Spotlight: Common House Richmond
Casseroles and Comfort
A chef’s love for a classic dish
Every family has that one dish around the holidays that is always on the table. Something that has a special seasonal appearance. A comfort food that is the first to hit the plate. The tasty star that outshines all others. The titular tradition. For Common House Chef de Cuisine Hunter Garvin, that must-have, can’t-miss offering is a classic casserole anchored by a ubiquitous crunchy topping.
“The pinnacle dish for the holidays would have to be the Green Bean Casserole,” says Garvin. “Everything else is a side dish.”
The iconic casserole of canned green beans, cream of mushroom soup and fried onion straws first appeared in the 1950s by Dorcas Reilly at the Campbell Soup Company. Despite his chef-driven background, Garvin says him and his family stick to the OG recipe and use the canned stuff, relying on that one special ingredient to bring it all together.
“With no shortage of French's fried onions,” Garvin continues. “This dish shouldn't be something you try to reinvent the wheel with.”
Helming the Richmond Common House kitchen for the past nine months, Garvin was previously at Church Hill’s Alewife before joining the team. His resume also includes stints at The Historic Cavalier Hotel and Beach Club in Virginia Beach, and Longoven. Sourcing ingredients from Cavalier Produce, Garvin says the winter menus at both Birdie’s and Common House are meant to present craveable options that walk the line of “rustic and refined.”
Growing up in South Norfolk, Garvin, a Culinary Institute of America graduate, shares that one of his favorite memories was decorating the Christmas tree with his dad.
“Holidays were always fun when I was younger, my Dad has this shoebox full of ornaments from his childhood and a lot of the ones I made in primary / intermediate school that we would put on the tree together,” he says. “We always bought canned black olives and stuffed them with cream cheese, oddly enough I still crave them all the time to this day.”
