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Many customers come in for live music, though to Richey, the most interesting people are the people coming in for the food.

    Steve Zissou and a collection of spirits along the brick walls of the Whiskey Jar’s bar. Photo by Kevin Haney .
    Richey was raised eating good food and always liked to go to restaurants, even starting tasting groups in college. Working at a wine shop was his first foray into a career as a gourmand before getting a job at L’étoile; according to Richey, working at that restaurant “was the life-changer.” Richey was interested in gourmet food before local food; his interests began with the “French thing and fancy food. Food at its finest.” Richey tells how Mark Reskey, owner of L’étoile, was a big Virginia history buff, interested in culinary questions like, “How can we re-create what the colonialists were eating?” Reskey did research at Monticello and created meals based on that. “It was definitely home,” Richey admits.
    The questions of “Who am I?” and what home tastes like underlie much of Richey’s culinary philosophy. “My family’s from the South,” he states. “We’re Virginians.” With a laugh, Richey tells happy stories of “cooking with old ladies.” While he may have “learned professional cooking from friends,” Richey attests that his best recipes are his mother’s. “I prefer the food eaten by my people,” Richey admits, despite being a self-confessed Francophile with a love of fine wines and gourmet offerings. “I wanted it to be a lifestyle, tracking heirloom varieties. How did we lose that?” Richey muses. “We’ve lost that in all aspects of the culture—now it’s homogenized and generic.”
    The ingredients and offerings at both Revolutionary Soup locations and at the Whiskey Jar, as well as the ways in which Richey sources his materials, are anything but basic. The percentage of local ingredients he uses at all three restaurants falls down to 50 percent in winter though tops at 80 percent in summer. They purchase local meats all year long; all the proteins at Whiskey Jar are local, and almost all at Revolutionary Soup are local. Richey is influenced by Anson Mills, a Charleston company that is also a big supporter of Southern Foodways Alliance. Richey and his cooks try to preserve a lot of summer produce, at times filling freezers with the last of summer’s tomato pulps. Richey’s goal for the future of his restaurants is increased organization, turning the Corner kitchen into a canning location.
    When Richey’s restaurants can’t get local, they at least try to get organic. “I don’t want to overstate what we do because then it belittles the good things we do,” he attests. “Local dairy would kill you price-wise; we go through so much butter. At home, it’s buy the good stuff, eat less of it, save other places.” Part of Richey’s ability to keep overhead down is his use of large-scale food distribution companies to his advantage. Richey has “made a lot of ground with Sysco” due to a rep who allows Richey to pursue his locavore interests, telling him, “I can source certain local things for you,” like Byrd Mill, Edward’s Ham products and Virginia peanuts. Both a self-confessed “Gen-X anti-establishmentarian” and an optimist, Richey has faith that one can get big institutions to work for the community, not vice versa.

    The map of local products at Revolutionary Soup. Photo by Kevin Haney .
    Chefs like Will Richey, both powerfully individualistic thinkers and savvy businessmen, understand the ideological and financial benefits of working local ingredients into existing food systems. Yet there also exist alongside these practical restaurateurs iconoclasts who would rather rid society of current methods of food production and distribution than recuperate them.