Hot list: 5 Hampton Roads restaurants to try in February for takeout and patio dining

This is not a list of the best five restaurants in Hampton Roads. Rather, it’s a recurring feature in which we list places we’re most excited about this month — a great new restaurant you should try, or a new reason to visit an old favorite.

It’s designed to answer a simple question: Where should you go out to eat this week? With coronavirus cases still at high levels locally, we’re concentrating on patio and takeout dishes.

Redwood Smoke Shack

2001 Manteo St, Norfolk, 757-624-1000, redwoodsmokeshack.com. Lunch and dinner Tuesday-Saturday

Many makeshift tents that restaurants have built for the pandemic help increase seating capacity when restaurant seating has been cut in half — but quite frankly, some don’t seem safer than dining in an indoor restaurant with an HVAC system. This is why I love what Redwood has done: Their newly built patio structure is roofed and heated, with eaves that trap the heat. But the patio remains fully ventilated on all sides, via wall-length screens.

Consider it one of the best versions of winter COVID dining I’ve seen this side of an igloo or a yurt. (And yes, private igloos are still available for reservations at Back Bay Farmhouse, and at the Sky Bar on the Oceanfront, for $50 or $75 rentals, respectively.)

A tip? Show up at Redwood Saturday for a treat rare in these parts: pastrami that’s been freshly smoked out back, juicy and peppery and blessedly salty, perfect for a piled-high sandwich. Expect that cured brisket to sell out early, because it always does.

And to whoever was behind me in line three weeks ago, I apologize. I ate the last one.

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Roux Raw Bar and Grill

2280 Executive Dr, Hampton, 757-964-6722, rouxrawbarandgrill.com.Breakfast, lunch and dinner Tuesday to Saturday.

Some of the finest new local fried chicken I’ve had in recent memory came from chef Charlton “Chop” Minor’s three-month-old, New Orleans-influenced, mini-mall spot on Hampton’s Executive Drive near the hospital.

That chicken is scratch-made each time, brined 24 hours, crispy but not overbreaded and beautifully juicy within, gently sweet and generously spiced with a drizzle of Cajun-kicked house honey. The sides bespeak simple, good Southern cooking — whether a creamy and lightly smoked gouda mac, or pork-free collards that don’t stint on richness.

Roux’s opening menu prices can sometimes feel ambitious for a down-home spot geared mostly for takeout: The chicken is $16 for two dark or light pieces and a couple modest-portioned sides; entrees can crest $20. But I’ll be back again and again for that chicken. Once it’s buried in your brain, that honey-Cajun flavor becomes part of your life — it kicks at you like a new reflex.

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A World of Good

905 E Ocean View Ave, Norfolk, 757-904-1729, aworldofgoodva.com. Lunch and dinner Monday-Saturday.

I slept on this burger for too long.

Ocean View’s A World of Good has a globe-trotting menu with more passport stamps than Carmen Sandiego, and so maybe I can be forgiven for not ordering anything as simple and familiar as an all-American burger until this past month.

But after a Norfolk colleague asked where she could get a truly great smashburger, not thickburger, that she could order for delivery — I realized I didn’t have a good answer for her. (I told her to put on a coat, and pick up her own burger at LeGrand Kitchen, which is still good advice.)

Well, here, belatedly, is the answer: The double-pattied OG burger is not just my favorite thing I’ve eaten at AWOG, it’s among the finest smashburgers in the region, a double-stack of grill-charred patty, tangy secret sauce and American cheese, with all the veggies that belong on burgers and none that don’t. It feels nearly patriotic to eat the thing, a canonical history between soft buns.

Note that you can get a single-patty smashburger, without fries, at about half the price — $4 or $5 depending on the day. Don’t do it. The O.G. double is the perfect harmony of things. And besides, you want the fries.

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Saigon One Pho

4221 Pleasant Valley Rd, Virginia Beach, 757-226-7969, saigononepho.com. Lunch and dinner Thursday to Tuesday.

After 40 bowls, 18 restaurants, many tastings, Dung Diep and Mimi Dao’s beef noodle soup turned out to be the pho that ruled them all — a discovery I’ve backed up with repeat visits since.

With temperatures dipping as low in February as January, it is still the takeout winter warmer the doctor might literally order: a bowl of healthful marrow, continually clarified of impurities over its 19-hour simmer.

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The version at Saigon One offers both richness and harmony, a delicate balance of cinnamon and cilantro and ginger and onion that swirl together gently without any one flavor coming too strongly to the fore. It is a treasure chest of flavor that keeps revealing new secrets with each sip.

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Lendy’s Cafe and Raw Bar

1581 General Booth Blvd, Virginia Beach, 757-491-3511, lendysvabeach.com. Lunch and dinner daily.

Did Lendy’s somehow get even better? The Virginia Beach mainstay has been jamming even harder during the pandemic than it does in a normal year, and so it’s kept on expanding. That has meant a pandemic kitchen re-model during the summer, and some new wing sauces.

And it’s also meant a bottled bloody mary sauce that went into full production during the pandemic, with the house flavor newly bolstered with bottles of smoked-bacon. Still more flavors, including a Carolina Reaper, might be available by the growler.

So now when you get your wings for takeout — easier to do now that football season is over — you can pair them with a cocktail that comes with its own bacon. All you need at home is the vodka.

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