Eat It, Virginia!

Life is good for Donnie Glass. The husband and father of a baby boy spent the last 13 months successfully guiding his Richmond restaurant Grisette through pandemic-related shutdowns and restrictions. A challenging time, for sure, but not the most challenging time in the restaurateur's life. The Northern Virginia native was in high school on 9/11. An experience that led him to enroll at Virginia Military Institute and enlist in the Army. Before graduation, Glass was overseas in Iraq. The experience changed his outlook on life. "Very, very quickly those ideals that make one 15-year-old boy enamored with joining the military are in absolutely no way reality," Glass said about his time overseas. "I was disenchanted by it. I was crushed that the way I thought my life was going to be was no longer an option at all." Glass returned to Virginia and graduated from VMI. But his previous military experience was enough to convince him to do something else with his life. That something else was restaurants. "Life ch