Month: September 2007

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The album cover of the new Kanye West record, Graduation, is a purple, animated monstrosity. On the front, a letter jacket-clad bear is catapulted into the stratosphere from among a sea of cartoon animals tossing graduation caps.

Bear necessity: Kanye West streamlines his sound on his third record, the cohesive Graduation, and proves that he is smarter than the average bear.

Given the title of his third album, you’d think Kanye West might consider growing up—drop the bear mascot that has adorned his record covers since 2004’s The College Dropout, avoid sales spats with Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, maybe pack in the whole “college” theme altogether.

Then again, asking West to grow up is more ludicrous than Ludacris, namely because the Louis Vuitton don’s attention to his craft places him firmly in the “adult” range of the hip-hop spectrum. The man’s got an ego big enough to have its own bling, but—considering Graduation will most likely be a platinum record by the time you read this—he may as well shine on, because a healthy combination of boast and beats haven’t hurt his sales figures.

And West has grown up. A bit, but enough to release what is, musically, his most cohesive record. The soul and R&B cuts that West used to anchor some of his biggest hits—the use of Ray Charles in “Gold Digger” and Chaka Khan in “Through the Wire”—are gone. In their place are samples from or references to records by Steely Dan, Can and Elton John, nearly unidentifiable beneath the sheets of subtly buzzing synthesizers that carry most of Graduation.

Nowhere is West’s progress more evident than on his lead single, “Stronger,” which doesn’t sample from Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” but completely remodels the song according to the electronic duo’s mission statement. Opening with a choppy sea of robotic chanting, West quickly fills in the low end with a steady bass riff and simple blasts of synthesizers, then cruises comfortably alongside his sleek creation, staggering his delivery like a man-machine hybrid.

Strands of the same electronic drones run through the bulk of Graduation, most effective when West slices through the washes of synth to make polyrhythmic club-thumpers. “The Good Life” paints over West’s opening lines from “School Spirit” and reuses them in a new, digitized backing vocal; “Champion” adds a Caribbean-touched vocal track to the same techno formula as “Stronger” and revitalizes it.

West has pared down his wordy delivery—he brags more efficiently, which  takes a lot of the fun right out of his songs. When West breaks from the reigns of his tunes, however, it is all the more noticeable—listen to his crack-throated impression of a female admirer in “Drunk and Hot Girls” and his throat-clearing rhymes in “Barry Bonds.”

And there’s still a kid in Kan. Opening “Stronger” with “Let’s get lost tonight/ You can be my black Kate Moss tonight” gets at everything the man still is—a musician filled with savvy references and clever beats, a young man filled with a sense of entitlement and a student with a broad view of the hip-hop campus.

So what will $20 get you around Charlottesville? More food than you think. Or less, depending on your predilection for cloth napkins laid in your lap by a haute cuisine high priest. C-VILLE gave eight staffers a crisp 20 and instructions to eat well. And we did, from pizza to foie gras to fake pâté on down to a simple, but special, soup for two. And drinks! Let’s not forget the drinks. So knock back a Maison Nicolas Cabernet Sauvignon priced to sell, an Old Richmond Brown Ale on the corner or a couple lemon gingerades in the mountains with us as we traipse over the local foodscape in search of the perfect—and perfectly priced—meal.

Mesob’s Buffet

Michael’s Bistro’s Thai Coconut Curry with Chicken

Orzo’s Yia Yia’s Crispy Chicken, Yukon Mashers, and Grilled Zucchini

Crozet Pizza’s Cheese and Fresh Garlic Pizza

Clifton Inn’s Foie Gras and Duck Confit Agnolotti

New-fashioned fare

Ordering within a $20 budget at an upscale restaurant is like using two limited wishes granted by a frog whose soul bears no trace of a handsome young prince. One glass of one of the cheapest wines. One of the few entrées on the menu that’s priced under $15 (i.e., frogs legs, if they’re on it, are out). And that’s all. Not even a second glass of wine to keep that buzz buzzing. Certainly no appetizer(s).

Dessert? You’ve got to be joking.

