THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, February 17, 1995 TAG: 9502170519
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
Out-of-state friends may have told you about these things called bars.
Beer and mixed drinks flow freely, but try to order dinner and the menu may have just one item:
Greasy cheese fries, anyone? OK, well how about a bag of peanuts?
Virginia has long considered itself too sophisticated a state - pardon, make that commonwealth - to license these houses of swill. As a matter of law, Virginia doesn't have bars. It has restaurants that just so happen, in many instances, to bring in more than half of their income by selling alcohol.
A bill that has cleared the House of Delegates and is being considered by the Senate would let Virginia's restaurants creep just a little closer to bar status.
To serve mixed drinks now, a restaurant in Virginia has to turn in receipts that show 45 percent of its business comes from serving food. Del. William P. Robinson Jr., D-Norfolk, sponsored the bill that would reduce that requirement to 35 percent.
``There's a lot of people who want to have a go-go bar and sell liquor, beer and no food, and that would be all they'd want,'' said Debbie Kassir, who owns four restaurants in Virginia Beach. ``But that's not going to happen. After all, this is Virginia.''
A beer-only restaurant has no ratio requirement, but still has to show $2,000 in monthly food sales. Though most restaurant owners say they have no trouble meeting the minimum food requirements, some privately concede that operating would be easier with a lower food ratio.
``Let me ask you,'' one restaurant owner said, ``wouldn't you like to see the speed limit raised 10 miles an hour?''
Some restaurant owners suggest that maybe not all restaurant owners have an easy time meeting the minimum. And some may be fudging their receipts.
``I've always sold quite a bit of food here,'' said Pete Clark, who owns Rosy's Cafe in Ocean View. ``In fact, I report the actual food sales I do. I don't think lowering it is going to bring more bars into the area or anything.''
Virginia's food-ratio law has been around since Prohibition ended in 1933.
``Prohibition came and there was all this illegal manufacturing of liquor, and they said `OK, we don't want that, we don't just want bars where people can go and tank up, but we want something,' '' said Maria Everett, who has helped recodify the state's alcoholic beverage laws for the legislature.
The tradition of serving food with liquor goes back even further. In Colonial times, a traveler could stop at something called an ``ordinary,'' which is a British term for an inn that provides lodging, drinks and food.
``There's a place out here toward Goochland called Tanglewood Ordinary,'' said Everett. ``Until I read about ordinaries I didn't know why it was called that - I just thought it was a really dumb name.''
Restaurant owners have learned to flow with the state's food-ratio law. In many cases, the result is a bar/restaurant that seems more like a restaurant during lunch and dinner and takes on a bar atmosphere after 9 p.m. One restaurant owner, asking not to be identified, questioned whether serving 95 percent of his food during certain hours was what the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control had in mind with its ratio law.
``Of course, most of the places, if you go out at midnight, you're not doing a lot of food business,'' Kassir said. ``But we're open early in the day, so we do a lot of food business early on.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
TAMARA VONINSKI/Staff
John Polock drinks a beer after finishing lunch Thursday at Rosy's
Cafe on First View Street in Ocean View.
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