Virginia Diner

Gift shops aren’t normally on my list of places to go and review, but in a last ditch effort to finish up Christmas Shopping, Virginia Diner was exactly what I needed.
First off, this is for the location on Cary Street. We’ve only been living in VA for about a year now, so I personally didn’t realize that this was a chain store until I came across one in another location, but it doesn’t matter.
This location is more or less right in the middle of Cary Street, amongst all of the hip and cool stores. We had spent a couple hours looking at various toy, gift, and novelty stores before having huge displays of peanuts catch our eyes. «Virginia is known for peanuts, right? People back home in NY might like some of these,» we thought as we entered the store.
HOLY NUTS. (Sorry if that offended anyone!) Perhaps peanuts are more of a common thing here in VA, but where I came from, we had Honey Roasted, salted, and maybe some sort of BBQ or spicy one. There are all sorts of flavors here, including but not limited to Sweet Onion, Dill Pickle, Butter Toasted, Salt and Pepper, Old Bay, Japanese Karai Fusion, and Cajun. The best part of it all? You can sample each and every one of these flavors. (And oh man, sample we did!)
There are more than just peanuts here though, so you’d have to be nuts to think otherwise. /​forced joke. They also have all sorts of local sports teams shirts and memorabilia, local products like jellies and salsas, and plenty of other things that just scream Virginia. Perhaps next year I’ll buy some cards or other trinkets mentioning VA because that is exactly how creative I am when it comes to gift shopping.
Price wise, it’s a gift store. It’s a bit on the pricier side compared to your peanut aisle at Kroger, but the stuff here is all Virginia grown and sourced goods, so it in some way seems more authentic. 12 serving peanut containers are $ 7-​$ 9, jellies are ~$ 10.
The staff was super friendly and willing to answer any questions we had, and in general it just seemed like a good gift store for VA products. If you’re not shopping for VA products or peanuts specifically you should probably skip out on it, but otherwise, go nuts!

I love this store! A fellow Unilocaler told me they recently opened when I posted in TALK asking for a place that sells Virginia-​related stuff good for making a gift bag for a friend from Washington state by way of Minnesota. Virginia Diner was perfect! Got several Virginia is for Lovers items, candies, nuts, etc. My friend was tickled when he opened his gift bag.
I will go here again and again when in need of such gifts.