Our favorite 13 meals and plates of 2020 in Hampton Roads: Takeout and patio edition

It’s been a trying and tortured year for restaurants — punctuated by a steady march of dining-room restrictions, and often heartening ingenuity from restaurateurs struggling to survive during a relentless pandemic.

And while the vaccines slowly making their way around the country may bring us into an interminable monthslong home stretch, restaurants’ continued survival will likely require that diners order takeout, or bundle up for al fresco dining on a new crop of heated patios.

To that end, our food writers reflect on some of their favorite takeout and patio meals of the pandemic. Critic Matthew Korfhage offers a list of his favorite dishes at new restaurants that opened into a difficult year. Judy Cowling remembers some of her favorite al fresco and takeout meals at restaurants both new and old.

Perhaps unconsciously, in a year that’s been uniquely luckless, we chose 13 of them.

Best takeout and patio fare at new restaurants

#bbiz ramen at Baby Izakaya

510 17th Half St., Virginia Beach, 757-937-1995, babyizakaya.com

Ramen is a winter warmer without parallel — a thumping, booming bowl of hot umami. But truly great bowls have often been elusive in Hampton Roads. Well, say hello to the #bbiz miso bowl on Baby Izakaya’s hidden back patio in the Virginia Beach ViBe District, in a restaurant remade for the needs of the pandemic. That $15 bowl is the most accomplished Alkaline has made, and easily among the best in Virginia Beach, with tight-waved and toothsome Sun noodles meant to hold up to the miso-rich loudness of its broth.

The broth’s boom comes from the flavor and marrow of a chicken and pork-trotter stock, leavened with delicate yellowtail dashi and the added umami of chicken garum — an ancient Roman style of fermentation recently revived at Denmark’s famed Noma restaurant. Still more umami arrives in the form of sausagey stir-fried pork in place of the customary chashu, a pleasing addition of meaty chew that distributes throughout the bowl. Add butter and corn, the way they do it in Sapporo, and the bowl is an umami bomb of nuclear proportions, a raised middle finger to winter.

Grilled or fried chicken at Yendidi

5800 Chesapeake Blvd., Norfolk, 757-995-1988, yendidirestaurant.com

The secret to Southern fried chicken, one of the world’s greatest culinary inventions, was the flavor brought to the dish by enslaved West African cooks — who were able to revive a piece of their lost home by dressing up the drab Scottish take on chicken with wondrous seasoning. If you need a reminder of this, stop by for takeout at Yendidi, a warm shoebox of a restaurant from Ghanaian chef Josephine “Abena” Oteng-Appiah. There, her West-African-style fried chicken arrives loaded with ginger and garlic and Scotch bonnet spice, steamed in buttermilk for hours before being fried up with light breading that fumes orange with its blend of seasonings.

Or, perhaps even better, try the grilled version, cooked for nearly an hour until its skin is brown and gently crisped, glistening with just a touch of oil. It arrives juicy and tender, thickly encrusted in warming spice and aromatic herbs — an addictive mixture she also uses on the crispy wings she serves with sweetly starchy yam french fries. Make sure to call ahead: She makes it fresh, and this takes time.

Jerk mushrooms at Desmond’s Island Soul Grill

977 Reon Drive, Virginia Beach, 757-963-268, facebook.com/desmondsislandsoulgrill

Our local Caribbean food scene has suffered this year; the world-beating Island Jerk Hut has remained closed since the beginnings of the pandemic, as owner Richard Downer works to expand his restaurant from its little South Norfolk shack. But if the world takes away, it also provides. Some of the best Caribbean food locally is now the vegan fare found at Desmond’s Island Soul Grill in Virginia Beach, from Guyanese-American chef Shavonne Alexander. And though the restaurant isn’t technically new, its re-imagining as a vegan spot is much fresher.

In particular, the jerk mushroom plate is a world of depth and bracing spice, its portobello caps smoked over hickory and apple — or sometimes pimento wood — tossed in jerk sauce made fresh for each batch. To make the dish, Alexander simmers down onions and peppers and smoked mushrooms and seasons the mix into Scotch bonnet sweet heat that lingers achingly on the tongue. The callaloo, which you can get on the side, is a creamy run down of amaranth greens simmered with peppers and onions and coconut milk, not to mention a world of earthy spice. The food at Desmond’s isn’t just some of the best vegan cooking in Hampton Roads: It’s some of the best cooking, period.

