|
Heather Vreeland displays the coin that she will flip at Basil's to determine whether patrons pay for their meals or not.
-
Diane and Chuck Hoffman wait to see how Kristen Bradford's coin flip turns out Tuesday at Basil's Bistro. The Hoffmans lost the flip. |
BY CATHY JETT
The new owner of a popular downtown Fredericksburg restaurant has diners flipping over their dinners.
And not just because the renovated space has a chef who's tweaking the menu.
Every Tuesday between 5 and 8 p.m., the waitresses at Basil's Bistro bring a newly minted presidential dollar along with a customer's bill. As the gold coin goes spinning in the air, the customer calls out "heads" or "tails." If the guess is correct, the restaurant picks up the tab.
"Tuesdays are normally very slow, and we just expanded our hours to 8 p.m.," said Chrissy Jones, who bought the small eatery at 909 Caroline St. last November. "I was trying to come up with a way to get people to come in."
Her inspiration for the promotion, which began last week, was a restaurant in Santa Barbara, Calif., that used the same concept to attract customers on its traditionally slow Monday nights. She went there with a group of 15 people once, and they were lucky enough to win the toss.
"I remembered being a happy customer then,
Chuck and Diane Hoffman, who live on Caroline Street, found out about the deal when it launched last week. They thought it was a fun idea, but stopped by for dinner on Tuesday this week mainly because they want to encourage places like Basil's to stay open later.
"We like to walk downtown to eat out at least once a week," Diane Hoffman said. "We think [Jones] is a great addition to downtown and we hope she succeeds."
Maxine and Ed Smith, who are vendors in a downtown antiques store, usually go to Basil's for lunch and then take home a loaf of Italian bread. Last Tuesday, they also came in for dinner.
"There's been a noticeable difference in the food," Maxine Smith said. "It was good before, but now it's better."
Neither couple won a free dinner, but they weren't discouraged.
"Some day " Chuck Hoffman said good-humoredly.
"Flip for Your Dinner Tuesday" is only one of a number of changes Jones has made or has in the works for Basil's. The restaurant has been cleaned up, repainted and redecorated, and Jones has hired James Thompson, the former chef at Brock's Riverside Grill on Sophia Street.
"Right now, we have the same menu [as previous owners Sam and Ledy Sejas], but we will have a new menu with different pastas and seafood dishes by the middle of February," Jones said. "We're still keeping the Italian theme, just offering a different flair on some things. I guess we're kicking it up a notch."
Basil's has been known for its subs, salads and hand-tossed pizzas, calzones and strombolis since Fredericksburg native Chris Harris, then 28 years old, opened the tiny restaurant tucked in The Galleria in 2002.
Then, as now, customers could pull up a chair at a linen-covered table at the restaurant, or pick up something to go from its deli counter.
Harris sold the restaurant several years later to the Sejases, who made some changes to the menu. When they decided to sell three years later, Jones, who had restaurant experience in California, decided it was time to do something in addition to her part-time job as a role player for the FBI Academy at Quantico.
"The old owners were able to run Basil's with just themselves in the kitchen," she said. "I've hired a great chef who's added some personal touches."
These include a large selection of desserts on weekends, such as an orange-caramel panna cotta and a cannoli stuffed with cranberries and mascarpone "that leaves people speechless," Jones said.
She and her husband, who works for the federal government, are paneling over the old black-and-white tile that runs halfway up the walls, and are adding a warm beige Venetian plaster from the chair rail to the ceiling.
A local artist has expressed interest in hanging his artwork in the restaurant when renovations are finished, Jones said. If he decides not to, she plans to decorate with antique Italian travel posters.
"When [the decorating] is done, it's not going to be anything like it looked before," she said.
The restaurant already is busier than it had been, Jones said, and she's already contemplating several new ways to keep it that way. One idea is to give people a free dessert every Thursday if they bring in a ticket.
"It could be a bus ticket, a train ticket, a movie ticket, even a speeding ticket," she said. "Whatever it takes as long as it has Thursday's date on it."
Cathy Jett: 540/374-5407
Email: cjett@freelancestar.com
