The New Beach Pub Mural
Being a Virginia Beach seafood restaurant you would probably never guess that being called a dive or a diner is a good thing. With our appearance as an ultra fresh and personable Virginia Beach Seafood Restaurant on the Diners, Drive-Ins, And Dives show our popularity has reached new heights. With it more people keep returning to the Beach Pub, and other diner and dive restaurants, for ocean to table food free of the glamour and glitz of national advertising and flamboyant chain restaurants. And there is a reason for this…
Virginia Beach Seafood Means Real Seafood
A Virginia Beach Seafood Restaurant of any kind should serve fresh seafood from The Chesapeake Bay. It is incomprehensible that you would even have to say that. 70 years ago it would even be silly to say that a seafood restaurant would even select anything but Atlantic Ocean fresh caught fish, crabs, shrimp, scallops, clams, or oysters. But it is the exception today. Pre-corporate chain seafood restaurant America was filled with scores of family owned restaurants that served fresh seafood. Everything was sourced locally and everything was cooked right there. Some of these places were affectionately dubbed diners and dives, a testament to their humble buildings and décor.
A Seafood Restaurant Diner or Dive was always a place with good food and a family owned environment that may not have had the most flashy building on earth. It was usually one of a kind. You knew what you were going to get and what you got was incredible, delicious, ocean fresh seafood.
But then the seafood world changed. If you look at where your seafood comes from it would probably shock you. An overwhelming majority of the seafood you get comes from foreign waters. And by foreign I do not mean Canada or the Gulf Of Mexico. I mean Central and Southeast Asia from huge fish farms.
And the regulations are not as strict in these countries. In fact a Consumer Reports article gave some alarming information about these foreign imports and the potential health risks of eating them. But you do not see them in Supermarket ads or National Seafood chains. They always show fisherman pulling seafood from the sea. You never see a fish farm or bottles of antibiotics and additives that were poured into these food farm swamps. I am sure they follow all the regulatory rules of the United States.
But in polished national advertising and commercially adorable restaurants that look like movie sets for a sea adventure, the public does not get to see the true origin of their food. Ironically, the seafood at these chains comes from biological dives or swampy fish farms that you would never dive into if you saw them. And then they are frozen and shipped thousands of miles around the world.
Fresh Does Not Mean Buried In Layers Of Ice
There is no ocean to freezer to table. The majority of the seafood should come off a local Virginia Beach Trawler and go right to the restaurant. Time is no friend of great seafood. While it may be safe, freezing every seafood item could not possibly be improving the taste of the seafood.
So A Seafood Restaurant Diner or Dive In Virginia Beach Is A Good Thing
The small family owned seafood restaurants, owned by locals here in Virginia Beach, did not abandon the principles of what makes a great seafood restaurant. Things like true local seafood were the ONLY way to create dishes people at the beach or Oceanfront could trust and truly enjoy as authentic.
Diner or Dive Is A Stamp Of Authenticity
The term dive doesn’t even mean bad. It means not faked. Fancy cookie cutter surroundings, clever advertising, and fun childlike themes do not mean the best food. Corporate seafood restaurant chains or supermarkets are no guarantee of locally caught seafood.
Dive and Diner Is A Stamp Of Seafood That Came From Virginia Beach
And fresh does not mean fresh then frozen. And local does not mean just the continental United States or North America. It means you pull from the local contiguous waters near your location. In Virginia Beach that means the Chesapeake Bay, The Mid Atlantic, The Pamlico Sound of North Carolina or other nearby estuaries. Yes, there are some items you cannot get nearby like lobster and certain shellfish. But you should try to source from local fishermen and local waters as much as you can. Do this and you are on your way to being a true seafood “diner” or “dive.”
“Dive” or “Diner” Is A Stamp Of A Family Owned Virginia Beach Seafood Restaurant
So I say dive in. Beach Pub is a locally owned, family owned Virginia Beach restaurant serving fresh seafood. We have officially made the illustrious list of diners and dives on Guy Fieri’s show and we couldn’t be prouder. I do not think there is a greater badge of honor for a Virginia Beach Seafood Restaurant near the Oceanfront than being labeled a “dive”or a “diner”.
Related posts