Hold on. There’s another side to the story. At fine restaurants like Orzo Kitchen & Wine Bar in the Main Street Market, $20 may not buy bliss, but it can buy a bigger word: happiness. 
The cheapest wine by the glass—$5—on the Orzo wine list is the 2005 Coloma Viura Blanco from Spain. Here are two plain facts: Iceland is known for Björk; Spain isn’t known for its wine. With some trepidation, I awaited my glass. Ooooo, too sweet…and yet it was all in the foretaste, and not the aftertaste. I got used to it. I even began to feel all sweet and warm and Spanishy inside as I waited for my $14 entree: Yia Yia’s Crispy Chicken, Yukon Mashers, and Grilled Zucchini.

I had no frickin’ idea what kind of chicken I ordered, and I still don’t know what the “Yia Yia” is all about. What I do know now is that “Crispy Chicken” is glorified—and glorious—fried chicken. As my dinner companion talked (between bites of her non-budget-restricted halibut) about having fried chicken every Sunday after church before taking a ride on the Robert E. Lee boat while growing up in North Carolina in the ‘60s, I imagined the folks back then chuckling at Orzo’s fancy presentation—but then digging in and loving the expert preparation. The delicately flaky skin seems almost like part of the meat, and not like an introductory thick scrap of leather that you want to remove and set aside. The meat itself is tender but not watery, hearty but not a dry chunk of protein. And I haven’t forgotten about the Yukon Mashers—mashed potatoes like someone’s grandmother who was a gourmet cook used to make, and the Grilled Zucchini—simply as good as it sounds.

Altogether, this delicious and fulfilling meal made me feel like a cheapskate turned into a middle-aged prince. Even though I wouldn’t have minded having just one more measly wish.—Doug Nordfors

Spices of life

Hailing from a wee Southern town, sometimes my redneck past comes nipping at my heels. Or my redneck stomach. Which loves buffets, stuffing my face until my gullet is raw and my belt’s bursting and I have six empty plates piled around me. A little slice of heaven.

So at lunch, I head out with $20 to burn and a buffet to consume. And feeling the manly desires to both pig out and provide for a lady friend, I bring along a date, feeling flush. But trying to paint a veneer of worldliness, I take said lady to the Ethiopian restaurant Mesob on the Corner.

Contrary to what Grant Woolard’s now infamous cartoon might lead you to believe, Ethiopian cuisine is rich in flavor and style (and would probably serve quite well in a middle school-style food fight). I load up my platter with all kinds of saucy delights. Most of the food has a mashed consistency, the better to scoop using the chewy, spongy flat bread called injera as an edible utensil.

These stews, called wats, are about half vegetarian and half meat and come in all colors. Some are made with split peas, some with lentils, some with chicken and some with beef, and each dish has a distinctive color—yellows and maroons and greens and dark browns. The spicing mostly involves jalapeños, ginger or berbere, a combination of spices similar to a chili powder—enough to tickle the tongue, but certainly not enough to overpower the palate.

The colors and tastes start melding on the plate as I push it around with the injera, and I have to force myself to look up from my feast in order to pay attention to my partner as we chat lazily in between bites. The music, sung in a language I can’t even pretend to understand, provides the soundtrack, and the décor offers glimpses of Ethiopia, from artwork to a map to images of people in traditional garb. Enough to keep us occupied as we keep scurrying back for more.

At last we’re sated. Combined with a couple of Dr. Peppers, the total is low enough that I only have to dig out one extra dollar to leave a satisfactory tip. We re-emerge from our African retreat to face the gaggles of undergrads, a bulge in the belly and the satisfactory hint of ginger at the back of the tongue.—Will Goldsmith

All in one and one in all

The doors to the patio overlooking University Avenue are open, and the cool September air fills the softly lit interior of Michael’s Bistro. I take a sip of my Old Richmond Brown Ale, lean back in the worn wooden booth and run my finger up and down the menu. Though tempted by the juicy tenderness of the bison burger and the guaranteed satiation of the meatloaf, I settle on what will surely be a complement to the fresh air and relaxed environment: the Thai Coconut Curry with Chicken. 

When the dish arrives, it looks great, but it’s the first bite that seals it. When I think of a Thai dish, I usually imagine the waitress asking, “How spicy?” and then pondering what number to pick on a restaurant’s heat factor scale (knowing that if I overstep, I’ll end up teary-eyed and guzzling my glass of water). But with its apricot chutney and coconut curry, this dish replaces any threat of spiciness with a soothing sweetness.

