Brick House Diner: Food for Every Palate

by Charles McGuigan 10.2023

Brick House Diner, one of Northside’s newest eateries, perfectly filled the void left by Kitchen 64 on Arthur Ashe Boulevard, replacing it with a restaurant specializing in the culinary comfort foods of a classic diner. It’s a clean, sparse space with a delightful front-of-the house staff, and a menu that will appeal to any discerning palate. And it’s open seven days a week for breakfast and lunch (on Sundays breakfast only is served all day long).

Owned by brothers Nick and Vick Routsis, this is the second Brick House Diner in the metro area. The one they own in Midlothian has been in operation for 19 years.

“We’re a family-owned and operated business,” Vick tells me. “We serve fresh homemade food that we prepare to order. We also grind our own beef. Everything from scratch. We make our own burgers, our own soups, and our meat sauce is made in-house. Our seafood comes fresh from our vendors, and we cut our own fries and our own chips.”

And that makes all the difference in the world. Even their beignets, which are killer, are all made to order.

“Our beignets are dropped to order,” says Vick. “A lot of places keep them on the warmer all day. We drop ours to order. And they come out hot. So with your cup of coffee, instead of a donut, you can order piping hot beignets.”

Vick mentions the restaurant his parents owned down in Chesapeake, Virginia, a place called Four Brothers Steak House. “It was named for me and Nick, and our other two brothers, John and Bill,” he says. “My brothers and I grew up in the restaurant business.” (All four brothers also own a Brick House down in Virginia Beach.) 

Nick’s father always stressed maintaining a very clean restaurant that served up only the freshest homemade food delivered to the patrons by an attentive waitstaff. “My dad always said, ‘That will take you over. Always stay on top of it.’And that’s what we do. We have great service and a great kitchen staff and use the best ingredients.”

The menus for breakfast and lunch are expansive. In the morning you can choose from their signature scramblers of three eggs mixed with an assortment of ingredients from tomatoes and mushrooms to bacon and ham, all served over a bed of home fries and topped with cheese; or virtually anything else you could desire for breakfast, including pancakes and waffles, an enticing array of eggs Benedict, or even chicken fried steak. And the lunch menu, along with hand-crafted steak burgers and fries, offers everything from deli sandwiches to gyros, from paninis to wraps, and a wide assortment of salads and a trio of seafood baskets.

When you visit this new Northside restaurant make sure to talk with the manager, a personable young woman named Katerina. Like her father, Vick, she was raised in the restaurant business.

Brick House Diner

Open 7 Days a Week

Monday-Saturday, 8am till 3 pm

Sunday, 8am till 2pm

3336 N Arthur Ashe Boulevard

Richmond, VA 23230

(804)358-0064