August 31, 2009
The praise keeps pouring in.
Balliceux, or Balliceaux -which is pronounced Ball-e-chew or Bali-Sue or something like that – is already raking in a number of positive reviews from food critics, just two weeks into its opening.
Ballichieux, the “x” in which may or may not be silent, opened in the former location of the easy-to-spell and pronounce Bogart’s at 203 N. Lombardy St.
Also possibilities: Ballhooks, Ballyoose, Bawlyserious, Ballychucks, Balisookes, Bazooka and Ballsux.
“The food is amazing, and beyond that, when you step in you really do forget that you’re in Richmond with the industrial-like interior you find at…Bally-hoo, is it? Or Ballyhooch,” said Matt Sadler, a Richmond blogger at The House of Marinara, which reviewed the Fan restaurant last week. “Ballitchyhewks? Maybe you just say it with only one ‘L’? Actually that wouldn’t really make a lot of sense.”
Balilesoox, which serves an array of farm-, field- and ocean-fresh foods in a hip urban ambiance, is French for a word that we’re not even going to try and guess or pronounce – though the name may very well be of Portuguese or Spanish decent, if “decent” is even the right word.
Origin. That’s the word we were looking for.
Virginia Commonwealth University’s Commonwealth Times newspaper described the restaurant as “a unique experience that took [the reviewer] out of Richmond for a couple hours,” and pronounced the restaurant as “Baliso,” which sounds the same phonetically as the name of a small Grenadine Island off the coast of St.Vincent.
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Out of Richmond for a while?
What, do they serve Bar-b-cue or North Carolina tube steaks there?
Balliceaux is pronounced “Bali-so” and named after that same small grenadine island in the Caribbean. The name literally means “Island of birds” and is a mixture of French and Patois – which is similar to creole. Balliceaux, the island, is uninhabited and untouched. So the owners wanted the restaurant to carry a few tropical cues on a very natural foundation and found much of their inspiration through travel to the area.
Open lunch and dinner!
I cannot believe someone presumably attached to the restaurant actually felt the need to explain the pronunciation and meaning of the name. Have they read ANYTHING else on this website? Wow.