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Vee Vee in Jamaica Plain gets a ‘Top Chef’ and new menu
With Chef Valentine Howell in the kitchen, Vee Vee is changing things up, including its menu.
Vee Vee, a restaurant that’s been on Centre Street in Jamaica Plain for 16 years, isn’t closing, despite what you may think you heard.
Its owners, Kristen and Dan Valachovic, took to Instagram at the end of April to break the bittersweet news — and the truth. Their chef, Keith Vanetti, left to open a restaurant in Rhode Island. And now a new award-winning chef, who was recently seen competing on Top Chef, is taking over the kitchen.
Chef Valentine Howell is heading to Vee Vee, introducing a new concept to the JP mainstay. They’re calling it Black Cat @ Vee Vee, the “Black Cat” being Howell’s Black Cat Eatery pop-up born during the pandemic.
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“We wanted to do something different,” said Kristen. “We’ve been doing mostly the same food for the past 16 years. The food he wanted to make and that he was making at his pop-up sounded like it would be perfect for this space and for JP. For our neighborhood.”
Once Vanetti told the Valachovics he was leaving, Kristen said that kicked off the search for a chef, preferably someone who had been doing pop-ups locally and didn’t have a home for their concept.
It was time for a change, even if some customers would be disappointed in the departure away from their fried chicken Tuesdays, she said. When she asked on her personal Facebook for ideas of chefs to reach out to, multiple people pointed them in the direction of Howell.
“We had no idea who he was. We don’t watch Top Chef,” Kristen said. “I reached out to him on Facebook and he said ‘People have been telling me I need to talk to you.’ So we set up a meeting on Easter Sunday, it turned out. We just really vibed with each other.”
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Before Vee Vee came to him, 38-year-old Howell of Dorchester has had a successful career as a chef, recognized as a James Beard Best Chef: Northeast finalist during his time at Krasi and working in the kitchens of Lydia Shire restaurants. But during COVID-19, he and fiancee Renea Adger started Black Cat as a way to feed people out of their home.
Then he started doing pop-ups at Lamplighter Brewery and Revival Cafe + Kitchen, serving a menu of tacos. But he told Boston.com in a previous interview that the goal has always been to do more plated food “without being too pretentious or too upscale” and using a mix of Caribbean and Latin flavors.
With Vee Vee, he’s now getting a chance to do that with menu items like seared scallops with scotch bonnet and ginger butter, and the tomato and cucumber salad with house-made chili crisp. Other menu highlights he shouted out are the red stripe and magnum barbecue glazed wings and the ground beef Jamaican empanada.
The menu is made up of small bites, bigger shared plates and desserts. And also, there will be tacos: a birria queso taco served with consomme, a crispy fish taco with avocado crema and lemon garlic yogurt, a jerk carne asada taco with sweet plantains.
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It should be noted that the menu available online is a sample menu for now, though the Vee Vee team expects many of the items to remain on the final menu.
Howell said he loves that he gets to do this kind of cooking in JP, a central point for those who will be familiar with these flavors, and those who won’t be as much.
“Knowing what’s already around here, and what’s been here, it will be a nice departure and change for the neighborhood,” Howell said.
The Valachovics also made the decision to go with Howell because they’re thinking of the future of this space. They’ve owned Vee Vee for 16 years now, but the plan isn’t to own it forever, Kristen said. Eventually, they’d like to hand over the keys to someone who would keep the restaurant local and for the community.
“Maybe when we get to 20 years or so, we want to be done,” Kristen said. “But we somehow want the restaurant to continue. We don’t want to just close it down, walk away, and have it become an Applebees or something — not that that would ever happen in JP.”
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Adger will also begin working with the Vee Vee team later this year, according to a press release.
Vee Vee will continue to serve wine and beer, slightly tweaked to accommodate the spicier foods on the menu than before. Kristen has also heard from plenty of loyal customers asking if their favorite dishes from the old menu would return. Except for the beloved butterscotch pudding made by Dan, the former menu is gone. But Howell hinted at bringing back the fried chicken Tuesdays in the form of a fried chicken taco night.
Vee Vee was closed this week to give Howell and his team a chance to prepare the new menu, but they hope to open up once again by late next week.
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