Field Guide

Had lunch here after work with a couple of my co-​workers. Its not a typical sit and order style restaurant. You go to the counter and order your food and drinks, grab your silverware, and then your food is brought to your table. I had the root beer brisket sandwich, side of apple bleu cheese slaw and the Tango Papa tequila cocktail. The sandwich was absolutely phenomenal. The slaw had large chunks of creamy bleu cheese and wasn’t too mayonaisey. The cocktail was spot on with what I expected reading the description. Everything I ordered was delicious and I would order again and again. On the other hand, my co worker had a chicken sandwich with slaw and neither one of us were fans of it. It’s a smaller restaurant. Staff is super friendly and the atmosphere is relaxed and clean.

Came here because the Grilled Cheese Bistro was closed, and I’m glad I did. Ordered the famous Privateer sandwich (root beer brisket and sharp cheddar) and a side of their sweet potato chips and YOH sauce. Fantastic experience. Great food. Great service. I will go back.

Unique and eclectic menu. Great for lunch and dinner. Communal tables.

I recently had the pleasure of eating lunch at this hidden gem. This is definitely a surprise restaurant in the Virginia Beach/​Norfolk area as people here don’t really do hipster and this is hipster minus (not fully San Francisco or Oakland Hipster but hipster enough).
THE YAY
The location is pretty prime. It is located in downtown norfolk and walking distance from MacArthur Mall on the lovely Granby Street. If you are unfamiliar with Granby street, it is a street in downtown norfolk that has a lot of nice mom and pop restaurants and stores.
My favorite part of the restaurant is that it opens to the outside. The restaurant has a normal door for walking through and next to it is a garage door that they open when the weather is nice. There are bar stools and high top seatings that face the garage door/​outside (when the garage door is open). It was so cute and fun. Unfortunately there was a large group sitting there when we entered so we had to find another place to sit.
The décor of the place is really cute. Check out the photos. I really liked the decorations on the wall and ceiling. There is a cool mirror decoration on the ceiling that adds an interesting depth to the room. There is a mix of seating arrangements. You can either sit at a small table for small parties, at the bar, at the hightop seating across the garage door, or at long tables for community tables.
The service was great. The bartender/​waiter was very professional and wanted to make sure that we understood the menu. He quickly refilled our waters when he saw my brothers water getting low.
The food was quite excellent. I ordered the YALA SURFER. It is a sandwich with grilled chicken, bleu cheese, and apple coleslaw, topped with their special hot sauce called Lupo Hot Sauce. My brother ordered their chicken pesto mozzarella sandwich. I really enjoyed the Yala Surfer. I am not a blue cheese fan so I should have asked to have the blue cheese on the side, but it wasn’t too hard for me to remove the extra cheese that I did not want. The apple coleslaw gave the sandwich an extra zing that was much appreciated. I also liked the company’s home grown hot sauce. It was a mix of spicy, sweet, and tangy. The sauce is not for everyone but I did enjoy it. My brother enjoyed his chicken pesto mozzarella sandwich. He ordered the sandwich without mozzarella because he is not a cheese fan (don’t understand how we are related). His main complaint was that there was built in cheese in the pesto which required him to remove the pesto from his sandwich (Yeah. I know… poor him he had cheese in his pesto). We also ordered an order of their wings with their special hot sauce (LUPO). There were five wings in total. My brother was not a fan of the home grown hot sauce so he was not a fan of the wings but I enjoyed it.
Overall two entrees and an appetizer were $ 30. Not bad for a nice Tuesday lunch.
THE NAY
First: When my brother and I walked in, we grabbed a menu and then went to find a table. We did not know that you are supposed to order your food and drinks at the bar first and then go to your table. I would recommend they buy a simple chalk board for the entrance that directs people. If we arrived when the place was packed it would have been pretty obvious how to proceed. It was awkward when the waiter came by our table with our waters and then told us that he would take our orders at the bar. My brother and I gave each other a side glance (say what).
Second: After we finished our delicious meal, we were sitting for a while talking when we noticed that our plates were not removed from the table. We then came to the conclusion that we were supposed to take the our empty plates to the bar. Again, it wasn’t clear what the culture was at this restaurant. A large bucket where we could deposit our plates and dishes would have given us a clue of what to do.
Lastly: This is supposed to be a nice hipster restaurant, but you have people drinking out of plastic cups that are thrown away after each use. Tisk Tisk… Glass, porcelain. something… anything other than plastic flimsy cups.

