Sometimes you want to go wherever everybody knows your name. Or maybe where a friendly smile and a familiar crock of pub cheese delivered to your table with a basket of sesame crackers set the stage for a juicy prime rib—one cooked just the way you’ve loved it since you went there for the first time with your high school prom date.
Every year about this time in Coastal Virginia Magazine, we ask our readers to weigh in on their favorite restaurants—and other businesses, organizations and destinations—in our annual Best Of Readers’ Choice Awards poll. And, as always, this year they weren’t shy about dishing on the dishes that keep them coming back to some of the region’s most beloved dining spots.
Among those spots is a familiar name for steak and seafood lovers. The Aberdeen Barn franchise once had a meaty presence around Virginia—including a location many locals may remember near the erstwhile Coliseum Mall in Hampton. Today, there are three remaining: one in Charlottesville and two in our region, each now independently owned and with its own unique character.
Abderdeen Barn Virginia Beach
Johnney Pramatia remembers sitting down to a big family dinner at the Aberdeen Barn on Northampton Boulevard in Virginia Beach, originally opened in 1966. The year was 1991 and he was 8 years old. His parents had recently moved the family to the area from the Midwest and were looking for a restaurant to buy. Like his grandparents, who came to the U.S. from Greece, they were experienced in the restaurant business.
They must have liked what they tasted that night because more than 30 years later Aberdeen Barn in Virginia Beach, voted Overall Gold for Best Fine Dining and Gold for Best Steak on the Southside by Coastal Virginia Magazine readers, is still a family affair. Johnny and his brother Dimitri now run the restaurant along with help from Johnney’s wife Ashleigh and even members of the next generation.
Longtime staff members are a part of that extended family too, like server Hassan Fahkreddin, who waited on an 8-year-old Johnney and his family that night in 1991 and is still serving up high quality steak and seafood to regulars, tourists and VIPs. Norfolk Mayor Kenny Alexander is a frequent guest, and famous visitors have included actors, comedians and sports stars.
Inside the Virginia Beach Aberdeen’s signature red barn exterior is a veritable maze of eclectic dark wood ambience, dining room after dining room of chandeliers, stained glass, glowing fireplaces, and Christmas trees that are bedazzled all year long. A charming high-low mix of cloth napkins and kitschy paper placemats celebrates that retro steakhouse vibe while teasing your tastebuds with a list of Jimmy’s Famous Handcut Steaks, “Only at the Barn” fried oysters Rockefeller and happy hour specials.
But it isn’t just the ambience that draws crowds to this 600+ seat dining destination that includes 10 private rooms and recently necessitated the addition of a second cooking line and upgraded parking lot. This place is an experience from start to finish, and it begins with a commitment to the quality of food and the service, say Johnney and Ashleigh.
“You walk in, and we want everyone to be greeted and to want to come back,” explains Ashleigh. “You remember the faces that come here because this is very rich local spot where people do come again and again and again.”
Whether it’s for Father’s Day dinners, graduation lunches or any given weekday, they explain, it should feel like a special occasion because of the way you’re treated and what arrives on your plate.
There are old-school, classic starters like lollipop lambchops with mint jelly and escargot with pesto and garlic butter alongside trendier options like their “Barn Blue” mussels nestled in a savory blue cheese sauce begging to be soaked up with the accompanying garlic toast points. Meanwhile, their “comfort in a bowl” she crab soup is bursting with juicy lumps of crabmeat and that perfect yin-yang of creaminess and spice.
Yes, it is a steak house serving USDA Stockyard Angus Premium Beef, but they are big on fresh seafood, too, and that means tuna, mahi and rockfish when available. There are local oysters aplenty, crabcakes, a truffle crab mac-n-cheese and crowd-pleasing mains like their stuffed flounder and fried shrimp broiled in herb butter and served with your choice of sides and complements.
“You definitely have to keep up with the times,” says Ashleigh of their menu, “but you also have to stay true to your roots, so we have some things that are classic that will never change.”
If it’s premium steaks your heart desires, fire up your engines because their menu runs the gamut from prime rib and New York strip, filet mignon and T-bone to higher end specialty and limited availability cuts like the Tomahawk ribeye—“a bone-in you won’t forget” and something Johnney notes they were among the first to offer locally, and absolutely melt-in-your-mouth Japanese A5 Wagyu in princess, queen and king cuts. Add truffle butter, a new option, to any steak for another layer of luxury.
Speaking of red meat, you’d be hard-pressed to miss a recent addition to their dining rooms in the form of two on-site custom-installed dry-aging rooms.
“A conversation piece, for sure,” says Ashleigh, these glass-walled displays allow guests to see their food in action as premium cuts of beef are dry-aged up to 45 days using a combination of precise climate control and Himalayan salt. You can also purchase hand-trimmed, dry-aged steaks to take home and cook.
