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Carol Mead Smith and her brother KG both left Warsaw for Richmond’s Virginia Commonwealth University and both found their way back to Warsaw to open restaurants.
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Michelle Snapp, owner of Michelle’s Sweet Treats, Carol Mead Smith, owner of Relish Restaurant and Wine Bar and Dana Boyle, owner of Garner’s Produce.
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Relish Restaurant and Wine Bar offers 14 specialty cocktails using seasonal ingredients.
There’s a certain sense of pride in making a living in the small town where you grew up.
Carol Mead Smith and her brother KG both left Warsaw for Richmond’s Virginia Commonwealth University and both found their way back to Warsaw to open restaurants.
KG had worked in fine dining restaurants around Richmond until he married, began having children and switched to real estate. But a decade later when he saw a prime location for a restaurant open up in Warsaw, he couldn’t resist.
“I always liked the restaurant business, but I had a young family by then,” he says. “But I figured with this, I could do breakfast and lunch and be home in the evenings.”
The Daily took a year of work to get ready, opening in 2010 and immediately attracting locals, business people and visitors. “We named that the Rusty Brown memorial crosswalk,’ he says laughing and gesturing just outside. “He works at the bank and he’s the only one who crosses that walkway every day to eat.”
It’s regulars—people who are in three to five times a week—such as Brown who make up 30 percent of hisbusiness, and many of them are in so frequently thekitchen has learned how they like a menu item tweaked to suit them. When the menu was updated this summer, several customer favorites joined the Kristy–turkey,bacon, ranch dressing, cheddar and cucumbers onpumpernickel—as regular menu offerings for the first time.
At one time, chicken salad was an occasional special, but it got so popular, KG added it to the menu and now it’s the best-selling sandwich and available by the pound. When he arrives at the restaurant at 5 a.m., it’s to cook off enough chicken for the day and yet the Daily often sells out of it by 1 p.m. Despite limited kitchen space, he’s also cooking roast beef for the French dip and making fresh soup before lunch customers begin arriving at 11.
Local produce is sourced from Garner’s Produce and he grows his own basil out the side door, where he’d eventuallylike to put a patio. “Anything I can do locally, I do.”
He prides himself on freshness, so everything except the bread is house made. Customers have told him his pastramiis better than what they’ve had in New York.
“I like the fast pace,” he says. “I’m not happy unless I have tickets all the way across the board. It’s great having a job you do like and enjoy. In 20 years, hopefully I won’t still be cooking, but the restaurant will still be here.”
Walking into his sister Carol’s restaurant Relish, avisitor is greeted by shelves of wine for sale, murals onthe wall and colorful glassware on every table. The yinto her brother’s yang, Relish only serves dinner.
“One thing I love about running this place by myself is that I can do whatever I want creatively,” Carol says of embracing seasonality and regionality. “I take inspiration from whatever ingredients I can find.”
Because she’s based in Warsaw, she can find quite a bit. She usually begins her morning sourcing for fruits and vegetables at Garner’s “because they have new things every day,” before moving on to Hinson’s Seafood, where she goes with whatever the watermen have been catching,say, soft shell crabs or cobia. Some desserts are made in house and the rest come from Michelle’s Sweet Treats across the street.
“I want what’s fresh every day because it tastes better,” she explains. Over the summer, she’d been juicing melons from Garner’s for use in Relish’s cocktails. The beef in their prime burger sliders comes to them from Berrymore Beef Farm and in winter, she gets juicy hydroponic tomatoes from Sion House Farms.
After growing up in the area, Carol couldn’t wait to escape. She worked as an activities staffer on a cruise ship, as part of the crew on a sailboat in the Caribbean and as a server in various restaurants before returning to Warsaw.
“It’s all KG’s fault!” she laughs. When her brother began having children, she moved back to be near her nieces and nephews, helping him out when he decided to open the Daily. “I’ve always loved this space,” she says of the early 20th century building that has housed a shoerepair and an antique store. “It’s small enough I knew I could manage it. I started small and as we gotbusier, I added things.” KG helped her with getting the kitchen set up and built the bar for her.
Relish’s doors opened in April 2014 and a diverse customer base followed almost immediately. Wednesday nights are oyster nights with 72-year old Miss Pearline, a secondgeneration shucker of 52 years,providing the shucking alongwith oyster storytelling.
Some evenings, Carol says she doesn’t know a soul in the room and other nights, customers mingle and move around because everyone knows each other. She enjoys it all.
But it’s when she’s driving around in the morning to source ingredients that she’s happiest.
“I love that part of my day, going around and seeing what’s going on. You get to look your farmer or waterman in the eye and say thank you.”
Relish Restaurant and Wine Bar • 804-761-6727
The Daily • 804-333-3455
