The story below is from our March/April 2019 issue. For the full issue Subscribe today, view our FREE interactive digital edition or download our FREE iOS app!
Photos By John Park
Billy’s Restaurant shines with particular flavors, but it’s their brunch, complete with Bloody Mary bar, that puts them over the top.
“Remember…time is money,” wrote Benjamin Franklin in his 1748 handbook, Advice to a Young Tradesman. America has been in a rush ever since. How strange then, to observe a business—a restaurant even—take its time. And yet, this is the approach the owners and executive chef of Roanoke’s downtown Billy’s Restaurant have taken.
Ten years ago, the early-1900s landmark that houses Billy’s Restaurant was a puzzle to Roanokers. It was in the middle of a major rehabilitation project. But the process was painfully slow; even stalled for a time. Local businesses worried the building would remain an eyesore forever. But the owners remained patient.
“Rehabbing buildings is a process,” Neal Keesee, co-owner of Billy’s, told the Roanoke Times in a July 10, 2009 article. “We weren’t in a hurry.”
Dave Hirshman, Executive Chef at Billy’s, is also unafraid of taking time. The 29-year-old chef came to cooking circuitously. After earning his bachelor’s degree in business from Virginia Commonwealth University, Hirshman worked for several years, then decided to become a chef.
“I’m a huge fan of the work that goes into the restaurant industry,” says Hirshman. He sees his business background as a benefit.
“I have an advantage in working in the kitchen and creating foods from a business perspective, too,” says Hirshman. “A lot of chefs don’t have that. You can be a phenomenal cook but not know anything about business. That can be a challenge.”
When stepping into Billy’s executive chef role, Hirshman immediately identified three goals he had for Billy’s food: continue raising ingredient quality, control costs and improve staff training. Hirshman is methodical in making small tweaks to menu items; whether it’s adding pork belly to the appetizer menu, or rewriting the shrimp scampi dish so it can be duplicated by any kitchen staff in a consistent way every single time. Hirshman says he likes to stay ahead of trends, but is also careful to incorporate his innovations in subtle ways.
“Dave does a pretty good job of not going over the top with ‘cheffin’ it up,” says Roger Neel, local Roanoke restaurateur and part-owner of Billy’s restaurant.
The phrase is Neel’s own, and one he uses liberally with all his chefs at all his restaurants. He says “cheffin’ it up” is when a new chef comes into a well-established kitchen with well-established recipes and tries to add his or her own creative twist, taking menu items over the top. The chef is trying to make the thing better, but Neel says it always works in reverse.
One area where Hirshman’s patient and purposeful tweaking is most praise-worthy is Billy’s Sunday brunch. It’s certainly an aspect of Billy’s menu in which Hirshman is most proud. When I ask him to describe Billy’s brunch, he leans in and smiles.
“For brunch, we take traditional breakfast items and put Billy’s into it,” says Hirshman. He credits the top quality of ingredients and his incredibly talented brunch crew that makes Billy’s brunch the success it is.
So, what does brunch with ‘Billy’s in it’ taste like?
A Billy’s brunch tastes like a regular benedict but with a Billy’s crab cake on top to make it taste like coastal Virginia, or a fried green tomato to give it mountain south flair.
It’s French toast only made with sourdough dipped in homemade banana pecan custard. It’s a twist on the classic omelet: Sea Breeze style–stuffed with corn, jumbo lump crab, cheddar and spinach; or The Southwest—filled with Billy’s prime rib, potato hash, cheddar and mushrooms.
A Billy’s brunch is breakfast nachos using house made chorizo sausage and jalapeño cheddar nacho chips. It’s lobster mac-and-cheese, cinnamon baked apples and succotash.
And then there is the candied bacon and Bloody Mary bar. These two items scream Billy’s Restaurant. Hirshman spends a great deal of time developing his flavor for each week’s candied bacon. He makes his own syrup, then uses a special method of cooking the bacon with the syrup to make it a sweet and savory perfection.
As for the Bloody Mary bar; I’m not sure any other thing could express the early 1900s Roanoke classiness that Billy’s is, more perfectly. Hirshman makes the mix in house and offers a large spread of items you can put around the rim: cocktail shrimp, bacon and even curled onions are a few mentionables.
Hirshman says he’s currently working on a recipe for fresh-squeezed juices to use for making mimosas. This is yet another example of Hirshman’s continuous and patient tweaking to meet customer demands.
It’s this patient eye on excellence—one that resists tired notions of time equaling money—that’s truly restored Billy’s Restaurant to Roanoke. And even made it something new.
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