Sally Bell's

708 West Grace St., Richmond, VA - (804) 644-2838

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Posted By Michael Stern on February 23, 2009 2:56 PM

Sally Bell's started making box lunch in the 1950s, but the recipes used to make the salad, sandwich spread, deviled egg, cheese wafer, and cupcake that go into the box date back to the 1920s, when Sarah Cabell Jones opened her bakery in a building across the street. There is nothing singly spectacular about the immemorial meal you get here, except for its immunity to anything modern. Sally Bell serves the exact lunch it served a half-century ago, which is probably much the same as polite Virginians ate a hundred years ago. There are two salads from which to choose: macaroni, which is fine, and spicy-sweet potato salad laced with onions, which is memorable. Of the eleven kinds of sandwiches, we seldom can resist pimiento cheese, but we have not regretted chicken salad (on a roll rather than white bread), cream cheese and olive (talk about a bygone taste!), and thin-cut Smithfield ham. As for cupcakes, there's no beating the orange-and-lemon, its icing sprinkled with little bits of citrus confetti. All the elements are neatly packaged in a cardboard lunchbox lined with wax paper.

Note: among its other charms of yesteryear, Sally Bell's offers beaten biscuits, which are not the typical Southern fluffy-centered biscuit but more English-style, like a cracker, hard and crisp. Also, spongy-sweet Sally Lunn muffins and lemon chess pie.

Overall Rating

Box Lunch

Beaten Biscuits (dozen)

Cupcake

Muffin

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Posted By Jeanne Muir on May 19, 2011 8:04 PM

Usually I love our Roadfood stops but we were disappointed with Sally Bell's. First, $8 each for a box lunch of average proportions was not what we expected for Roadfood prices. The sandwich was okay, the side salads and cheddar cracker were good. The deviled egg half was pretty tasty, but the cupcake was dry and tasteless. I did appreciate the uniqueness of the cupcake design and the icing was better than the cake.

Overall Rating

Box Lunch

Cupcake

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