Went here on a day where the sun was finally shining. Enjoyed a bourbon slushy. Although I did get food today, the food around us looked good. We were more interested in drinking and sitting by the front where the whole section opens up. It’s pretty cool. When you are sitting you are looking directly out on to Granby st. I will definitely go back to try one of the rice bowls

Another great meal at the Field Guide. Awesome customer service, the portion was tremendous and everything was cooked perfect

I recently headed here for dinner on a Friday night while in town for work. The Unilocal reviews were positive, so I decided to make the 7 mile drive. Boy was I glad I did.
The décor is über hipster and modern. Beers on draft are dispensed with bicycle brakes. The «full bar» is a careful selection of each major type of booze. The menu is sparse and crafted. Seating is minimal. These are all GOOD things. I had to decide between a rice bowl or a sandwich — I chose the bowl. The Park Dog rice bowl was recommended by Jeremy, and it was a truly awesome experience. It’s exactly like what I make for myself and my family at home, only it was WAY better. The sweet and spicy yogurt sauce combined with the sausage and pickled onions tasted like fusion heaven.
I will definitely come back here. So should you.

First time and I love it! I will be back. Love the décor and the service! Is very unique and interesting menu. The staff was very helpful and friendly.

One of the top hipster spots in town! I love this place! From the exposed bricks, the cool garage door, the diagonal communal style seating and the crazy cool wood shelves! What’s not to love about this place. Okay okay… they do have their flaws sometimes. But lets focus on the good stuff for now.
Their food is always phenomenal! Their rice bowls are just an eclectic mix of flavors, that surprisingly enough, all complemented each other. Plus the option for quinoa is a plus! Their sandwiches are massive in portions. And their staple muchies, the sweet potato chips. Do I even need to mention their amazing Lupo sauce?! Because you need that in everything. During the summer time, bourbon slushies are the way to go.
So the only con would be the fact that when they do get busy, there is absolutely no seating for you. Also, when they do get busy, their service tends to veer down, which is understandable.
If you’re a true Norfolkian, this place is nothing new, but if you’re a visitor, please make sure you visit this spot! It’s worth it!

This is a great little restaurant with some interesting sandwiches and rice bowls. We tried a couple of beef brisket sandwiches and cannot wait to return.

Perfectly nice, solid little place for lunch with reasonable prices. Would have liked a more extensive selection, but still good. Will eat here if I’m in the area again if I want a filling sandwich.

Second visit even better! This time for dinner. Highlights of the night were the Marrakechy wings seasoned with a Moroccan spice blend. Ask for their hot sauce to dip them in… perfecto! An added bonus would’ve been a side rice… just playin’…no not really… lol.
Next highlight for me was a bourbon cocktail with mint & lemon… forgot the name. I normally don’t drink (alcoholic beverages that is), but server brought it out with our other drinks so lucky me for me it was all mine! So very refreshing! Paired well with the Marrakechy wings.
And lastly, a shout out to the Field Guide staff who were very friendly and attentive… great service! Way to keep us all coming back for more!

I feel like my experience could have been much better. The parking is always atrocious in this area-​so can’t even begin to complain about that. Not their fault.
We walked in and stood awkwardly at the door for a long while. We walked up to the bar wanting to at least order a drink and the tender didn’t really take a hint. Finally we got seated. The kid who was serving us just plain wasn’t up to snuff.
I am not sure what his deal was but eventually I asked another waiter and he kind of adopted us. We finally got our drink order in and a while later we finally received them and got to place our order.
The food sounded great and I kind of took creative license on ordering a bowl with chicken, avocado and egg. It turned out über delcioso! For dessert I had to try the oatmeal cream pie and I am glad I did. It was banging. Maybe I will go back-​but for now I am exploring elsewhere.

Hipster vibe, community tables, unique menu items… now that’s that ish I DO like!
Came for dinner on a Saturday night and was able to be seated right away. My friend and I both got the chilly fish bowls — mine with an egg on top. Awesome, awesome, mix of flavors and textures from something as simple to a sweet potato to their white fish salad. YUM. I was a bit overzealous and thought I was going to be super hungry still so I also ordered a side of their curry roasted veggies — this was unfortunately not as great as I had hoped. The veggies and the yellow curry IMO just weren’t a great mix, also the fact that it looked like veggie mac and cheese kind of turned me off too. I also did find a bone in my whitefish salad (ps: if you ever swallow a fish bone, take a big bite of rice or bread and it should take the bone with it as you swallow) which was kinda offputting, but not a deal breaker.
Service was great throughout the meal and I love paying tableside with the iPad! Why don’t more places do that? Parking was nearly impossible on Granby St. so I ended up parking at MacArthur Center which is only 5 minutes away. Overall I was pretty happy with my meal (minus the curry veggies) and look forward to coming again and trying their desserts as well.

