Chic's Beach Restaurants, From Buoy 44 to Chic's Laundry
August 6, 2026
August 6, 2026
At the corner of Lookout Road and Seaview Avenue, in a building that spent most of its life as a laundromat and then two decades as an Italian restaurant, a wood-fired oven now anchors the dining room of Chic's Laundry. The name is a wink at the address's earlier chapter. The menu is the more interesting story.
For a neighborhood that has always defined itself against the Oceanfront's crowds, the arrival of a serious modern Mid-Atlantic kitchen inside the residential grid is less a scene shift than a confirmation. Chic's Beach has been building this dining identity for years. What is new is that a restaurant now exists that was designed, from the outside in, to match it.
Before Chic's Laundry had a name, it had a QR code. A "coming soon" sign posted outside the future dining room linked to a community survey with more than two dozen questions, aimed at beachgoers and neighbors who could influence exactly what kind of restaurant they wanted to see. The project is led by Drew Monroe and Adam Howarth, nearby residents, and the concept is a sit-down restaurant described as serving mid-Atlantic fare.
That approach matters because the space carried weight. The venture took over the site where the Italian restaurant Zia Marie stood for two decades, and locals were watching to see whether what replaced it would treat the neighborhood as a customer base or as a backdrop.
The result opened in December 2025 with a short, specific menu. Chic's Laundry describes itself as a modern Mid-Atlantic restaurant inspired by the tides of Virginia Beach, serving seasonal seafood, wood-fired classics, and craft cocktails in a bright, laid-back space just steps from the water. The address is 4497 Lookout Rd, and the current hours are Monday 4 to 10, Tuesday closed, Wednesday through Saturday 4 to 10, and Sunday 4 to 9. Dinner only for now. A second phase, a separate coffee and breakfast concept in the residential building behind the lot, is planned under the same ownership.
Chic's Laundry lands inside a food scene that already had its own gravity. Understanding where it fits means understanding what was here.
Buoy 44 sits on the site where the neighborhood itself begins. The exact corner where a little hot dog stand called Chic's once stood, not far from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, was a summer meeting spot, especially for high school kids. The stand was run by Luther "Chic" Leddington, who was thin and wiry, and his wife Audrey. Buoy 44 today is the neighborhood's default waterfront table, a place to send visiting family and then meet them the next morning for coffee.
Chick's Oyster Bar, tucked toward Lynnhaven Inlet, is the counterweight. It sits near Dockside Seafood & Fishing Center, and both are casual with indoor and outdoor seating and prime water views. The hush puppies with honey butter are the reason people bring out-of-town guests here even when nothing else is on the itinerary.
Hot Tuna Bar and Grill occupies a different lane. The kitchen leans into the Farm-to-Fork movement, with a menu built around what is fresh, in-season and local, Eastern Shore seafood and produce from nearby farms as staples. Happy hour runs from 3 to 6 daily with drink specials and dollar shrimp and raw oysters, which is the piece most weekday regulars actually organize their week around.
Shorebreak Pizza & Taphouse is the family Tuesday choice. It is celebrated by Coastal Virginia Magazine, OpenTable and Tripadvisor, and the pies are hand-tossed with a 60-year-old family recipe and toppings like hot honey, applewood bacon and Virginia ham.
Bobo's does one thing at a very high level. Operating out of a former family-owned seafood joint, the fried-chicken recipe runs four generations, and the chicken is brined and battered before frying in a process that takes two days, served alongside made-from-scratch biscuits.
Bay Local Eatery, Leaping Lizard Cafe, Green Parrot Grille, and 1608 Crafthouse round out the everyday rotation, each holding a distinct slot in the week. Brunch, patio, Tuesday-night comfort, burger-and-a-beer.
"It is not a resort. It is not a suburb. It is a real neighborhood with real character."
That is the frame worth holding onto. Every restaurant on this list is either owned by residents or run by operators who know the residents by name.
The dining scene has a weekly anchor that is not a restaurant. Every Saturday morning from 9am to noon, the Shore Drive Farm Market runs at Lynnhaven Square Shopping Center, with local meats, fresh produce, specialty baked goods, Lynnhaven Coffee Company, and rotating artisan and seafood vendors, and the whole neighborhood organizes around it.
The market matters to the restaurant conversation because it is the same supply chain. The producers vending at Lynnhaven Square on Saturday are, in many cases, the same names showing up on chalkboards and specials boards Wednesday through Sunday. When Chic's Laundry lists a citrus-cured rockfish crudo or a bay scallop ceviche on a given evening, that language is not marketing. It is inventory.
The other quiet piece of the Saturday ritual is transportation. One thing that surprises people new to Chic's Beach is the golf cart culture, and on warm evenings families cruise the neighborhood streets to the beach, to the brewery, and to the farmers market without ever getting in a car. That mobility pattern shapes where restaurants can succeed here. If a place is not accessible on a five-minute cart ride, it is competing on tourist terms rather than neighborhood terms.
For residents who already know the anchors, the practical question is which room fits which occasion. A working outline:
The rotation is not a checklist. It is what happens naturally when a neighborhood has enough good rooms to spread the week across without repeating.
Chic's Laundry does not replace anything on that list. It adds a room that did not exist before, one calibrated for the resident who wants an ambitious plate of local seafood on a weekday without driving to Town Center or the Oceanfront. That gap is what the community survey identified, and the kitchen has answered it.
The larger pattern to notice is that Chic's Beach food, taken together, tracks the neighborhood's underlying character rather than performing against it. The area is not tourism-driven, there are no high-rises, and there is no long boardwalk crowded with people; instead, the time is spent at places like HK on the Bay, and the locals-only vibe is hard to find in any other area of this big city. A restaurant that opens here and tries to run a resort playbook will get corrected quickly. One that listens gets kept.
For anyone thinking about how a neighborhood retains value across cycles, the food scene is a useful proxy. Restaurants that survive here are the ones the residents chose. When a new one arrives having asked, in writing, what the residents wanted, that is worth paying attention to.
Curious how the Chic's Beach food scene fits into the broader coastal micro-markets we cover across Virginia Beach? Michael Rowland at Rowland RE works with buyers, sellers, and long-term residents across the North End, Shore Drive, and the bay-side neighborhoods, and is happy to walk through what the neighborhood looks like at ground level. Start your tailored market consultation.
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