Toast at Cafe Blanca

4117 Granby St., Norfolk, 757-937-0847, blancava.com

Chef Courtney White’s little breakfast and-lunch-and-wine sidebar to her Continental restaurant Blanca contains something wonderful and unexpected: an innovation in cinnamon toast. The toast here is not French toast — though it is French, and it is toast. It is instead a buttery brioche toast glazed in sugar, then caramelized on a grill to haunting sweetness and crispness.

With its sugar shell and airy softness within, Cafe Blanca’s toast is bread’s thumping answer to creme brulee, with jam and creme fraiche besides. And it is heaven. Whatever else I order when I pick up food from Cafe Blanca, whether egg-topped pasta or a sriracha-spiked breakfast burger, I also order this.

Jalisco-style barbacoa at Chorizo Mexican Eatery

4820 Hampton Blvd., Norfolk, 757-390-2526, chorizo-mexican-eatery.business.site.

Has it been less than a year since Chorizo opened in Norfolk? It seems hard to imagine a pandemic without it. Rodrigo Ochoa and Fernanda Martinez’s bright-lit, clean-lined taqueria is home to some of the most consistently excellent Mexican cooking in Hampton Roads, whether the expertly grilled carne asada cut from actual steak, or the marinated pork al pastor shaved from a trompo vertical rotisserie — the only one for miles.

But one of the most timely additions to the menu was Jalisco-born Ochoa’s take on the orange-tortilla quesabirria trend that took over both Instagram and Mexican menus all over the country. Ochoa’s tacos, however, were not a trend. It was instead the taco he grew up eating for breakfast in Guadalajara: fatty beef cheek stewed for eight hours and served in grease-crisped tacos alongside chile-cumin-clove-spiced consomé.

Made into a quesadilla, that barbacoa is fatty stewed heaven, with lightly toasted and toothsome house-made tortillas stuffed until fluffy with Oaxaca cheese, grilled onion and achingly tender beef cheek. It is a school in decadent richness leavened with spice, and barely contained by the crispness of wheat.

Korean fried chicken at Choong Man Chicken

2040 Coliseum Drive, Hampton, 757-800-9893; 908 S. Lynnhaven Road, Virginia Beach, 757-800-7706; 200 Monticello Ave., Williamsburg (inside Bonanza Social Kitchen), 757-808-6032.

2020 is the year that Korean fried chicken broke in Hampton Roads. And while the texture of Choong Man’s has not been consistently perfect — it is seemingly in a constant process of dialing itself in, and then letting out its waistband — it is a flavor that has become a charcoal-charred, chile-spiced and twice-fried obsession. I’ve ordered it far too often to not place it on this list.

Favorites include the lovely sweet-earthy curry, and the psychedelic and inhuman fire of the red hot pepper chicken, which makes no allowances for tender American tongues. Out of superstition more than any legitimate expectation, I always order it “tikkudak,” for a promised extra turn in a charcoal oven.

And yet, if someone were to ask for the most well-executed Korean fried chicken in Hampton Roads, I would not send them to Choong Man. I’d send them instead to Chick N Roll in Portsmouth (5660 Portsmouth Blvd., Portsmouth, 757-956-5536, toasttab.com/chicknroll/v3), which reliably makes a textbook version: a perfect shell of crisp breading, a gentle balance of many flavors, a feat of meticulousness.

But cravings don’t lie, and I crave Choong Man so often I wonder if I’m pregnant.

Farther afield: Some of the finer meals I’ve tried for the first time this year within a daytrip of Hampton Roads include picture-perfect ribs and perhaps the best pulled chicken I’ve tried in this world, at Old Colony Smokehouse in Edenton, North Carolina.; the transcendent and idiosyncratic smoked pastrami or pork BBQ at Ace Biscuit and Barbecue in Charlottesville, which is the fully realized promise of every other Southern spot like it; and the parallel-universe take on Basque cuisine at Adarra in Richmond, where grass-fed lamb and mussels collide in an anchovy-amped and savory universe of earth, sea and spice.

