Take a chance: Off-the-beaten-path eats

You are driving down a lonesome country road, through a swath of forest that gives way to a panorama of hazy blue mountains.

Out of nowhere, you spot a whitewashed building beside the road, barely larger than a trailer and just as humble-looking. You would have passed it by without a thought if not for the hand-painted sign: Thai Siam, Thai Food Takeout.

Skeptical, you take your chance on the little Thai place in Nelson County. It pays off. The food rivals, if not surpasses, dishes you’ve had at big city restaurants.

Many a weary traveler has experienced the joy of stumbling across a slice of culinary heaven while taking a drive through the countryside. Though the

Lynchburg area is saturated with chain restaurants and fast food joints, it is also fertile ground for those undiscovered gems. The appeal of these eateries has as much to do with the people who run them and the journey to get there as it does with the food.

Here are several restaurants off the beaten track. From lip-smacking soul food to organic, gourmet cuisine, there’s something for anyone looking for a culinary adventure.

These were chosen for no reason other than the luck of having stumbled across them. There are plenty more we couldn’t get to, but we hope these get you started.

Thai Siam
4137 Tye Brook Highway
Arrington
(434) 263-8577

With its authentic Thai food and remote Nelson County location, Thai Siam epitomizes the off-the-beaten-track experience. The food rivals that of metropolitan restaurants, and the prices ($5 to $10 for entrees) are reasonable.

“In here, we cook homemade everything,” says owner Taci Mays, a native of Thailand and longtime Nelson County resident.

The menu ranges from staples like Pad Thai to tofu dishes to traditional desserts like sticky rice and mango. Mays’ favorite dish?

“I like ’em all, honey,” she says with a laugh.

Mays knows her recipes by heart, and sometimes modifies her mainstay dishes with fresh, seasonal ingredients, such as Thai pepper from her garden. She makes regular trips to Washington, D.C., to buy specialty ingredients for the made-from-scratch meals.

The restaurant bills itself as take-out, but offers several tables to stop and eat while passing through the area. With its faded floral wall paper and collection of
Buddha statues and oriental rugs, the décor is one part country kitchen and one part Asian bazaar.

Though Thai Siam has the feeling of being remote and undiscovered, it’s less than five minutes off of U.S. 29 in Colleen (with an Arrington post office address).

It’s a convenient side-trip for people driving from Lynchburg to Charlottesville or Wintergreen.

Dudley’s Country Store and Deli
6285 Lee-Jackson Highway
Coleman Falls
(434) 299-7118

Next door to the Coleman Falls post office, Dudley’s Country Store and Deli is a cozy country diner with an extensive menu of burgers and sandwiches, plus some Italian treats like calzones and stromboli.

It’s owned by its namesake, Clint Dudley, a volunteer firefighter and EMT for Big Island. Dudley opened the joint two years in a space that stood vacant for about 15 years. Before that, it was Arthur’s Market, a small-town fixture since 1955.

“I rode by it a million times and never thought about it,” Dudley says of the unassuming, gray building that now houses his restaurant.

The restaurant walls are covered with vintage tins signs and other Americana donated by customers. Dudley’s top sellers are the no-frill favorites: the hamburger and the homemade chicken salad. The fresh baked pies and pound cake are also a hit.

Dudley is no stranger to the restaurant business. He has run a catering business called Tasteful Sensations Catering for the past 17 years, which began out of an 18-foot box truck furnished with a kitchen. Before opening the deli, he ran The Islander in Big Island.

His new venture is a good place to mix with the locals. Among the regulars is the lunch crowd from the Georgia-Pacific paper plant down the road, hunters during deer season, and a handful of deputies and state troopers who cruise through the area.

Toy Town Soul Food
1192 Amherst Highway
Amherst
(434) 458-5091

Toy Town Soul Food is situated right beside U.S. 29, but this hole-in-the-wall restaurant is easy to miss if you’re whizzing down the road at 65 miles per hour.

The hickory smoked ribs and pork barbecue are Toy Town’s signature dishes. Owner and chef Rufus Rucker is developing what he can only describe as “Central Virginia flavor” that falls somewhere between the vinegar-centric North Carolina style and the sweet, tomato-based barbecue of St. Louis.

