Hampton Roads is trying, but not on foodie map

A barbecue cook-off.

A cooking competition extravaganza in Las Vegas featuring a trio of local chefs.

A media trip aboard a battered oyster barge with lunch at a nearby Eastern Shore vineyard.

Three disparate events, one identical mission: to forge a reputation for the region as a dining destination, a place where foodies flock to sip wine and savor seafood and other local bounty.

Despite splashes of attention in glossy magazines, big-city newspapers and on television, and regardless of continuing efforts by local chefs and restaurateurs, the Hampton Roads food scene is all but invisible to influential dining guides such as Zagat.

The region was even absent from a 2012 list of “Top 100 Scenic View Restaurants” as rated by diners who use OpenTable, an online reservation service for restaurants nationwide.

“To some extent, people will always know it as a haven of fried crabcakes and fried shrimp,” said Executive Chef Jerry Weihbrecht of Zoës in Virginia Beach, a restaurant that won a 2012 Wine Spectator’s Best of Award of Excellence. “That’s always the looming shadow, no matter what.”

Restaurateurs have been shaking that shadow since 1979, when Chef Monroe Duncan redefined Chesapeake Bay cuisine by opening Suddenly Last Summer in Norfolk and offering a menu devoid of broiled and fried seafood platters. Critics found the food striking.

Since then, a brigade of local chefs have debuted restaurants and won accolades from the loftiest of food critics and influencers. “We’ve got a lot of great chefs and a lot of great restaurants now that we didn’t have 10 years ago,” said Joe Takach, CEO of The Meridian Group, a Virginia Beach-based public relations and marketing firm.

A little more than a year ago, Takach approached a group of local chefs about pooling finances and resources to get a campaign going. But the time and expense involved in setting up press tours proved too much in tough economic times, and the effort sputtered.

The promotion problem remains, Takach said. “No one has taken the responsibility of promoting the entire region as a whole. Anybody can see the need.”

In culinary terms, the region is a cohesive unit known for its crabs, oysters, pork, peanuts and other foodstuffs.

In geographic terms, it’s fractured into five cities, Western Tidewater and the Eastern Shore, with no single organization promoting the dining scene as a whole.

“We’re very broken up, city to city,” said Aimee Taylor, executive director of the 100-plus member Virginia Beach Restaurant Association. “At this time, we don’t do anything all together.”

Enter Sunday’s barbecue cook-off. It was to be the first public activity of a fledging organization called the Chefs’ Roundtable. A few area chefs had the idea to come together to improve the quality of kitchen personnel through an intensive apprentice program, help chefs make more informed hiring decisions and foster collaboration among working chefs.

Promoting the area’s dining scene was “one of our main priorities, to get it on the map,” said organizer Chef John Mannino, of Mannino’s Italian Bistro, with two locations in Virginia Beach and a third location that opened this month in Olde Towne Portsmouth.

But that effort also has sputtered, again because of the time constraints among chefs who already work 50-plus hours a week.

It might not have happened anyway, said Steve Plotnicki, publisher of “Opinionated About U.S. Restaurants,” a book and online diner’s guide.

Southeastern Virginia is absent from Plotnicki’s 2011 guide, and the area is “not on the radar” for the updated online edition.

“There are a lot of cities with a lot of good restaurants that fail to attract people from out of town,” he said.

Changing that requires hard work, a critical mass of high-quality restaurants, serendipity and perhaps some luck – like being the hometown to a famous chef who decides to return.

“If I had the formula,” Plotnicki said, “I’d be a gazillion-aire.”

One key, Plotnicki said, is having a marquee restaurant with a renowned chef. That not only draws influential food writers but also raises the bar for restaurateurs and educates local diners about the kind of food served at the nation’s most elite establishments.

That’s what happened in Chapel Hill, N.C., said Chef Bill Smith of Crook’s Corner, a restaurant with a giant pig standing on its sign and one that Bon Appetit magazine called “a legend.”

A French restaurant, La Residence, opened in the 1970s and raised expectations, said Smith, who began his career there. Today, the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area holds a prominent place in dining guides – Plotnicki lists 11 in his 2011 edition.

Since Duncan turned the area’s culinary wheel in 1979, the accolades have trickled in.

In 1999, an editor from The New York Times dined at Todd Jurich’s Bistro in Norfolk and proclaimed the chef “a wizard with Eastern Shore shellfish.”

Shortly after the Vintage Kitchen opened in Norfolk, Chef Phillip Craig Thomason’s place was named in 2006 as one of the nation’s best new restaurants by Conde Nast Traveler.

Local chefs have studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and the Culinary Institute of America. Several chefs – Weihbrecht, Jurich, Rodney Einhorn of Terrapin Restaurant in Virginia Beach and Sam McGann of River Stone Chophouse and Vintage Tavern in Suffolk – have cooked at the James Beard House in New York City. That’s a rarefied invite that allows chefs to showcase their culinary skills – and homegrown ingredients – for some of the nation’s most influential foodies.

Area bakers have been featured on the Food Network’s “Cupcake Wars,” and it seems that every local restaurant with a flattop grill has been featured on Guy Fieri’s “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.”

Saveur magazine has twice this year featured the Eastern Shore, where a coalition of watermen, vintners, farmers and restaurateurs have joined to promote the area’s culinary offerings through events such as the oyster-and-wine luncheon early next month.

The World Food Championships gig in Las Vegas next week, hosted by the Travel Channel’s Adam Richman, might further peel back the shadows. Three local chefs are participating – Weihbrecht, Travis Brust, executive chef at the Williamsburg Inn, and Michael Farrell, chef at Still Worldy Eclectic Tapas in Portsmouth

And the Zagat nut is starting to crack. This summer, the publication, which was recently bought by Google, has rapidly expanded its reach, with first-ever surveying in places such as Madison, Wis., and Virginia Beach.

“This area has something so unique to offer,” Kristina Pitsilides Chastain, president of the Virginia Beach Restaurant Association, said of the waterways and build-in tourist traffic. “What we must focus on is making the culinary offerings a true and valuable accompaniment.”

The area’s off-the-grid status actually might prove to be its biggest asset, Smith said, because today, more than ever, foodies and food writers are on the hunt for the next new thing.

Lorraine Eaton, 757-477-5652, lorraine.eaton@ pilotonline.com

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