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Chef Griggs and his son, Austin Griggs, went back to the farm to procure wood from Moody’s barn to use on the front side of Cochon’s bar, as well as on the front of its open kitchen.
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A chef’s table directly overlooks the open kitchen and can accommodate two to ten diners who want a culinary show as well as a fine meal.
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The iconic spotted pig logo is painted above the open kitchen.
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Moody the Pig; Cochon on 2nd’s mascot.
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Seared Sea Scallops with Seaweed Salad
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Moody's Ribs
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Wood grilled prawns with local succotash in Ham Hock Broth
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Salmon with Scallop Mousse in Puff Pastry
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Knockout roses and a rosemary garden line the front of the restaurant.
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Chef Neil Griggs with his mother Sallie Sue, sitting at the bar stool named after her.
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The bar stool named after Chef Neil Griggs' mother, Sallie Sue.
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Tables are covered in white paper with the spotted pig logo stamped on two corners.
Ask Chef Neil Griggs where he grew up and he’ll gesture through the window of his restaurant, Cochon on 2nd, toward a housing enclave beyond a grove of trees. But ask him where he spent his boyhood summers and he’ll begin rhapsodizing about weeks spent on his Grandfather Moody’s Suffolk farm where pigs, corn, peanuts and chickens were the family’s bread and butter.
A root cellar and the annual canning of summer’s bounty—tomatoes, Concord grapes, green beans—were staples of a thrifty farm life.
“I remember my grandmother cutting slab bacon in the morning and frying it up in a cast iron skillet. That’s the way to start a day,” he says emphatically from a table inside his handsome and homey restaurant.
His grandfather’s general store had been wiped out in the Great Depression. The family was dirt poor, he recalls, but they managed to buy a farm.
“I watched my grandmother cut chickens’ heads off and I remember my aunt and my Mom had pet pigs they named and raised.”
Later, his grandfather sold some of the land in the back of the property to the state for the Great Dismal Swamp.
Farm life suited the young Griggs.
“Walking in and inhaling the smell of the smokehouse, it was life-changing. It made me start barbecuing as a child. That’s a flavor profile you can’t get with gas. It’s the purest way of cooking and once you get to an age, you don’t want to mess around with anything else.”
Thirty years later, he and his son went back to the farm to procure wood from Moody’s barn to use on the front side of Cochon’s bar, as well as on the front of its open kitchen.
“No one had been in that barn for 30 years,” he says with a chuckle.
Welcome to Cochon
Tables in the light-filled restaurant with burlap curtains at the windows are covered in white paper on which a spotted pig is stamped on two corners, while small vases of roses from the chef’s garden make for colorful and fragrant centerpieces.
Hanging in a nook are sepia-toned photographs, one of Grandfather Moody looking rather dapper for a pig farmer, and another of him with his daughter, Griggs’ mother at age 15, posing next to two pigs at a trough. A hutch in the dining room holds glasses and plates.
On one wall, wood scavenged from pens where piglets and their mothers were housed—the hooks used to close the gates still visible—provides a visual focal point for diners.
“The farm is the genesis of it all,” Griggs says, gesturing toward the bar. “The name on that barstool over there is Salli Sue, my mother’s name.”
Her name is also on the indulgent lemon pound cake that graces the dessert menu, hardly a surprise given that it’s her recipe.
Chef Neil Griggs
The open kitchen overlooking it all was intentional because Griggs likes to wear two hats at his restaurant: maitre d’ as well as chef, or, as he puts it, a maitre d’ with a chef’s coat on.
“I wanted the kitchen open so I could mingle from the kitchen and for the bar to be an extension of the dining room. I sincerely like to talk to people and I also like to cook.”
It isn’t something he initially realized about himself, though.
“I didn’t know I wanted to cook until college. I wanted to play piano and I sucked. I wanted to paint and I was terrible. But I got in the kitchen and I saw cooking differently.”
That revelation led to him attending Culinary Institute of America beginning in 1989, a period he characterizes as “stone broke and working night and day.”
Told to go apprentice with a good chef, Griggs eventually landed in northern Virginia doing country club management and high level corporate catering, including one of Bill Clinton’s second inaugural balls.
