Pomegranate: You Gotta Be Good If You're Replacing Moshi Moshi...

(Picture from Pomegranate's official website)

Ok, so yeah I have to admit that when I heard Moshi Moshi (the sister of Sumo San, with excellent prices and delicious food, located at 3321 W. Cary St. in Carytown) was closing its doors, I was really bummed.  So bummed that I didn’t give a seconds thought to whether or not a new restaurant would be opening in its place, nor what said restaurant would be.  In fact, I heard about a new restaurant called Pomegranate that was getting good reviews first, and then later realized it was in the old Moshi Moshi spot.  I had to let my love of Moshi Moshi go in order to experience this new restaurant objectively.  So let’s see how it worked out, shall we?

The ambience was a complete 180 from the casual Japanese restaurant it once was, with a candlelit, old European-romance ambience.  Very homey yet classic and romantic, IMO.

(Picture from Pomegranate's official website)

They have a decent sized wine menu.  Not extensive by any means, but pretty typical for small yet semi-fancy restaurants in Richmond.  But the cocktails! The cocktails were unique and delicious.  I tried one with “moonshine” and it was amazing.  My friend got one that made me feel like I could cause an explosion if I opened my mouth too close to the candle on our table after taking a sip.  But it still tasted good J

I started out with a spinach salad with local tomatoes (yay local!), pancetta cracklins and creamy avocado dressing for $7. It was pretty darn good.  The dressing was a little overwhelming for me, but then again I didn't ask for light dressing or dressing on the side so that's not necessarily bad on their part.

For my main course, I got the pan seared arctic char with a duck fat buttermilk biscuit, carmelized onions, roasted local mushrooms (again, yay!) and a pancetta cracklin butter sauce for $24.  Oh. My. Gentle. Jesus.  It was so good.  The fish was cooked perfectly, the biscuit was oh-so-amazing, and all the flavors just blended together really well.  It seems everything comes with pomegranates as a garnish, scattered all over the plate, which is a little weird and I couldn't figure out if I should try to eat them with the rest of the meal or not.  After I few bites I decided, no, not with this dish at least.

And for dessert…well their dessert menu is different every time, and unfortunately my friend and I can’t remember exactly what we had lol.  We know that it was chocolate, possibly hazelnut related, and dense.  This tiny little thing came out and we were like, “Ugh, European portions” (which I recently found out really aren’t that small, at least not all over Europe), but we assumed it’d be filling enough.  It really wasn’t that filling, but then again, do you really want to leave dinner feeling stuffed?  Well when you spend over $100 on dinner, maybe ya do.  This is not a moderately priced restaurant; it’s just slightly past that.  So don’t go here for a casual dinner.

For more info on Pomegranate, check out their website or their Facebook page.  So far they're only open for dinner Tuesday through Saturday from 5:00-10:00 pm, with the bar opening at 4:30 pm.