HOME GROWN Portsmouth Native Phillip Craig Thomason, of Vintage Kitchen in downtown Norfolk, talks with SevenCities' Allison Hurwitz about sourcing local ingredients, his vast culinary resume, and how it all started with a high school crush.

Chef-Owner Vintage Kitchen

Did you study culinary arts at UVA? No, at Virginia it was French literature. I spent my third year undergraduate in Paris at the Sorbonne and came back with a degree. Then I thought I wanted to go to film school, so I spent some time traveling around the states looking at schools. I went on a trip to Colorado—I thought I’d spend two weeks; it turned into two years.

I ended up under a great chef who had come from the Bel Air in Beverly Hills—an incredible person to work under—then decided to go back to Paris to study cooking. I studied at Le Cordon Bleu and graduated first in my class. Then it was Palm Beach, and then Seattle. I joined Jeremiah Tower’s group in San Francisco—we had restaurants in Singapore, Seattle, Manila. I moved to L.A. after that. Then I became a food designer for a hotel group in New York. At one point I had apartments in Seattle and Salzburg, Austria. I’ve been very fortunate to travel a lot.

So how did you first happen upon the culinary arts? You know, for the sake of romance, really. I had a girlfriend when I was in high school—everybody had a crush on her. She was a couple years older than I was. So to get her attention, I sent her one hundred carnations, and it worked. On our very first date I ended up cooking for her. And I didn’t know too much about cooking at the time—I remember asking my mother how to cook a green bean—but I did an elaborate menu; a five-course dinner. I did the research, the recipes, the whole thing. And it went well—we dated for a while. So I thought, ‘There must be something to this cooking thing.’

After a while I decided I didn’t want to go to film school. I didn’t love Los Angeles, and Aspen was a fun place to be. So really two weeks of skiing turned into two years. The more you do something, the more proficient you become, and the more you want to do it; so I kind of just ended up in the industry.

You’re from Portsmouth. How many years have you been back? I came back in ’03 maybe.

Is that when you opened Vintage Kitchen? No, I was a consultant for Todd Jurich’s restaurant. And then I took over this space in the fall of ’04. We just started our fifth year.
We’ve gotten a great deal of national press, as well. Conde Nast chose us for their Hot List; they chose 80 restaurants around the world and ours was one of them.

This area is marketed as ‘America’s First Region,’ but it doesn’t always act like a region. In ways the Seven Cities very much function as separate cities. We have such a powerhouse—an amazing Southern area, as big as any metropolitan area in the country practically. [But] a problem with the area is everything’s so spread out, you don’t know where to go for anything. That’s why MacArthur was such a great boon for downtown, because at least it collected.

What is it that you love about this area? We’re central on the East Coast, and that’s fantastic for travel. I travel a great deal, about three or four big trips a year. We’re close to DC; we’re a 45-minute flight to New York, so I go there once or twice a month.

And the area itself is pretty familial. It’s relatively safe compared to other major markets. It’s diverse. You’ve got a beach, you’ve got mountains close by, you’ve got countryside, you’ve got something that’s vaguely urban starting to happen. And for me, having lived so many places and seeing what’s out there, what’s on the horizon, and what is coming—it’s nice to be someone who can try to keep pushing forward with a whole group of people, like you all.

How do you stay inspired? I travel and try to stay inspired personally. We’ve got a great clientele, and the ones that get it, get it. You know, it was explained one time that liking the Grateful Dead is like liking licorice. Now, not everyone likes licorice, but the people that like licorice really like licorice. So the same kind of crowd, the people who get what we are trying to do for the community, get it. Look how far the Farm Market’s come. You know, Bev [Sell] and Kathy [Reese] have been able to move Five Points to this much cooler, grander location, and that’s where the dialogue starts. It gets people thinking about where their food comes from.

Where do you like to eat in the area? The restaurant pool here is a little slim, but you try to be as supportive as you can. Some of my favorite restaurants have closed over the last six months. You know, when you look at the independents closing in this market and the chains thriving, you just think that maybe people’s focus is just a bit off. They should be supporting the little guys.

What sets Vintage Kitchen apart specifically? I think the big thing is our focus on community… I came back to be a larger part of the community in that sense. And it wasn’t an option for me to do any other restaurant besides one that focused on local artisans and farmers. [Some locals] don’t really care that much about it, which is funny because our roots in this area are so agrarian, so steeped in farming. I came back to the area because I wanted to put that out there to get people thinking about where their food comes from again.