I read somewhere that Virtue Feed & Grain had been nominated by Bon Appetit as one of the 50 best new restaurants in America.  The first thing I thought, was "waitaminute, I went there back in January...how can it still be a new restaurant?"  Oh.  It probably had only been open for a short while in January.  My second thought was that they had probably sufficiently worked out all the new restaurant quirks and it's now getting nationwide recognition.  Coincidentally, I had some friends come into town that were staying in Old Town Alexandria and wanted to meet up for some dinner and drinks.  Two birds and one stone later, we decided on an early dinner (6ish) at Virtue Feed & Grain.  Make that three birds, this is officially my first return visit to a place that I've blogged about and am blogging about again.  Yeah, just go with it.

106 South Union Street
Alexandria, VA  22314
571.970.3669
www.virtuefeedandgrain.com


The first thing you notice about Virtue Feed & Grain is that the space is huge.  It is a wide open seating area that meshes well with the bar that runs almost the length of the restaurant.  The tables are spacious and gives plenty of elbow room for everyone to sample the food.  The next thing I thought about is how in the world do you ever keep up the rent for such a big restaurant (albeit very aesthetically pleasing) which used to be a feed and grain house (presumably for horses).  It is located in the heart of Alexandria's waterfront and while it's not New York City, it can't be cheap.  The answer, I think, is that while it calls itself a restaurant, it almost certainly doubles as a sports bar since when we went there for lunch, there were equal amounts of patrons sitting to eat a meal and milling about to watch games at the several TVs along the bar.