Davio's show-stopping seafood tower

Absolutely. Thank you so much. All right, Steve, I'll send it over to you. You know what pairs well with cider and donuts is a good seafood tower. I've been telling people this for years, Steve, and they don't believe me, right? Well, you know, most restaurants do cold towers, which, look, we have one, too, right? Who doesn't love a cold tower, you know, with raw oysters and shrimp cocktail? But we decided to take it up a notch, okay? And what we do is we actually cook ours at Davios in Reston Station. So it's so amazing because everything is cooked. It's really cool. And you got it all ready to go. I should introduce our guests. This is Steve and this is Rodney, and they are here from Davios, which is out at Reston Station, which is right off the Silver Line, easy to get to via Metro or otherwise. But here's the deal, Steve. So Davios is, and we said this earlier, you technically ain't an Italian steakhouse, but you're providing good quality food of all types, right? We wanted to focus on the Seafood Tower because for this time of year, it's something that's really cool. I think also this is a centerpiece. Well, you guys do an amazing job. This is your baby. I know that. This is the kind of thing we could do as a showstopper at home, too, right? Well, it's actually really simple. I mean, we have lobster tails. It's very simple to cook a lobster, right? And all we did was take some butter, some fresh tarragon, throw it in a pan, and cook them up, and that's it. The prawns, right? We use prawns. We don't use shrimp. You know, prawns are absolutely incredible, much more healthier, much more tender. Much better for you. So we use prawns. And we know where they come from, which is very important. You know, the wild, wild catch, fresh waters, you know, because shrimp can be, you know, you don't know where it comes from, right? So prawns is just the best to have. So you want to know to give the best. Yeah, and of course, you know, we have Maryland crab, which is, you know, in our opinion, the best in the world. So we have those crab cakes. And then we have these oysters Rockefeller, all right, which. are just unbelievable. So we take spinach and we take pernod and we mix it with gruyere cheese. So they're amazing. And then we have, of course, the elephant tuna over here. And then we had to have calamari. You cannot be in a time frame. I mean, it's just, they go together, right? It's so funny because when he came in to me one time and he goes, you know how we have the cold tower? He's like, okay, now just make it all hot. And I'm like, really? Like, no, I have to make it hot. So I originally thought it was like, well, this is crazy. But it is becoming an incredible dish, especially in the winter because everybody wants a seafood, but they want it warm. You know, seven fish dinner, too. You know, Christmas around, you know, you got seven fish in there. And it's a great shareable item. I mean, everybody gets to have something. I love it. Steve, I love your story, too. How old were you when you bought your first restaurant? I was 24. And this has turned into a lifelong passion, right? Yeah, well, that was 41 years ago, so we know how old I am. Yeah, no, it's something that. I knew as a little kid I wanted to do this, you know, I'm a hospitality guy, you know, I learned it from my parents and, you know, I just, we're blessed, you know, I just love it every day, I feel like I'm just getting started. So what was the vision, I mean, for a 24-year-old who's starting out, oh, this is what I love about this guy, just deliver the food. By the way, our crab cake is very simple, just crab, okay, a lot of people put so much stuff in their crab cakes, it makes me crazy. It's very, very simple. Our whole way we do our restaurant is we try to keep everything three, four, five ingredients, tops. So you know what you're eating. It's not mystery meat. You can close your eyes and you know you're eating crab. It's crab, yeah. Right? Marylanders all through. Yeah, yeah. For sure. What was the vision when you started this out? Well, that you wanted for Davios, and how do you explain to people now that this has been, I mean, seven locations now, decades later, you know, we have all this in Fairfax County. Well, I wanted Davios to be something that you just can't go to, like, we don't do chicken parm or veal parm, you know, more American Italian, which I love, by the way. I grew up eating meatballs and all that stuff, and we do have meatballs now, but, you know, we want it on our own dishes. We have our own wine, right? We have our own spring rolls. We do a lot of our things that we just have at Davios, you know, and if you want a chicken parm, we'll make it for you. OK, but it's not something that we don't we have on. Yeah, I mean, it's good to know. We don't know if you want a place where they're going to live. Well, we're in the yes business. OK, that's what we are. That's why COVID was so hard for this industry, because we were in the no business, unfortunately, during that time. And now we're back to being a yes business. You come for hospitality. I mean, look, our food's important. Don't get me wrong, but it's really how you're treated when you come to see us. So, Rodney, you're running the food for all these locations. So be honest with you when when the boss. This boss of mine right here, when the boss came to you and said, take this amazing traditional cold seafood tower and make it hot, what was the first item that you thought of? Well, I'm always excited because, you know, he always comes with the ideas, and he always says, hey, he goes, I just thought of the idea, and he's got to get back to work and deal with it. So it always takes, trust me, it takes a lot of tryouts until we get it right. That's my job, to try everything. But to me, it was great just to go to the menu and to look at the cold seafood tower and say, okay, what can we do that it becomes like the lobster tails. So just getting, you know, just poached lobster. We did it with a beautiful tarragon butter. So that was like we needed to add and enhance the flavor. The prawns, you know, we wanted to do it with a little like Vermouth and like a little lemon butter. So it was all those things that you wanted to incorporate flavors to it. Simply. Take it to the next level. All right, guys, I'm going to, I got to try some of the calamari here. In the meantime, we're going to take a short break. Where do folks find you the easiest way? Right in Reston Station. I mean, it's so simple. It's a beautiful JW Marriott now across. For us, we have an amazing landlord, the Comstock. They're incredible. They kind of control that whole area. That's great. That's incredible, too. All right, we're going to be back. We'll wrap this up in a minute, and we'll see you right after this. I'm starting to speak now.