But a deep-rooted family history kept pulling him back toward the land of his youth to practice his craft. Two years ago, what started as a “drive-thru pig-thru,” only confirmed for him what he’d been sensing all along as the concept grew to become a white tablecloth restaurant.
“I went ahead and sold my house in northern Virginia, so I was basically rolling the dice and betting on myself.”
His goal was to open a locally-sourced, approachable restaurant serving a daily changing menu of hand-crafted food and he was fortunate enough to find a choice spot to do it in Williamsburg when the Velvet Shoestring, a high end furniture consignment shop, began an expansion.
Delays in construction provided time to better study the Williamsburg market to determine what area diners wanted and what would work and what wouldn’t. “What I’d thought I wanted was flawed, so I changed course.”
Velvet Shoestring owner Betty Stevens helped him decorate the place to create a vibe that’s stylish, comfortable and very much rooted in the local terroir, merroir and Griggs’ own family history.
Of his year-old neighborhood restaurant, he observes, “I just got into this while most chefs my age want to get out. But when I stand here on Saturday nights with people and friends coming in to eat my food? Wow, I get goose bumps.”
The Menu
Falling back to the flavor profiles of his grandfather’s farm–fresh farm eggs from Kel Rae Farms, Parker Farm butter beans from four farms down, Red Barn Berkshire pork from Surry and oysters from the York River—Griggs crafted a menu using the bounty of Virginia cooked over locally sourced firewood from the same supplier that services Colonial Williamsburg.
Proud as he is of the years he’s spent in the kitchen, he’s the first to admit that his cooking has evolved.
“When I was younger, it was all about how much I could put on a plate and not screw it up, but now I go for as few components as possible. It’s the simplistic approach versus the complicated. That, and with some maturity, I finally figured it out.”
His savvy clientele provided input, too, for instance, asking for specific dishes and demonstrating a preference for prime over choice cut meat.
When a first-time customer dithers over menu options, he’s quick to advise, “You have to have something off the grill,” testament to how the flavors of the smokehouse brought him to a decided preference for the grill.
The Wagyu burger with Cochon bacon and extra-sharp Cheddar cheese announces itself as a tower of the freshest ingredients, the kind of perfectly char-grilled burger that results in warm juices running down the diner’s fingers.
“Just in case, here’s a hot towel for you,” an observant server offers with a knowing smile.
A chef’s table directly overlooks the open kitchen and can accommodate two to ten diners who want a culinary show as well as a fine meal, and plans are in the works for an upscale private dining room to be called Moody’s Room.
“We’ve got a welcoming vibe, so when you walk in, this feels like Cochon on 2nd and no place else. The lighting is soft, so it feels like there’s a fine dining element without the…”—here he pushes the end of his nose up in the air to represent snootiness—“making us very approachable.”
But at the end of the day, Griggs knows food trumps ambience and that key element alone is enough to make Cochon a bona fide dining destination.
“In summer, we do wood-grilled prawns with Parker Farm butter beans, Silver Queen corn and tomatoes in hot ham broth. In winter, it’s braised lamb shanks with collards and potatoes au gratin with bleu cheese and Parmesan,” he says with obvious pride.
“Either way, that’s 25 years of love right there in those dishes. I am doing what I love to do.”
Grandfather Moody would be proud.
For more information, visit cochonon2nd.com.
Cochon on 2nd Chocolate Mousse Paté
Cochon on 2nd Chocolate Mousse Paté
Yield: ten slices
Ingredients:
3/4 pound softened butter
1 cup sugar
8 egg yolks
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/3 cup dark chocolate such as Baker’s or Ghiradelli
1/2 cup heavy cream
Directions:
1. In a mixer, combine sugar and eggs, blending until very creamy
2. Add softened butter and blend well
3. Add cocoa powder and blend well. Move to large stainless steel bowl
4. Temper dark chocolate by melting it in a double boiler over an inch of simmering water. Add into mixture and blend well
5. Place in large bowl
6. In another bowl, whip cream until stiff and peaks form
7. Slowly blend whipped cream into chocolate mixture until smooth and well blended
8. Transfer mousse into paté mold and allow to chill fully
9. Cut into desired slices for serving