Desserts, classic cocktails, orange crushes and specialty drinks like their Signature Frosé (rosé wine and fresh strawberry blended into a frozen refresher) will cap off your visit, as will a beer and wine menu that includes a variety of local brews and, soon, a selection of Santorini wines from Greece. Who said fine dining wasn’t supposed to be fun, after all?
Photos by Jacqui Renager, Performance Foodservice Virginia
Aberdeen Barn Williamsburg
Across the water and through the woods at the Williamsburg Aberdeen Barn, located on Richmond Road, owner Dennis White is no stranger to the family restaurant business either. Dennis’ father and his business partners purchased the restaurant in 1974, and that’s when Dennis began working at the perennially popular dinner spot, which took the Silver for Best Restaurant Overall on the Peninsula and the Gold for Best Service and Waitstaff on the Peninsula.
When she’s not busy serving as the principal of a local elementary school, Dennis’ daughter Melissa can also be found in the dining room along with longtime staff members, some of whom have called the restaurant a home away from home going back a decade or more. Colonial Williamsburg visitors are a staple here, of course, but so are resident steak and seafood lovers.
“We have always had a very strong local clientele,” Dennis says, “so we feed a lot of folks from Williamsburg, Gloucester, Hampton, Newport News, even Richmond.”
What keeps guests coming back year after year? Prime rib cooked to juicy, slow-and-low perfection in a special oven designed to hold its temp at a Goldilocks 140 degrees for up to 16 hours, for one, ensuring that every cut arrives tender and packed with flavor. The bones from all that prime rib hit the stock pot to make the au jus that gives their classic French onion soup its punch. The soup is a popular starter as are their “Black and Blue Bites” with grilled top sirloin, blue cheese chive butter, provolone and mozzarella broiled over garlic toast points.
“We’re an old-fashioned steak house,” Dennis explains. “Our menu is fairly basic. It has stayed the same for years and years and years. We feature two different cuts of New York strip steak, ribeye steak and filet mignon. We do a porterhouse cowboy cut bone-in ribeye and then we have our regular chops and things like lamb chops and bone-in French pork chops, and all of our meat is wet-aged in Richmond and custom cut to order.”
The focus, he notes, is on quality and consistency in a comforting environment people know and love. The old-fashioned steakhouse vibes come through loud and clear in a farm-inspired interior complete with wagon wheel chandeliers, a cool collection of old farming equipment as décor and entrees served sizzling on your own personal cast iron pan.
Aberdeen Barn Williamsburg is also a Virginia Oyster Trail site, serving exclusively Virginia oysters, including “fresh as they can be” bivalves from Mobjack Bay Oysters just across the river in Gloucester. Their 10/20 scallops wrapped in a hickory smoked bacon, broiled and served with a bourbon barbecue sauce, are a big hit with guests as are alternate versions with shrimp or a combo of the two.
“We take a lot of pride in our food,” Dennis says. “One thing I learned from my dad when he was running the business was that he was a firm believer in never cutting quality or cutting corners. When things are busy, I tell the staff, ‘Don’t rush it, get it out right.’ Because if people wait for it and it’s perfect when it comes out, they don’t mind.”
That’s a recipe for success worth toasting, so be sure to check out their local beer, wine and cocktail list while you’re there. Want a dessert and drink in one? Try an old-school Aberdeen classic, “The Stablemate,” a blend of piña colada, rum and Galliano.
More Steaks and Fine Dining
Rounding out the 2023 Best Of winners in the Best Steak category, The Butcher’s Son, with locations in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake, is owner Brian Radford’s refined take on a classic American steakhouse and took the big prize with Overall Gold. Both Schlesinger’s Steakhouse in Newport News and its Williamsburg sister restaurant Opus 9 Steakhouse, both long-running favorites for their classic menus and elegant settings and service, got nods for Gold and Silver on the Peninsula, respectively. River Stone Chophouse in Suffolk, known as a premier chophouse featuring steaks, seafood, a raw bar, cigar patio and extensive wine list, won Silver for Southside. And Bronze prizes went to Brass Bell Steakhouse and Jefferson Restaurant.
The Butcher’s Son also took Southside Gold for Best Fining Dining, and Opus 9 and Schlesinger’s again received honors in the form of Silver and Bronze wins on the Peninsula in that category. Le Yaca, Steinhilber’s Restaurant and Heirloom completed the category with Gold Peninsula, Silver Southside and Bronze Southside honors.
Be sure to check out these other food-and-drink Overall Gold Winners.
Leona Baker
Leona Baker is the Editor-in-Chief of Coastal Virginia Magazine, a writer, creative, communications professional, food freak, news junkie, nature and travel lover and mom. She holds a degree in English from James Madison University and a degree in Dance & Choreography from Virginia Commonwealth University. She previously served as Senior Copywriter for Spark 451, Director of Marketing & Communications at Virginia Wesleyan University, and Senior Editor of Port Folio Weekly.
