A restaurant wall can speak volumes. Much like a book jacket or the title sequence of a TV show, it has the capacity to communicate what the place is about, its thematic essence, even the very reason for its existence.

For decades, Penny Savings Bank, the first in the country chartered by a Black woman, served the African American community when many white-run institutions in the Jim Crow South would not, helping them break down racial barriers to financial freedom and empowering them to save toward a better future and start their own businesses. Opportunities for Black entrepreneurship that hadn’t existed before were possible, thanks to Walker.

That legacy lives on at Penny’s Wine Shop, where Kristen Gardner Beal and Lance Lemon, a new generation of Black business owners, are not only honoring their debt to Walker, they’re also paying it forward. In the spirit of Jackson Ward’s founding mother, they’re blazing their own trail through the white-dominated world of fine dining and wine, hopefully paving the way for others to do the same.

When the restaurant opened in February 2023, the kitchen was run by the talented Manny Baiden. But it is now under the direction of Chris Stough. Better known by his Instagram moniker @kimchiboyfalife, Stough is a rising star chef, in his own right, whose after-hours Korean popup during last year’s “Encounter” wine series was among the best I’ve ever been to.

Stough’s menu adeptly walks that line between fun and serious, an everyday enjoyment and a sense of occasion. Paired with natural and biodynamic wine, by the glass or bottle, plates progress in increments of complexity, from the understated to the provocative. It’s tough to pin down a single motif for the food, which is more of an eclectically inspired collection. Excellence, though, would seem to be the common theme.

We open on the bread course ($9), which is not so much a culinary flex as a mindful exercise in restraint, greeting you with little else than farmstead simplicity. Wholesome slices of Sub Rosa bread sidle up to some hot honey and a salted dollop of butter, softened by columns of steam filtering through the pipingly-warm loaf.

Next, Stough grabs a vernal bunch of juicy, little hakurei turnips, chickpeas, guindilla peppers and pea shoot tendrils and loosely sketches out a salad ($15). Its contours get filled in by a latently-spicy red pepper sauce and an herbaceous and lively tahini vinaigrette.

Cubes of vegan feta, pleasingly creamy but milder than the real stuff, are plotted around this cheery, well-composed garden, the seeds of which are sown together organically.

Simplicity, at times, borders on incompleteness. A conserva of mushrooms ($12), wading just knee-high in its own faintly acidic emulsion, proves to be a clumsy bite. Assembly instructions might have helped. But in trying to untangle these barely-clad clusters of the oyster variety and stick them onto narrow beams of foccacia, it somehow felt as if a part or two had gone missing from this dish. The flavors of it never cohere either.

Far more compelling are the steamed clams ($25). With loose fronds of dandelion and leek and crispy potatoes that pass for croutons, they come cloistered in a bowl, meditating deeply on a buttery, full-bodied broth as saline as the waters they’ve been harvested from.

Once diners have had a chance to warm up, that’s when Stough really fires up his creative engine. A chunky green-garlic cream cheese, whose yolky hue gives it the look of gently scrambled eggs, acts as mortar for slabs of sourdough used in constructing the anchovy toast ($15) — a menu item that seems to be trending around town these days, but that Penny’s very much manages to make its own. Affixed to the bottom-heavy base are chainlets of anchovy and pickled rubies of chile, adding lots of salty sparkle to this showpiece.

Chicken and rice, another classic coupling, see their steamy romance rekindled by the kitchen as well. A confitted leg of bird, seductively supple and spiced, revealing a peekaboo of crackling bronze skin, enters the room, splayed out over a bed of fried rice ($26). The rice is eggy and soy saucy enough to have come out of a Chinese takeout joint. At the same time, with all its exotic, colorful, tagine-worthy bling of cherries and shaved pears, combined with flashes of turmeric from the chicken, its birthright could as easily be Moroccan.

At the far end of the spectrum are dishes that evade any fixed points of reference, ones so bizarrely delicious they might as well be an alien life form.

Take the swordfish ($32), a truly mesmerizing specimen I can only begin to describe as a Southern-inspired chirashi rice bowl. Served atop steamed, short grain rice are silken slices of fish, mixed with masago roe, marinated kombu and gochujang pear salad, an undertow of umami that brings in strong Japanese vibes. Yet the rice itself, cooked to almost grit-like consistency, paired with vinegary stewed collards, turnip tops, and green tomatoes, sends you right back to the South. Every bite, in turn, activates a wildly-stimulating flavor loop I’d happily keep riding until my fork hits the bottom.

Dessert, a course that rarely arouses any new emotions in me, is one of the most thrilling aspects of the Penny’s menu. Had Alice sprung for some dessert in Wonderland, I swear it would’ve been the pears we ordered one night ($10).

Custardy sweet and mounted on a soft, snail-shell spiral of toasted meringue, the poached halves are tinged with allspice and furtively salted. Contributing to that stealth element of savory are crushed almonds laced with truffle oil, which draw you farther and farther down this rabbit hole of flavor. (I highly suggest capping it off with a crazy delicious glass of what the server introduced to us as “medieval-style” sake, a ferment of unpolished rice grain that sips like sherry and smacks of brûléed pineapple.)

Penny’s is a triumph. And trust me, with food this good, one might well be left at the end of their meal in a dizzy, happy, well-fed stupor, staring intently at those walls all over again.

Editor’s note: Lance Lemon is employed by the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s advertising department, but that connection did not influence this review.