The Amherst County native says he knows what it takes to satisfy the locals. The meat is slow-cooked over a hickory fire for six to seven hours, then smothered in his “secret marinade” called Buddy’s BBQ sauce. The result is tender, lip-smacking good barbecue.

All his dishes are made from scratch and some include fresh produce, such as tomatoes and collard greens, from his garden.

Rucker, who has a degree in hotel and restaurant management from the University of Maryland, returned to Amherst to raise his family and carve out a local niche in barbecue and soul food.

Like Thai Siam, Toy Town is mostly a take-out joint, but there are a few tables for those who want to eat in. Don’t expect much in the way of ambience. Rucker has chosen to keep his place sparse and focus his energy on the food. The décor will evolve over time, he says.

What the restaurant lacks in décor, it makes up for in history. The building has been in his family for more than 70 years. His grandparents, Catherine and Sam Rucker, ran it as a country store for decades, back when 29 was little more than a country road.

The country store was part of a small strip of commerce for the black community during segregation known as Toy Town, Rucker says. There was a blacksmith, country store, barber and other amenities. When big stores like Kroger and Wal-Mart came to the area, many of the Toy Town shops went out of business.

Toy Town is a throwback to the pre-McDonalds days of down-home country cooking. On Saturdays, he serves regional favorites such as pig knuckles or “trotters.”

“Soul food is about someone who loves cooking and puts their love into the food,” he says. “ I actually want you to feel good when you eat my food.”

Millstone Tea Room
9058 Big Island Highway
Bedford
(540) 587-7100

Driving to the Millstone Tea Room in the Sedalia corner of Bedford County on backcountry roads is a feast for the senses that rivals the organic, home-grown foods it serves. Whether it’s the smell of fresh cut grass, the view of cows roaming a green field or the way the earth shows signs of new life after a warm rain, the journey to Millstone is half the experience.

“Farm to table” is the motto of the Millstone, owned by Lynchburg natives Jared and Melanie Srsic. The upscale restaurant features a country-inspired menu made with ingredients plucked right from the gardens on their five-acre property.

On their little Eden, the couple grow organic vegetables like beans, squash, okra, peppers, cucumbers. They raise chickens for eggs, and keep apple, pear and cherry tress for fruit for their desserts. This spring, they added honeybees to the mix.

Everything is as local as possible, with meat raised on nearby farms. Even the seafood comes from the Virginia coast.

In a past life, Millstone was a three-in-one pit stop (country store, gas station and diner). It was re-established by the couple in 2001 and transformed into the elegant restaurant.

But even in its current permutation, Millstone grew from humble roots, with Southern comfort food-inspired entrees. Even still, it was a far cry from greasy spoon joints the South is known for.

The fare took a more gourmet turn when the Srsics began using ingredients such as truffle oils and expensive cheeses. In response to the economic downturn, they have scaled down the menu and the prices again.

Millstone takes walk-ins but encourage reservations, especially for special occasions and during peak times on the weekends.

Perky’s Restaurant
802 Wards Road
Altavista
(434) 369-9908

“Renaissance redneck” is how Lee and Gay Perkins describe the ambiance of their family-owned restaurant in Altavista.

It’s the kind of place where the walls tell stories. There’s Max the Iguana, an unlikely guest to the restaurant now immortalized in taxidermic form. There’s a foyer full of military memorabilia, from pictures of locals serving in Iraq to relics of Lee’s days in the military.

Perky’s is named for its owner, Lee Perkins, a soft-spoken man with a white beard and clear blue eyes. Lee and Gay opened it in 1993, fighting against the rough-and-tumble reputation of the biker bar that used to be there.

“Once they realized that we weren’t going to have any nonsense, we had no problems,” says Gay, who is known to employees and regulars as “Mama Gay.”

The extensive menu specializes in steak and seafood, with dishes like Cajun crawfish, crab legs, rib eye steak and country style ribs. Their son, Greg Toren, the general manager and head chef, prides himself on the restaurant’s seafood, which is fresh-caught and grilled, not fried.

Another one of Perky’s perks is its full bar, which includes a selection of close to 80 beers, from mainstream domestics to obscure imports and microbrews.
Perky’s is a perfect stop if you’re on the way to Danville, or a destination point in and of itself for someone seeking a family-friendly break from the chain restaurants that dominate Ward’s Road.

The restaurant is a packed house on weekends, so reservations are recommended to avoid a one- to two-hour wait.