- Matthew Korfhage

Favorite al fresco and takeout meals of the year

Fin Seafood

Fin Seafood: 3150 Styron Square North, Newport News, 757-599-5800, www.finseafood.com; Fin & Tonic: 1301 Bridgeport Way, Suffolk, 757-800-1074, www.finandtonicsuffolk.com.

I sat for dinner on the patio under the awning in the pouring rain at Fin in October, so I will gladly brave cold, snow or sleet to have their sriracha ice cream tuna tartare. You don’t think ice cream and fish go together? I didn’t either until I discovered this rare creation from the mind of Chef Kenny Sloane Jr. Seaweed salad and snowy crumbles of sesame oil powder plus crispy fried strips of spring roll wrapper make this an appetizer to share or an entree if you are feeling a bit selfish.

The Pink Dinghy

609 19th St., Virginia Beach, 757-937-1010, www.facebook.com/thepinkdinghy.

Any empanada on the menu is fine by me, be it filled with pork, peppers or plantains. But then again, I do love the chili relleno stuffed with all that savory goodness. Heck, I’ll take both. Might as well add a side of the elotes, made of Cromwell Farm corn with queso fresco and chile dust. As long as the sun is shining, you can enjoy picnic-table dining, and the Dinghy is adding a reservations-only tent in the new year.

May’s Parlor

2708 Pacific Ave., Virginia Beach, 757-278-5559, www.maysparlor.com.

A cuppa smooth and smoky La Colombe coffee and pretty much anything from the mesmerizing pastry case. Instagram worthy muffins, scones, croissants, cookies and quiche are made daily in this scratch kitchen. Choose salads and sandwiches for bigger appetites. The new pick-up window makes everything a breeze. Closed for the holidays: Will reopen Jan. 5.

My Mama’s Kitchen

My Mama’s Kitchen, 7943 Shore Drive, Norfolk. 757-233-0433, www.facebook.com/MyMamasKitchen

Winner, winner, catfish dinner. The golden fried catfish is super tender and super fine just as it is. But give it a dunk in the house remoulade and add a big ol’ warm slab of that heavenly cornbread and you achieve lift off. Whether you sit on the new patio or order to go, you will leave here with a smile. Closed for the holidays: Will reopen Jan. 5.

Graze Kitchen

Graze Kitchen VB, 215 67th St., Va. Beach, 757-457-7105, www.grazekitchenvb.com.

The sweet hash bowl is a hearty helping of sweet potatoes, caramelized onions, greens, grilled pears, blistered shishito peppers and a fried egg on top, all drizzled with a cream sauce. The sandwiches, smoothies and desserts are made in house. You can’t beat the bird’s eye view of the Oceanfront, the service or the food at Graze Kitchen. It’s a great place to park yourself for a spell and zen out. Dinners to go are available; hide the containers when you get home and tell everyone that you made it yourself. After the accolades roll, admit that Graze Kitchen was responsible. Closed for the holidays: Will reopen Jan. 5.

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Clayton’s Counter Delicatessen

1337 Oceana Blvd., Virginia Beach, 757-937-3587, www.claytonscounter.shopsettings.com.

The mesquite-smoked chicken “sando” is a masterpiece of tender sliced smoky chicken breast, a schmear of pimento cheese, perfectly cooked pepper bacon and Swiss stacked between beautifully toasted focaccia. And the richy-rich Butter Burger was a whopper of a winner in which a Brasstown beef patty is seared in a cast iron skillet and finished with a pat of compound butter. Served with pan-seared fingerling potatoes and the best pickle ever.

Luce

245 Granby St, Norfolk, 757-502-7260, lucenorfolk.com.

I enjoyed an early dinner at Luce on their Granby St. patio dining space back in June. Chef Antonio Caruana has done his best to create enough seating to accommodate his devoted guests, but couldn’t make the COVID percentages work at his original location. The unstoppable Caruana devised a fix in the way of dressing up space in the Lorraine Hotel for additional dining. The original Luce seats 15 to 20 while LuceLorraine comfortably seats 30. A soaring ceiling plus expansive windows give this space a luxurious feel and well distanced tables make for great canoodling while enjoying this sexy food, though a heated patio is also available. Call for reservations.

— Judy Cowling