If you’re looking for a three-course meal but don’t want to fork over too many bills (or wait for each dish to make it to your table), the Coconut Curry is an all-in-one alternative. The puffy flatbread serves as a great appetizer, soaking up the sauce and providing a great balance to Old Richmond (or any of the Bistro’s selection brews, for that matter).

Then I dive into the heart of the dish, the chicken and basmati rice. Mixed with just enough of the curry and chutney juices, they make a savory main course that is neither too meaty, nor too starchy.

Finally comes my favorite part of the meal, the “dessert.” With the chicken gone, the topping of sugary apricots provided the final course. The sweet fruit mixes with the remaining curry and rice to make the end of the meal almost like eating a fresh-from-the-oven summer pie.

So now the plate is clean and I’m left to sip on the latter half of my brown ale and gaze across the street at UVA’s grassy grounds. Life is good. Maybe it’s partially due to the perfect temperature or the calming blend of evening sunlight and the cool interior. But I’m pretty sure it’s also the delicious, comforting and well-rounded meal that I’ve just eaten.—John Ruscher

Home sweet home

So I already had the olive oil, garlic and pepper.

Those are staples; they make the kitchen go ‘round. I’d bought soup things at Integral Yoga and by no means considered it cheating to already possess crucial ingredients. A big tin of olive oil is nothing if not a wise investment. 

I cut the onion ($1.93) into big chunks, to minimize weeping and so that broth would collect in its curves. John came into the kitchen and starting scrubbing the crimini mushrooms ($2.10) while I moved onto the garlic, still slightly muddy from our garden. Chopping the cloves is second nature by now, as is remembering the instruction of a onetime restaurant boss: “You put oil into a hot pan.”

I broke off two stems from the celery ($2.99) and listened to their pitch rise as I chopped them shorter and shorter. “After the soup’s going I’ll get on those dirty dishes,” John said. He was slicing mushrooms while the onion and garlic hissed in hot oil. I opened a can of black-eyed peas ($1.25); John chopped up two carrots (61 cents). I unwrapped four bouillon cubes ($3.29) and they lay there in their papers, enough color and flavor to turn eight cups of water into broth. The onions now clear, I added the mushrooms to the pot. We talked and chirped to our cat; the mushrooms began to smell strong, almost like seafood.

We talked about what we ate for dinner one year ago today, the first day of our honeymoon. I lined up spices on the counter: pepper, oregano, chile flakes. There would be plenty of salt in the bouillon. In with celery and carrots. John oiled and seasoned three slices of sourdough ($3.50) and I waited for the veggies to take on a humid aroma before I put in the water and turned up the heat.

How long to boil the bouillon and the orzo (83 cents)? John started the toaster and fetched a book about raptors. As the soup simmered, we looked at bald eagles, great grey owls, “Little Owls” from Greece. I burned my tongue testing orzo. In with the peas; John took the grated parmesan ($1.89) to the table with two spoons. The soup filled the silver ladle and then our brown bowls.

The mushrooms tasted especially vivid, and the onions were soft and sweet, almost dissolving. The beans were just themselves. We turned on NPR and ate the delicate golden bread over news of two earthquakes. I wished we still had chard growing outside; I would have tossed in some of the dark, firm leaves at the very end. But it was still soup ($18.85).—Erika Howsare

Vegan heaven

Give a man 20 bucks, and he’ll eat for a day. Give a month-long vegan $20, and he’ll spend the day wandering Charlottesville looking for something he can eat. That’s why upon receipt of my per diem, I headed for the largest contingent of hippies I could find. They happened to be at the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello’s Tufton Farm, and I mean to tell you $20 goes a long way around those parts.

I quickly found a plate of stir-fried spicy tofu from the Vanguard Ranch booth. Head Vanguard foodie, R.F, Turner, baked the tofu in a basil curry—spicy with a smooth finish. After the tofu plate, I knocked back a glass of his Lemon Gingerade: sweet, followed by a ginger bite. It was so good I had another. And a mere five minutes after walking onto the premises, I’d blown 13 bucks.