Oh my holy goodness. Shut. Up. I think I have found my favorite place to eat in Norfolk.
Ive heard SO much abut this place and I’ve been wanting to go for years. A good friend of mine has been raving over it since she and I have been friends, so, about a good 2.5 months now? «Field Guide this» and «Field Guide that». So when she asked if I wanted to go yesterday I basically flew out of my chair and out the door, almost leaving her behind. ha.
Parking was almost TOO easy. We went on a Saturday, found on street parking that was like, .3 miles from Field Guide AND the first two hours were free! So, it was a sign we needed to be there.
Walking inside i’ll go ahead and say it gives off a hipster/​trendy feel. I LOVE that atmosphere but if you’re «too good» for that vibe then, bye Felicia! :) The server let us sit wherever we wanted. We picked a 4-​top right by the wall because we were meeting up with two other FG newbies. After sitting there for 5 minutes and getting our drink order we realized this probably want the best idea because it was FREEZING. We must have been right under the AC unit. Im actually very surprised I didn’t get sick. I digress. Who cares about my health, we are here for the food! Onward.
My friend says, «We HAVE to get the Marrakeshy wings» (they also have the same wings in a LUPO sauce). At this point in time it was about 45 min after a full on 4 hour workout so needless to say I was starved. Didn’t honestly didn’t care what came out but it needed to be something I could ingest like, NOW. So we ordered them.
The wings came out and were actually REALLY big! I was honestly quite surprised. The seasoning was like a dry rub. Im not sure what it is but i LOVE wings like that. Actually, who am I kidding. I love wings any way they come out. But this was nice. I wasn’t feeling terribly messy this day. The flavors were incredible! Almost an indian style of spices? Indian fused with something else. Moroccan? These wings come with no sauce, well, if you get the Marrakeshy ones. But you honestly don’t need a sauce because it takes away from the delicious spice.
Ill try to power through our other two apps because I only get so much space to write. So next we got the Sweet Chips. Those are sweet potato chips with your choice of dipping sauce. Our server said something about a Horseradish Something sauce (who knows-​I stop listening after Horseradish because Im always game for horseradish anything) and so I yelled «yes!“without waiting for a discussion from the others. Hey, I hear something I like, I go after it. #SorryNotSorry. Basically once these came out with that sauce I was congratulated for my quick sauce decision making skills because that sauce was LEGIT! We ended up dipping basically everything in it. And got 2 more sides of it. *Dont worry, I tipped well*
And the other app we got was the Bleu Apple Slaw. This was delicious as well! The bleu cheese is one of those strong types (um, favorite!) so if you don’t like bleu cheese then steer clear from this one. I throughly enjoyed this app though. Very fresh! And we didn’t devour this one as quickly as the others. not to say it wasn’t good! but the flavor is so strong, it stays with you a little longer, leaving you to really sit back and ENJOY this this.
OKAY! So, apps are out of the way. Let move on to the good stuff! Our main dishes.
My friend got the Privateer. Apparently thats one of their more popular ones? It LOOKED amazing! I was able to snag a small piece of the Root Beer Brisket that was falling off of his sandwich and that was all i needed. Oh my godddd it was amazing! I couldn’t imagine eating that sandwich, I probably would have died and gone to heaven.
I got the Tikka Byrd rice bowl. I chose the Brown Rice and Quinoa blend over the white rice. I also switched out my sauce. The sauce that comes with it was a Sweet and Spicy Yogurt. Its weird, I usually never change things in my order because I figure the chef knows exactly what he’s doing and what pairs well with what. But for some reason that sauce didn’t sound appealing to me (not to mention I’m a die hard curry fan) so i switched out the Sweet and Spicy Yogurt for the Spicy Red Curry. And can I just say GREAT call on my part because there was someone else who ordered my bowl and she kept the sauce and once I tried it I knew that would have ruined my whole experience there. That Sweet and Spicy sauce was not good at all. It was sweet on the front end, SPICY on the back, but the middle area was totally lacking. it just, didn’t meld well together. The girl that ordered it said the same thing. She said the sauce ruined her whole bowl. Anyway, the bowl comes with chicken and roasted peppers-​and the rest comes with every bowl, so– broccoli, cucumber, sweet potatoes, scallions, pickled red cabbage, and sunflower seeds. IT WAS SO EFFING DELICIOUS! Holy crapppp! The flavors on this. Oh my gosh the flavors were amazing. AND it was HUGE!!! I took half of it home and i NEVER do that!

My favorite place to eat downtown. The service is always friendly. The food is absolutely wonderful and they’ll bend over backwards to make it just the way you want it. The rice bowls are flavourful, fun, and filling. The sandwiches are some of the most interesting, tasty flavours put together I’ve tasted. They have fun drinks and classic drinks. A very welcoming environment. Great prices. Last but not least, THEIR OATMEAL CREAM PIE IS THE MOST DELICIOUS DESSERT I’VE EVER EATEN!
I highly recommend coming to eat here, once, twice a week. At least.

