. Judy Clarke of Clarke Farm is now open early, I've been getting asparagus, beauregard sweets and hayman sweet potatoes, baby lettuce, fresh strawberries and now she has her own chickens laying some eggs. The eggs are rich and wonderful to. My not so local but 30 minutes from my home town is the grit gril, she sources her corn from some local farmers who grow no monsanto labratory corn seed, that leaves heirloom and it is devine. she grinds on sundays after getting your order a few days before the weekend and voila, it shows up the next week, no preservatives so this stuff is the real thing and we cook with it here and i must say, dam good-the end

And just a note, we are small with only 11 tables in the dinning room and 1 in the lounge. We fill up quick so make sure you call early in the week for a weekend night or I'd like to recommend a week in advance. Our early seats are booked for 2 hours so if you wish to linger please book the later seating. Call 757.397.0900 for reservations.

Last but not least and speaking of southern heritage, learn to cook real fried chicken the ole south way which is how I learned from my grandmother Johnson, and Lorraine Eaton just informed me that we'll have this recipe in their new cook book plus we won 300 dollars which will go towards out champagne celebration so to taste the real thing check out this link, cook some and I'll come eat it: http://leitesculinaria.com/75694/recipes-sydney-meers-fried-chicken.html

Last but not least, a Chef friend of mine who calls himself Surfer Bob, is having some great foods come out of his garden which is gigantic. go to www.surferbobs.com and have a blast, then get some food down there in Pongo Va, and he has the best elephant garlic I've found yet! xo sydney