Do You Remember When We Ate At Nick’s Seafood Pavilion in Yorktown, Virginia? You Will Never Forget!
I just wanted to tell folks about my favorite of all time restaurants ever was Nick’s Seafood Pavilion in Yorktown, Virginia. My family, Friends and I have spent many a happy your there enjoying fine food, warm atmosphere and celebrations. I really miss this fabulous iconic restaurant.
After a vacation stopover in Yorktown, Nick and Mary Mathews, decided to return in 1944 to open a restaurant. The original Nick’s had 35 seats. Later, Nick’s Seafood Pavilion, famous for its fine seafood menu and ornate decor, expanded to seat 440.
“Ah had,” says Nick, the owner, his Greek accent as heavy as the smell of fish. “We always busy. We are known the world over, I tell you. The kings and the queens, the stars and the politicians, we got ’em all here.”
Nick Mathews, 72, swept-back white hair, nice brown suit, cigar in left breast pocket, smell of cologne, is known inside his restaurant as Mister Nick. His wife, a Greek immigrant with thick brown hair and a predilection for chopping air with her right hand during conversation, is known as Miss Mary.
With the help of up to 100 cooks, waiters, waitresses and a Vietnamese maitre d’ who six years ago was a general commanding 1.1 million troops, Mister Nick and Miss Mary run what is often called the best restaurant in Virginia.
Nick’s welcomed many dignitaries and entertainers. Among others, John Wayne, Elizabeth Taylor, Fred McMurray, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Randy Travis, the 1980 Winter Olympic torch relay runners, and two Russian military defectors dined at Nick’s. The couple openly expressed their love of America and Yorktown and generously supported many projects and causes, including donating land for the development of the Yorktown Victory Center. That generosity also extended to military members in uniform, who always ate free-of-charge at Nick’s.
Couples have been known to drive 400 miles in one day just to eat the shrimp casserole. Ann Landers, in a radio show a few years ago, referred to Norfolk (40 miles to the south) as “that Virginia city that’s near a good seafood restaurant.”
U.S. Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), who gave Mister Nick the Bicentennial pin he wears in his lapel (he also wears a tie clasp given him by vice president Nelson Rockefeller), describes the food at Nick’s Seafood Pavilion as “excellent, just excellent.” “My wife [Elizabeth Taylor Warner] and I, whenever we are in a radius of 10 miles, we will deviate from our course to go there. Not only because of the food, but because of our friendship for these two great Americans,” Warner says.
When sundown came on the south bank of the York River, the smell of fish hangs heavy among rococo statuary and ailing palm trees. Lines of diners loop in the gravel parking lot. Nick’s Seafood Pavilion, the legendary home of gastronomical virtue served amid a motley of art, is cooking.
