L'Opossum

L'Opossum treats French technique like a joke worth telling well. The menu reads as a running bit between classical training and Richmond's own habits — escargot turns up with petit ham biscuits, pork cheek gets stuffed inside quail and hit with a Creole treatment that has no business working as well as it does. None of it reads as gimmick because the cooking underneath is precise. The fun is the delivery system for real skill, not a substitute for it.

Walk the room before you sit, and don't skip the bathrooms. The place doubles as a gallery of deliberately odd art, bronze David included, and it sets the tone: this kitchen doesn't take itself too seriously while taking the food very seriously indeed.

Richmond Magazine keeps L'Opossum on its lists for good reason, and a James Beard semifinalist nod for Best Chef backs up what the plates already argue. This is a restaurant confident enough to be funny and disciplined enough to earn it.