vol. 287 / Top ChefExploring and celebrating the place we all love to call home.
VOL. 287 / Top Chef
Meet this week's guest editor, Brittanny Anderson. A born-and-raised Richmonder, Brittanny is the celebrated chef and owner of Metzger Bar & Butchery, Bar Buoy, Black Lodge, and The Pink Room. She is a two-time semi-finalist for the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic and has been named StarChefs’ Mid-Atlantic Restaurateur of the Year.
On television, you can spot her competing on Bravo’s Top Chef (Season 18) and Food Network’s Tournament of Champions, Iron Chef America, Last Bite Hotel, 24 in 24, and Triple Threat, where she took down Bobby Flay’s Titans. Her restaurants and recipes have been featured in Food & Wine, Garden & Gun, Elle, and Bon Appétit.
This week, we’re honored to have Brittanny share her favorite ways to explore and celebrate this delicious city we all love to call home.
Take it away, Brittanny ...
Volunteer with Beyond Boundaries
One of my favorite groups to work with in Richmond, Beyond Boundaries, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to guiding participants with disabilities, veterans, underserved youth, and recovery programs on outdoor adventures. Help someone learn to fish, kayak, or rock climb! Shep Roeper, Executive Director of Beyond Boundaries, has created a really special group that shares our beautiful outdoors and wildlife here in Richmond with those who have had limited access to it in the past, and it is truly special to get to be a part of it!
Hook up with one of the terrific guides at Current Culture Fly, or go hang with Richmond Fly Women and learn to tie your own flies, cast a rod, and ultimately land a monster right here in the city! Current Culture Fly is a guide service working out of Richmond that takes pride in making fly fishing accessible and fun. And Richmond Fly Women is a community for women anglers of all skill levels who just love to fish. Established in 2025, the group’s mission is to see more women on the water, solo and together. Join the group for social and active meetups where participants fish, tie flies, and learn from one another.
Visit my favorite neighborhood in Richmond and take a walk filled with history, cocktails, and yummy snacks! Visit brunch spots like Alewife or Metzger, sit on the patio at The Hill Café and chat with the neighborhood regulars, grab a slice at Pizza Bones, browse the Italian goodies at Giorno Market, and then take in the gorgeous architecture of historic Church Hill.
Richmond chef and restaurateur Brittanny Anderson recently set sail on a new culinary adventure with the opening of Bar Buoy, a Chesapeake Bay–inspired eatery in Scott’s Addition. Drawing on her family lineage of watermen, Brittanny has brought casual, fun, beach-shack vibes to Richmond’s dining scene. Think raw bar, steamers, crab cakes, beer-battered cod, Chesapeake Bay shrimp toast, and plenty of boat drinks and nostalgic cocktails like fancy crushes and buttered popcorn rum and Cokes, plus a curated non-alcoholic soda lineup. Head over to 3200 Rockbridge St. for a little bit of the Bay right here in the River City.
vol. 284 / TaylorExploring and celebrating the place we all love to call home.
VOL. 284 / Taylor
This week's guest editor is Taylor Scott, a community organizing powerhouse! Originally planning to join the FBI, Taylor found her calling in grassroots organizing and mutual aid work. In 2020, she founded RVA Community Fridges after her hydroponic garden's abundant harvest sparked her understanding of food systems and community needs.
What began as one fridge in Church Hill, created with friends, has grown into 15 locations across Richmond, with a focus on communities affected by redlining and food apartheid. Scott has helped establish community fridges throughout Virginia and beyond. She also co-runs Matchbox Mutual Aid, a brick-and-mortar kitchen space that partners with Richmond Food Not Bombs to host community cook days, events, and free food-based courses.
A New Orleans native who now calls Richmond home, Taylor enjoys fiber arts like sewing, crocheting, and knitting. She shares her space with Serrano, a 3-year-old Red Foot Tortoise named after the pepper.
Take it away, Taylor ...
Fund the Fridge Concert ft. Erin Lunsford and Deau Eyes
Experience an evening of live music and community care at this special pop-up show, featuring performances by Richmond favorites Erin Lunsford and Deau Eyes, with all proceeds supporting the #35thStFridge — a vital neighborhood resource providing free food and essentials. Come out, enjoy the music, and help keep the fridge full.
Bring your needlework and join a welcoming community of stitchers for an afternoon of cross-stitch, embroidery, and sewing. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned maker, this casual gathering is all about sharing skills, stories, and creative company over coffee.
Roll up your sleeves and cook for the community! Join RVA Community Fridges at Matchbox Mutual Aid for an evening of preparing meals that will stock local community fridges and feed neighbors in need. A great way to connect, share skills, and support mutual aid in action.
Vitals:
RVA Community Fridges Cook Day / Tuesday, September 23 / 5:00 – 8:00 PM / Matchbox Mutual Aid, 2919 North Ave.
More about RVA Community Fridges:
The RVA Community Fridges are open to everyone in the community — take what you need or give what you can. Operating 24/7, 365 days a year, the fridges are maintained by community members just like you.
Donations can be made at rvacommunityfridges.com, where voting is currently open for future fridge locations. Community members can submit new location suggestions and vote on existing proposals.
Join Taylor and her team at upcoming community cook days, classes, and events. Stay connected through their Discord and follow @rvacommunityfridges on Instagram and Facebook for the latest updates.
vol. 283 / TraskExploring and celebrating the place we all love to call home.
VOL. 283 / Trask
This week we welcome back artist, musician, and community leader Ed Trask as guest editor. A Richmonder requiring no introduction, Ed sums himself up like this: “Painter, drummer. A scattered mess trying to push stories, color, composition, rhythm, love, and light on to the masses.” That restless energy has defined Ed's work and his place in the River City for more than three decades.
