Suffolk on Sunday: Choosing What We Want to Keep

Some places become part of how we live. Sushiaka is one of them. Choosing downtown, choosing what we want to keep.

The thought came to me in the quiet way the truest ones often do.

A friend of mine—Kris Brown, owner of The Pinner House and Café Davina—posted a short reel on Instagram the other day. Just one sentence, written plainly, without flourish:

Cute towns only stay cute when you choose to shop small.

I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

Because once you let that sentence settle, another question follows close behind:
What would downtown feel like if your favorite place simply wasn’t there anymore?

Not closed for the evening.
Gone.

We don’t have many restaurants downtown. That’s true. But the ones we do have matter more because of it. A few of them—Sushiaka and Harper’s Table among them—aren’t just good for Suffolk. They’re excellent by any standard. They’re the places you bring out-of-town guests. The names you offer without hesitation when someone asks where to eat.

And yet, most of us save dining out for the weekend. Friday when we’re tired. Saturday when we’re celebrating. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday—those nights slip by unnoticed. Too easily.

I think about food often. I think about downtown often. But I also remember something else: the long, uncertain months of Covid, when we understood—without anyone needing to explain it—that if we wanted these places to survive, we had to show up for them. We ordered takeout. We bought gift cards. We told our friends. We rallied, because the stakes were unmistakable.

There’s no pandemic today.
But I do wonder if there’s a quieter risk at work—the assumption that the places we love will always be there, even if we only visit them occasionally.

They won’t.

If we want restaurants downtown—places to linger, to gather, to celebrate birthdays and ordinary Tuesdays alike—we have to choose them. Not once in a while. But regularly. Especially on the nights when staying in feels easier.

I write Dear Mom, How Do I Host? as a way of talking about everyday choices that shape the lives we live and the places we love. And one simple reframe applies here, too:

Takeout is catering.

Ordering dinner from a downtown restaurant isn’t giving up on hosting—it is hosting. Light a candle. Set the table. Invite another couple. Let someone else cook while you handle the welcome. You support a local business, feed the people you love well, and still end the night in your own home.

That’s not indulgent. It’s intentional.

Downtowns don’t thrive because of grand gestures. They thrive because of ordinary habits—Tuesday reservations, midweek takeout orders, familiar faces who keep coming back.

If we want the places we love to remain part of our lives, we have to make them part of our routines.

So here’s my gentle nudge: choose downtown. Choose it on a Wednesday. Choose it when nothing special is happening. Choose it because you want it to still be there—lighting the windows, setting the tables, waiting for us—years from now.

@downtownsuffolk @yessuffolk @sushiaka

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kristy McCormally is a writer and hospitality educator whose work explores how atmosphere, intention, and the way we gather shape a meaningful life. Through Truitt House Living, she teaches a modern, quietly authoritative approach to gracious living rooted in beauty, connection, and everyday practice. She lives in Suffolk, Virginia, where she and her husband make their home at The Truitt House, a 1909 landmark.