Richmond: Church Hill Food Tour
Taste the best of Richmond’s oldest neighborhood with a walking food tour, visiting 5 local tasty establishments.
The ham biscuit is the Virginia tea-table and tailgate staple. Country-cured Smithfield ham sliced paper-thin and pressed inside a small buttermilk biscuit. Sally Bell's box-lunch standard since 1924.
Captain Mallory Todd of Smithfield, Virginia (about 70 miles east of Richmond) made the first known commercial export of cured Smithfield ham in 1779; Virginia's General Assembly later codified the Smithfield ham name in a 1926 statute restricting it to hams cured, smoked and processed within the town. The dry-cure-and-smoke method of country-curing pork hindquarters became a colonial Virginia trade. The biscuit-and-ham combination appears in early-twentieth-century Virginia cookbooks as the canonical tea-table snack. Sally Bell's Kitchen has sold them in their box lunches since 1924, and Mama J's Kitchen in Jackson Ward keeps them on the menu today.
3 editor picks for Smithfield ham biscuit in Richmond, ranked by editorial score. All Richmond signature dishes · Smithfield ham biscuit across every city.
Mama J's Kitchen ★ 4.6
jackson-ward · 415 N 1st Street, Richmond, VA 23219
Velma Johnson's soul food kitchen on 1st Street in Jackson Ward, opened 2009 by her son. Sunday-dinner Southern cooking in the Harlem of the South.
The Roosevelt ★ 4.6
church-hill · 623 N 25th Street, Richmond, VA 23223
The Roosevelt in Church Hill cooks Southern food under Leah Branch, a 2026 James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef Mid-Atlantic. Country ham biscuits, gravy.
Sally Bell's Kitchen ★ 4.4
downtown · 2337 W Broad Street, Richmond, VA 23220
Sally Bell's Kitchen has sold box lunches since 1924, founded by Sarah Cabell Jones and Elizabeth Lee Milton. House-made cupcakes and deviled eggs daily.
Learn to cook it, or eat it with a guide
Smithfield ham biscuit makes more sense with someone from Richmond explaining it. These are the classes and tours we have checked, with booking links.
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