RVA Brunch Club: Selba

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Selba

Selba, 2416 W. Cary St., Richmond
Brunch Menu

Karisa: I wanted to *love* Selba. That didn't happen. The server was cute, but very slow. The food was good, but not amazing. I'd go back, but not soon.

Andrea: The highlight of the meal for me was the Selba Benedict - great value for the money ($8) and an interesting twist on the bread component of the dish (a Salvadorian corn cake). I was disappointed that during the "piano brunch", no piano was played. Our french press coffee was strong but got cold very quickly; the coffee experience was inhibited by the fact that we had to ask for milk/creamer three times before we received it. The ambiance score would likely have been higher had we been seated in the garden room, which is serene and beautifully lit with Tiffany lamps. With improvements in service and seating in the garden room, I would return for brunch and probably for a happy hour.

Michele: The first few minutes of our meal were wonderful. Mimosa pitchers on special, French press coffee, and a very attractive waiter. What more could we ask for? Well, for starters cream and sugar. Andrea has covered that issue. We split the baked brie with our coffee, and it was delicious. For my meal I ordered an omelette with chorizo, tomato, cilantro, and manchego cheese with a side of sweet potato fries. This next part irks me the most about our meal at Selba's. Andrea and I received our food a good 10 minutes before Karisa's food was brought out. When we finally got around to eating, I enjoyed my omelette, but I remember thinking that I wanted to put some goat cheese on top of it. I really liked the sweet potato fries - thick cuts of sweet potato and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. Overall the food was good, but Selba really lost points in my book for the service. Our waiter's handsome looks could not make up for his inattentiveness.

Rating: 3
Food (includes overall quality, value for the money, vegetarian options, innovative/yummy-sounding options): Good

Ambiance: Good

Service: Fair
Coffee: Fair
Mimosa: Good (liked that we could get a pitcher!)

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About our Ratings

We have a 5-point scale rating system:

5 - Excellent; a stand-out destination that should be on the short list of options for a new or experienced bruncher

4 - Very Good; definitely worth coming back for repeat visits and telling your friends/family

3 - Good, but not on the heavy rotation list

2 - Palatable, but only if there aren't other options (or if you're hungover and this is the only place you can stumble to)

1 - Awful; we'd only eat there again if you paid us a large sum of money

Note: we reserve the right to add a zero to the bottom of the scale if you couldn't pay us to eat there again (hopefully we never run into this occasion...if brunches thus far are any indication, we won't!).

We consider many factors in our rating including alcoholic beverages (usually mimosas or bloody marys), coffee/tea, service, ambiance, and food quality/options.

The last category is a catch-all that evaluates the number of options on the menu, the number of options we would actually consider ordering, the number of vegetarian options (one of us is a veg but the others like breakfast meats), specials available, value for the money, and creativeness/innovativeness, among other things.