I love dives.
And not the old idea of a dive bar or restaurant that included words like "unsavory," "unclean" or "unseemly." I'm smitten with the new definition that Food Network star Guy Fieri's show "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" has ushered in, meaning a cool, casual neighborhood spot with good food.
So after a movie at the Naro Expanded Cinema last week, my friends suggested we walk across Norfolk's Colley Avenue to one of their favorite dives, The Ten Top. It's been there forever, but I'd never tried it, probably because it's located next to a laundromat and I can be a bit snooty.
Forgive me.
But when I walked in and saw the food being served and read the surprising menu, my nose leveled out and we settled in for a great meal.
My coconut curry vegetable soup was a steaming bowl of sweet coconut milk thickened with spicy thai curry paste and chock full of peppers, broccoli, zucchini potatoes and fresh basil. My friends were nice enough to share their tuna cheddar melt and Hereford beef meatloaf.
All of Ten Top's sandwich bread is bought wholesale, is proofed and baked daily and is crusty, crunchy, chewy good. They take a French baguette, split it open and bake it, pull it out of the oven and fill it with tuna salad made with fresh tuna, top it with cheddar and run it back in the oven until the cheese melts. The bread and cheese are hot and the tuna stays cool. It comes with pasta or potato salad, chips, coleslaw or orange slices and a big, juicy orange served as a healthy side.
The giant slab of moist meatloaf was served with chunky mashed skins-on red bliss potatoes, steamed broccoli, yellow squash and carrots, and a leafy green salad. The immense portion turned the conversation to what constitutes the perfect meatloaf sandwich, as there was going to be plenty left to take home.
Speaking of home, depending on where you live, you don't even have leave your place to taste some Ten Top.
The restaurant will deliver to Ghent, West Ghent, Freemason or downtown Norfolk homes between 5 and 8 p.m., as long the order is $10 or more. That means you can have a grilled portobello mushroom cap sandwich or Greek lamb hoagie, a smoked salmon and arugula salad or Thai peanut noodles, a bacon and date with balsamic onion flatbread pizza, BBQ braised Berkshire pork shank or roasted vegetable pesto lasagna, or more, without starting your car. Just tip your driver.
If you'd rather venture out, Ten Top meals are served in plastic to-go containers and the interior is turquoise atomic-diner-hip with galvanized steel accent walls. I dig the fact that the owners and cooks, Rick and Heather Fraley, met while single and working side by side in the kitchen eight years ago. They fell in love, decided to get married and bought the place. They just celebrated their third year of ownership and the second birthday of their daughter, Charlotte.
I'm a sucker for a love story, and it makes this dive all the more cool.
The Ten Top: 748 Shirley Ave., Norfolk, 622-5422; call ahead for pickup or check www.thetentop.com, and www.facebook.com/thetentop for daily specials.
Take another dive
I don't get to see my friend Suzan nearly enough, and when I do, it's a special occasion. I had her all to myself for a few hours on a Sunday, so we hopped in her car and took a short drive over to South Norfolk for lunch at another dive we'd recently heard about.
Mi Pueblo is a tiny taqueria/restaurant that is attached to a small Mexican market sitting on Bainbridge Boulevard in the middle of a residential neighborhood. If you blink, you'll miss it.
Don't blink. You don't want to miss this place.
The owners, Gerardo Anvrade of Mexico City and Sylvia Rosas from Guanajuato, serve up Mexican dishes and pour their love of Mexico's cuisine into every one.
The Spanish menu has English translations, and there are pictures of the dishes on the wall to help you choose. Suzan was ecstatic for the pozole, a rich, deep-red silky stew of succulent pork chunks and puffy, chewy hominy.
So you won't have to ask, as I did, hominy is dried corn that has been soaked in a lime bath, which causes the kernels to soften and double in size.
The pozole was served with fresh lime wedges, sliced radishes, shredded lettuce and fried tortillas.
I chose the tortilla soup, slightly lighter in color and packed with diced onions, fresh fried tortilla strips and warm spices, topped with cilantro, sour cream and plentiful cubes of ripe avocado.
We were both in heaven, but heaven is served only on Saturdays and Sundays because these soups take a while to prepare, and taste best when served fresh.
We also shared a couple of entrees. The quezado was a tender, pounded chicken breast topped with sauteed red and green peppers, melted cheese and served with flour tortillas, seasoned rice, refried beans and a scoop of guacamole. Our carnitas were perfectly cooked, succulent but not greasy, with a slight crunch from chunks with skin on them.
As a Spanish TV program played in the background, Gerardo and Sylvia came out of the kitchen to see if we liked their food and treated us to a slice of a chocolatey flan dessert. They welcomed us like family and treated us like friends, another quality I'd like to add to my updated definition of a dive.
Mi Pueblo is open 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sundays.
Mi Pueblo Mexican Restaurant and Taqueria: 3715 Bainbridge Blvd., Chesapeake, 233-3920 or fax 233-3972 for takeout orders.
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