In a near-unmarked Norfolk house, a panoramic Turkish brunch with uncommon wines and teas

Maybe it was the apricots. And maybe it was the gentle Greek cheese. Maybe it was the Irish butter, thick with fat and the taste of grass. Or perhaps it was the ezme — a bright burst of walnuts and red pepper paste meant to be dredged with slices of French baguette thoughtfully warmed before serving.

Or who knows? Maybe it was the vermouth.

But in the backyard garden of a century-old house in Norfolk’s Chelsea neighborhood, I had a sensation I haven’t experienced in most of a virus-strewn year: Normalcy. Peace. The thrilling discovery that can often lurk in simple things. A mild March breeze. And frankly, a mild buzz.

Grandiflora Wine Garden opened quietly in December, in a nearly unmarked house the creamy color of French vanilla. The house was built for a tugboat captain and has since served as an art gallery. It’s now a domestic and multi-roomed spot devoted to natural and out-there and interesting wines, with an Airbnb inn upstairs and backyard garden whose season has finally come.

The Turkish breakfast held each Sunday offers a potentially endless procession of simple and earthbound delights — prettily ornamented dishes of olives and nuts, soft cheeses served perhaps with rose petal jelly or Turkish grape syrup, eggs or roasted sweet potatoes blanketed in rust-toned spice, a bottomless supply of a flakily layered Turkish pastry called börek that arrives with a dappling of earthy black Nigella seeds.

The brunch, as everything at Grandiflora, is meatless, though it’s unlikely you’ll miss the meat.

In the breakfast tradition of kahvalti, which Grandiflora co-owner Erin Edelman grew up sharing with her Turkish family, there are no large and sugary gut-bombs either. For $20 a person, the brunch is a broad spread of simple and lovely bites, each one treated with care. A plate may consist of just some bright-fleshed cucumbers in olive oil, with the addition of tomatoes when they’re in season — both of which the Edelmans have planted in the restaurant’s garden.

Each bite is mix-and-match, if you’d like, from the spread on offer. Did you load your toasty La Brioche baguette with earthy walnut paste and sour cherry jam, to make a Mediterranean-Continental PB&J? Layer your kasseri sheep’s milk cheese with local wildflower honey? Feel free to proclaim yourself a genius.

No dish or bite will feel filling on its own. But after a long meal of grazing and talking and sipping you will feel gently sated, well at ease.

Traditionally a kahvalti comes with black tea, made Turkish-style on a double teapot and poured into buxom little hourglass cups, the same ones you might find at nearby Turkish spot Naci’s Corner Cafe at lunchtime. Coffee is also available, from local roaster Prescription.

But Grandiflora is also a wine garden, as we were reminded by the couple across the patio who seemed to be making an enviably tipsy day out of the endeavor. And the list at Grandiflora is stocked with uncommon flavors — with a strong focus on natural wines with long traditions. Natural wines have had a local boom lately, with Toast in Norfolk and Virginia Beach’s Pink Dinghy mining the fun and glou-glou side of the trend especially. But Grandiflora is likely the most accomplished and meticulous of the bunch.

At breakfast, the wine list is short. This might involve a simple spritz made with excellent and complex Atxa vermouth, resplendent with flavors of wormwood and orange peel. Or a glass of lemony and brightly apple-acidic wine from Greece, morning sunshine in a bottle.

But from Wednesday to Saturday, the full wine menu comes out to play. And in a rare but extraordinarily welcome gesture, Grandiflora offers half-glasses of each esoteric wine on the list at around half-price. This encourages hearty experimentation on the palate, even among the more expensive wines that might otherwise be $19 a glass.

Co-owner Jason Edelman spends hours researching each Turkish or Serbian or Cypriot wine that Grandiflora stocks — rare bottles often made according to ancient traditions, or newfangled biodynamic practices, or sustainably by aging in local woods that impart their own unique flavors.

And so he’s an uncommonly knowledgeable host, spinning out yarns upon request about why each wine tastes the way it does, and why it’s special. You suspect he could tell you the winemaker’s favorite color and middle name. He might even refer you to partner Kenny Gerry, the resident history geek, for an accounting of the volatile medieval history that led to the wine’s production.

But the wine mostly speaks for itself. A three-year-old Slovenian rebula, with honey-dark hues and stemmy tannins from time spent resting on the skins of its grapes, might take on the light floral qualities of acacia wood. A Cypriot dessert wine turns out to be a chewy whirl of pleasantly oxidized and spiced-raisin flavor.

Edelman’s favorites lately, he says, include a Bolivian cabernet sauvignon called La Concepcion that tastes a bit like getting lost in a bramble patch, its high-elevation vineyards drawing uncommon flavors from a familiar grape. A cappadocia from Turkey’s high plateaus offers a similar sense of discovery— a dry wine with all the minerality and salinity of a German wine, he says, but without the “ripping acidity.”

