Adrift: The Northern Neck Dining Destination Is Anything But

On a Friday night in the offseason, White Stone, a rural town of about 400 people in Virginia’s Northern Neck, is quiet. But inside a simple faded green clapboard building near the corner of Rappahannock and Chesapeake, something special is happening. There, you’ll find Adrift, a small, mom-and-pop restaurant whose roughly 50 seats are filled with guests who have come to enjoy Chef Devin Rose’s seasonal, locally sourced menu. It’s a culinary adventure in dock-to-dish and farm-to-table excellence. 

Over its seven years in business, Adrift has often been referred to as a hidden gem or best-kept secret. But for its regulars, weekenders, and visitors to the area, Adrift is neither hidden nor secret. Rather, it’s consistently packed to the gills and buzzing with a lively energy. And, as with every night of service, you can reliably find Chef Rose in the kitchen and his wife, Kati Rose, behind the bar.

The Roses are White Stone natives and high school sweethearts who dreamed of opening their own restaurant ever since Devin got his start in professional kitchens at the long-shuttered New American restaurant Swanks on Main in Kilmarnock. There, Chef Matt Turner introduced Devin, who grew up in a restaurant family, to chefs like Thomas Keller and Patrick O’Connell. When Swanks closed its doors, Devin told Turner he was headed for culinary school, an idea that Turner discouraged. “I did it anyway, because I always did things people told me not to do,” Devin says, grinning. “It was a kind of a self-discovery—going to school, meeting people from all over the world, and leaving this small town.”

Just a few months into culinary school, Devin got a call that would change everything—Kati
was pregnant. On a trip home, Devin and Kati tied the knot at nearby Tides Inn before making their way to a bluegrass festival for an ersatz honeymoon. Soon thereafter, Devin scored a coveted internship at The Inn at Little Washington, and just a few days after the gig began, their son, River, was born. For the next five years, the Roses became a fixture at the Inn, with Devin working his way up through the kitchen and Kati ascending through the ranks in the front of the house. This was the couple’s version of grad school, a crash course in hospitality that would serve them well years later. 

After a brief interlude in California where Devin worked under Chef Justin Cogley at the Michelin-starred Aubergine, in swanky Carmel-by-the-Sea, the Roses were ready to come home. A few months after landing back in town, Devin got another life-changing call—a former restaurant space on Rapahannock Avenue was available, the perfect spot for that dream restaurant. The couple was cash-strapped with a toddler in tow, but they knew this was their chance to make their vision a reality. “We didn’t have any money,” recalls Devin. “We didn’t have anything other than what we were capable of doing.”  

With a combination of sweat equity and sleepless nights, the Roses opened the doors to Adrift in April 2018, just a month after Devin turned 31. They started with breakfast and lunch service while still working their other jobs. In those early days, the Roses and Kati’s dad, who washed dishes for free, were the only staff. But within a year, the restaurant, which eventually began to offer a prix fixe dinner menu, started attracting attention as a destination for food-lovers in the region, and soon Adrift introduced the extremely popular à la carte menu that epitomizes Devin’s talent and dedication to seasonal sourcing.

The menu at Adrift changes often—that’s the whole point—but there are a few mainstays to note. You can reliably expect to find local Steamboat Wharf oysters, either baked with togarashi butter and served like escargot with a baguette for capturing every last drop of the oyster-tinged butter, or presented on ice on the half-shell with bright, fruity, acidic accompaniments. The chilled version is what Adrift calls “slurpies,” because you can’t help but slurp them down as soon as they land in all their icy perfection on the table. A proper Caesar salad; a playfully messy, hunger-abolishing burger; and the kind of gooey, decadent chocolate sundae that transports guests back to their childhood are almost always available and are all stand-outs (and I can’t help but notice that this specific combination of standard bearers is what Julia Child requested of Chef Patrick O’Connell when he catered the culinary great’s 90th birthday). 

The appetizer selection regularly includes good, meal-anchoring bread, like pillowy bao buns with softened, seaweed-seasoned butter or a bouncy focaccia with plenty of garlic. The nightly soup showcases Devin’s exceptional technique—simple ingredients like parsnips are transformed into a velvety masterpiece whose simple garnishes elevate rather than detract. 

Entrées are divided by land and sea. Devin takes particular pride in sourcing those ingredients himself, hand-selecting rockfish at the docks and personally traveling over an hour to Richmond to pick up whole Autumn Olive pork with which the chef can offer specific cuts and flex his creativity in sausages, such as the classic Italian sausage he debuted on one of my recent visits. It was served simply over a whipped celery root and potato fondue, with peppers and onions (a nod to the traditional sausage and peppers combo) and a tangy black garlic sauce. 

Otherwise, the menu reflects the two guiding principles of Adrift—what’s in season and what’s capturing the imagination of the chef. On one visit, there was pan-fried shad roe, a delicacy of early spring, paired with a comforting potato purée and bacon jam. On another, it was a mound of house-made squid ink linguini adorned with Tom’s Cove Aquafarms clams from Chincoteague and buried under a drift of garlicky breadcrumbs.

Every restaurant regular knows that the bar is usually the heart of the operation, so it stands to reason that Kati would be presiding over the bar at Adrift. Her role is to ensure that guests are content, a calling she aces flawlessly. Over the years, she’s taken a greater share of the responsibility for the beverage program, creating a cocktail menu that includes the bright and vivacious garden martini and nods to classics like old gashioned and Manhattans. On the wine menu, she says, she tries to strike a balance between big-boy reds and buttery, oaky chardonnays with the funky, natural wines that are particularly exciting to her at the moment. The result is a small wine list that manages to offer something for everyone.

Adrift has changed often over its seven-year run, a fact that the restaurant’s regulars like to tease the Roses about. The quaint restaurant has dabbled in brunches, offered a retail selection of wine and provisions during the pandemic, and most recently, introduced a weekly Italian night. But those changes are, after all, a reflection of the restaurant’s name. It is, as restaurants must be these days, quite literally Adrift, riding the waves of change in order to grow, survive, and thrive. 

This article originally appeared in the June 2025 issue.