Field Guide is exactly what I expected it to be. I have tried coming here since they first opened, but they are always sooo busy, a good thing for them, for me attempting to find a seat at communal tables, not so much so I avoided them. I finally tried them the day before Christmas Eve and they were basically empty. I talked to the guy about the most popular sandwich, the Privateer. As I told him, it looks amazing, but I’m not a fan of root beer, which according to the menu, it has. He informed me that it cooks in the root beer and other things for hours so you are not tasting so much the root beer but the sugars and such.
I got it and was delighted, I could not taste root beer at all. Its a massive sandwich that could be split amongst 2 people, the cheese was perfection, the bread was soft but did not become soggy from the brisket juice. Cutting the sandwich was difficult but I powered through it. I went during happy hour, yes that exists here, and snagged a bourbon drink for $ 2 off. I will surely be back, maybe even on a weekend.

This is the hippest of all hipster restaurants I have been to in a while. Communal tables, interesting/​abstract décor, delicious/​trendy food and a chill atmosphere. That being said, I’m a huge fan of Hausmann-​Porter restaurants. In fact, this was my second trip from Newport News to one of their restaurants on Saturday, and I have no shame in admitting that. I don’t know if that makes me a hipster, but I’m okay with that if it means I get to come back to their restaurants multiple times a day.
I came here with 3 of my good friends for dinner before an Admiral’s game. Parking isn’t too bad, there’s parking on the street if you can find it, and parking garages around. We were given menus and sat ourselves. There are long communal tables, with a couple of private two seaters scattered around.
My friend told me that you can substitute any of the sauces for any of the bowls. I decided on the Chilly Fish rice bowl, two of them got the Lil’ Bee, and one of them got the Park Dog with bacon. The company was good, so it didn’t seem like we waited a long time for food. The bowls are loaded. The girls decided on eating a little bit of everything first before mixing the bowls which is the best method! I loved the sweet potatoes and greens. They complemented the flavors so well. The grilled shrimp was spot on. The white fish salad wasn’t too bad, I did feel like they put too much red curry sauce in the bowl. It drowned the rice, and the sauce definitely had more of a kick to it then I thought it was. I still really enjoyed it though! My friend’s bacon add-​on looked like a hugeeee portion. I couldn’t finish all of my bowl, and trust me when I say, I can eat a lot of rice.
Service was good. Our waiter wasn’t too overbearing and knew when to come back to check up on us. They do have alcoholic slushies here, that I want to try next time. Actually, I can’t wait to come back multiple times to try everything on the menu, it looks fantastic. Check out the bathrooms while you’re there. They’re interesting and have unique decorations.
I will definitely be back here! Toast and Handsome Biscuit aren’t too far away either if you’re like me and want to try to eat at all of their restaurants in one day! Toast is definitely my favorite, but Field Guide is a close second.

I finally got a chance to return to Field Guide for lunch. Several months ago I had the most wonderful breakfast with my lovely daughter and vowed to return for a rice bowl or sandwich. I don’t know what took me so long. Maybe subconsciously I felt like Field Guide had become too hip, too mainstream for me. With their prime location on Granby, everyone and their grandmother knows the bliss that Field Guide generates with their kitschy décor and delicious, delicious food.
But that’s not fair. I *want* Field Guide to enjoy the kind of success that brings mainstream moms and dads and hipsters and whoever the hell else has money to their restaurant. Besides, I’m a dad and closeted hipster myself. I had the BBQ Beef rice bowl. The brisket was perfect and the veggies tasted fresh. I ate every last bite. My beautiful lunch date had the Park a Dog. She almost ate every bite, but I stole a few bites of sausage for myself then licked all of the spicy yogurt sauce off my fork before trying to go in for another bite… then she BLOCKED me like Mutombo because really, who can afford to share at Field Guide? We managed to come to some sort of truce long enough to share a side of Sweet Chips. The Year of the Horse sauce was amazing.
I am an unabashed Field Guide Fanboy. I wish I had more respect for myself, but the truth is, if I lived or worked in Norfolk I would find a way to eat at Field Guide or Handsome Biscuit 7 days a week. I’d go broke, lose my home, my daughter would get kicked off the soccer team because I’d run out of money to pay her club fees, and no lovely ladies would join for me lovely lunches at lovely little restaurants. Freaking exquisite place.

Probably the least expensive dinner I had all week, I arrived just before the end of the happy hour where I got $ 1 off of a tasty tin of beer. Limited seating and much of it is shared tables. Hey, that’s okay.
I ordered the five wings as a starter in a flavor they called «marakeshy». $ 8 for five wings seemed a bit much, but these were the full quarter — flappers and drumsticks. And they were very tasty. Dry, not wet. I’d have these again.
For main, I went with the «chilly fish» bowl. Brown rice topped with all sorts of stuff, including a couple of large grilled shrimps, a red curry sauce that had some nice zing to it, and a scoop of smoked whitefish salad. Oh, my.
Totally would return to Field Guide. Street parking (or walk over from the Macarthur Center) or just take the light rail!