Erin Edelman says her favorites on the lists lately include a minimal-intervention Italian aglianico with a luscious flavor and body, available at the moment on their Italian flight — though expect the flights to change constantly. She also appreciates the pet-nats, naturally carbonated and often low-alcohol sparklers that are easy on both the palate and the stomach.

That last detail — considering not just the flavor but whether it will sit well with the diner’s constitution — strongly characterize Grandiflora, not just with the wine but with the food. It is a conscientious and mindful place, with food prepared low in oil and salt to go easy on the system.

The nighttime food menu is nonetheless a bit less easy to navigate than the brunch, most suitable as snacks and tastes rather than as a filling meal all to itself; a $12 walnut-miso “pate” sandwich might still leave you hungry if you arrived with an empty belly. For fuller meals, aim again at a grazing experience. It’s the tasting boards that will buoy you — thoughtful arrangements of cheeses and nuts and breads, available in a variety of forms.

Order one, and augment with the soup or the hummus in particular.

The traditional Turkish red lentil is a simple preparation, one of the first Erin learned to make for herself upon leaving home for college, laden with red lentils and rice and vegetables, made earthy with Turkish sweet paprika and oregano and spiced with a dappling of aleppo pepper. It is, like the best of the food they serve at Grandiflora, both simple and heartening, a homestyle meal in a literal home — available if you’d like with a half-serving of a simple feta-and-greens quesadilla.

And just as if you’re at someone’s home, the prettily arranged hummus plate might be prepared a little differently each time depending on who makes it: Erin favors more tahini, a bit of extra lemon for balance. And on many plates, she might like to throw in some micro-greens from the garden, an aid to digestion. Akin, the restaurant’s general manager, might favor a little more rough chickpea texture in his hummus, and a wallop of garlic.

The boards in particular, the tasty rotating bruschetta bites, or a plate of crispily cakey stone-ground chocolates, make excellent accompaniments to the flavors you’ll find in the glass. For those less inclined toward wine, there are also artisan ciders and a growing selection of complex vermouths meant for sipping, as well as a few glasses of sherry.

When they feel comfortable expanding their hours, the owners hope to focus more on their rare teas, which include a tightly curated selection of lesser-found leaves such as naturally fermented pu’erh, or the Edelmans’ own herbal blends under the name Iron Goddess. Soon, they’ll begin serving more food and herbs from the garden outside, and add a careful selection of beers to the menu. In a beer-dense neighborhood, they said, this will less likely mean IPA than beers with the same wild and natural flavors you can expect from the wine.

The food menu will evolve as well, with time and the seasons. Perhaps, as the pandemic subsides, there will be tea classes, wine tastings, volunteers from the neighborhood learning how to garden. A wine club is underway.

Already, Grandiflora is a version of wine bar very welcome in Hampton Roads — a tightly curated hall of natural and out-there and distinctive wines from all over the globe, delivered with uncommon knowledge and care.

But its owners also seem to be hard at work turning Grandiflora into a peaceable little universe all to itself. The restaurant’s interior is cozily domestic and oddly personal-feeling, filled with tiny rooms and hangout spaces, with mismatched chairs and delicately homestyle plates. Outside, the fast-growing garden bower contains enough biodiversity to qualify as a micro-habitat. And in the glass, you’ll find more flavor than you have any right to expect.

Matthew Korfhage, 757-446-2318, matthew.korfhage@pilotonline.com

If you go

The spot

Grandiflora Wine Garden, 1231 Boissevain Ave, Norfolk

The vibe

Cozily domestic wine bar with an inn upstairs and an edenic garden bower outside, serving natural wines, carefully selected cheeses and some Turkish-inflected plates

Order this

Turkish brunch on Sundays. Or the tasting boards and the lentil soup in the evenings. As for wine, just show up and tell your server — likely co-owner Jason Edelman — what you like to drink. And then you will receive something you’ve never tasted before.

Hours: 5 p.m.-9 p.m. Wednesday to Friday, noon to 9 p.m. Saturday, 11 a.m to 2 p.m. brunch on Sunday.

COVID protocols: Patio, takeout, a few little interior rooms and spaces with only one table.

Food prices: Small plates and sandwiches, $6-$12; soup, $6-$9; tasting boards, $12-$35; Sunday brunch, $20 all you can eat

Drinks: Wines and vermouths and ciders, $7-$19 a glass (half glasses available); tea, $3-$5; coffee, $4-$7

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Kid-friendly? I’d probably leave them at home, but it’s not like something bad would happen.

Vegan/veg/gluten: All vegetarian, with multiple vegan options. At least one gluten-free tasting board, with other options gluten-free if you remove the baguette.

Disabled-access? Ramp in front

Reservations? Yes, online, and recommended for brunch.

Parking: Street

Contact: 757-256-3647, grandiflorawine.com.

Matthew Korfhage, 757-446-2318, matthew.korfhage@pilotonline.com.