A graduate of VCU with a BFA in Painting & Printmaking, Ed made Richmond itself his canvas, transforming forgotten buildings with murals that gave walls new life. After graduating in 1992, he kept painting wherever he went, sometimes illegally and sometimes while on tour with punk rock bands, always in search of rhythm and story.
Back home in Richmond, he has been a driving force in using public art as a catalyst for community. He co-founded the RVA Street Art Festival, served as a commissioner for the city’s Public Art Commission, and worked with nonprofits to bring inclusive, collaborative murals to neighborhoods across the region. He has also shared his perspective in classrooms, boardrooms and community spaces, reminding people that art is most powerful when it belongs to everyone.
Today Ed’s paintings and murals can be found in collections around the world, including the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ Modern & Contemporary Art Collection, but his roots remain firmly planted in Richmond, where he lives with his wife and two children. On the horizon for Ed is Universal, a gallery space created by Artists for Hope to incubate new creative endeavors that give back. Artists exhibiting at this nonprofit gallery will donate a percentage of their proceeds to the charity of their choice.
Take it away, Ed ...
Camera to Canvas Fundraiser
On September 12, I’ll join fellow Richmond artists for Camera to Canvas, an annual event that blends photography and painting to benefit the Friends of the James River Park System. For more than five decades, the James River Park has been Richmond’s beating heart. It's a place that has shaped my art, my music, and my life. I’ve biked its trails and paddled its rapids. I've cast a line into its waters and found endless inspiration for the stories that end up on canvas.
This year, I’ve donated my painting Train Songs, a piece that echoes the rhythm of steel, water, and movement along the mighty James. Few places capture Richmond’s creative pulse like the James River Park, and Train Songs is my way of honoring that soundtrack.
At Camera to Canvas, you’ll be able to bid on this painting, as well as photographs by Richmond photographer Bill Draper, plus original works from other artists. Attend the show, or bid on artwork online, or just spread the word. Every dollar raised helps protect and expand the park that we all love to call home.
Vitals:
Camera to Canvas / Friday, Sep 12, 2025 / 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM / 6228 Forest Hill Ave.
Walk the Dams Under the Manchester Bridge
This is my favorite spot to breathe, fish, and decompress. It is the perfect blend of nature and the energy of rushing water pounding rocks for millions of years, with trains in three-quarter time carrying goods, coal, and people slicing between osprey and herons looking to roost. The water drowns out the sound of the Manchester Bridge, which has its own rhythm of passing trucks and car horns. Together they create an orchestra that is peaceful, layered, and at times a little discordant, touching every sense. Yet just half a mile away, a completely different rhythm and song rises from the heart of a city that is changing rapidly. And here you can also walk the dam to the now-closed Pipeline Trail, a beloved spot for so many who seek solace and connection to a river that carries both a difficult history and the promise of unity. I encourage everyone to support the “Save the Pipeline” efforts led by groups such as RVA Paddlesports and the James River Outdoor Coalition, who are working to restore public access to this special place.
Vitals:
Under the Manchester Bridge, near the end of 12th & Byrd Street in downtown Richmond
Health Arts in Healthcare
I just wrapped up a collaboration with VCU Health Arts in Healthcare and the Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU, bringing a little extra color and energy to the Virginia Treatment Center for Children’s Northside campus. This mural is meant to welcome kids and their families with warmth and imagination, but most importantly with hope. While I was painting, it struck me that there are so many ways we Richmonders can support CHoR beyond large financial gifts. The Child Life Department keeps Amazon and Walmart wish lists for toys, books, and art supplies. And the Virginia Treatment Center for Children has its own wish list to support recreation therapy and mental health services.
You can also join events like Extra Life, which unites gamers from across the globe to play games to change kids' health to change the future. Donations stay local to fund critical treatments and healthcare services, pediatric medical equipment and charitable care at Children's Hospital of Richmond at VCU. Or start your own project, from a neighborhood art show to a “Shop for a Cause” event at a local business. Supporting CHoR doesn’t always mean writing a big check. Sometimes it’s as simple as sharing your time, creativity, or even a box of crayons.
Do yourself a favor and revisit Kuba Kuba today. Here you can stand on the tiles worn down by nearly three decades of footsteps and lean against this well-worn neighborhood bar, its edges smoothed by years of elbows, while you wait for a plate of Cuban pork. Out front there's a mural I painted years ago, still bright with color. Inside, if I listen closely enough, I can still hear Papi reminding me that Rana's house hot sauce, not sriracha, is the sauce you want. Here you'll find sunlight drifting through the front door, cutting across the chorizo smoke. Regulars laughing over what is probably their fourth espresso of the day. The walls are lined with photos, chalkboards and well-loved artifacts that retell decades of neighborhood stories. Even the dogs know to pause at the door for milk bones. For me, Kuba Kuba has always been a home and a family, and Richmond is lucky to have it. If it has been a while, stop by. Order the pork, sip an espresso, and remember why we rally around the places that feel like home. Cheers, y’all.
This is not your normal podcast. It takes place on an island in the James River in downtown Richmond. For more than 200 years, Richmonders have built on this narrow sliver of land, only to watch the river reclaim it. Still, people keep returning, keep building, and keep trying to find their footing. That spirit is at the heart of Richmond’s newest podcast. Check out the recent episode featuring Ed Trask, recorded with feet in the sand and the city skyline in view, as guests talk about what it means to keep pushing the place we love to call home forward. Richmond Grid and Here Weekly are proud partners of the Sharp's Island podcast.
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