Luckily, this was a festival, and a lot of these folks were vegans—two facts which translated into an overwhelming amount of free food. I stalked up and down rows of food on platters and found Matt’s Wild Cherry Tomatoes. While I subsist on a diet of pretty much nothing but veggies and fruit, I still got a beef with tomatoes. Like George Carlin said, cut one open, and it looks like it’s still in a larval stage. But these were free, so I speared one with a toothpick and bit down hard. It should give you some indication of the sophistication of my palette when I tell you that the tomato tasted like really, really good ketchup.

After rather awkwardly maneuvering around a dude hell bent on playing a mandolin to snag some Whole Foods guacamole, I decided it was time to hit up the Integral Yoga stand. I had already cribbed an IY Blueberry Torte from my girlfriend Kelli (a walnut crust created a pleasing counterpoint to the fresh fruit), but for some reason the IY folks always make me feel nervous, like I’m just pretending to be healthy, which, for the most part, I pretty much am. But I forced myself over there and copped a living foods pizza, complete with a crust of sprout wheat germ, garlic, peppers and flax seed.

As I munched away happily, the very nice woman explained that living food has all its natural enzymes and nutrients—having not been cooked above 166 degrees, the point where most food loses these things. It sounded like a fancy way of saying “raw,” but my mouth was too full to argue. I wouldn’t have had the guts anyway.

With $3 left of my boss’ money, I wasn’t walking away still hanging on to those three bills. Kelli and I were going to picnic with her family that night, and pickings for us vegans were bound to be slim. So after sampling the Twin Oaks wild mushroom veggie pate an unseemly number of times, I bought a tube of the rich loamy paste. With all the happiness surrounding me, I needed something dark. The pate was just the thing. Mushrooms, after all, are known in Mexico as carne de los muertos, “flesh of the dead.”

That left me with $1.10 and precious little time. As the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange tent was breaking down, I bought a dollar’s worth of Northstar watermelon seeds. Give me half a year, and I’ll let you know how those turn out. Over a nice steak dinner.—Scott Weaver

Brown bagging it

After bobbing and weaving along Rockfish Valley Highway for 15 minutes or so, my two traveling partners (including Mr. Jackson, the gentleman that pays the bills) and I arrive at a small sign for Basic Necessities, billing a “Gourmet Wine, Cheese & Bread Shop.” A three-planked wooden fence circles the front entrance, and a few low mountains back the scene. With the restaurant closed on Monday and operating with early hours on Tuesday, a Wednesday night drive to Nellysford from Charlottesville—35-40 minutes of rise-and-fall roads, all pleasant—becomes the perfect time for such a trip. Inside, two employees wait on a single couple; we have the place to ourselves, and head for the wine cellar.

“We definitely have wines from all over the world,” our hostess assures us, and this seems like it may be more obstacle than blessing: Most of the wine prices start at $10 and reach skyward, from the parallel shelves of “France” and “Italy” in the cellar to the display of local bottles in the front. But along the bottom rows, a bottle of Maison Nicolas Cabernet Sauvignon is spotted with $8.99 scrawled in white marker near the neck.

From the spreads-and-breads shop in the front of the store, we grab a baguette from the Albemarle Baking Company (“Can’t beat a brick oven,” the hostess adds). The chilled case near the breads holds brie, gouda and more; with a little effort, a firm globe of goat cheese (Caramont Chevre, from Gail Hobbs-Page’s Esmont farm) is selected. The cheese will hold fine for the ride back to town and, like the wine, it’s best not to rush the scenic trip. We get the cheese, bread and wine in a brown paper bag, then split, our bill coming in at a handful of coins under $20.

The drive back leans towards 35 minutes—we’re hungry now, and tear pieces from the baguette on our way. A location is settled on, plates and glasses are procured and the wine is poured while the chevre is unwrapped—a white ball capped on two ends with a dusting of sage and oregano—and jabbed with hunks of baguette. It yields easily to the bread and we dig in.

The chevre rides the ridge between milky sweetness and a stronger tartness, then picks up the oregano flavor and runs with it. Each piece of the baguette tears with a satisfying ruffle, like a deck of cards; the cheese works well in heavy doses and the herbs and strong cherry notes in the wine wrap their lips around the tart taste of the goat cheese. As the black cherry taste of the wine grows more evident and adds a richness of texture to the crumbling chevre, we recline and grin, lazily munching, tannin-toothed and pleased.—Brendan Fitzgerald

The upper crust

When the pizza arrives at the table, it never seems as if there will be enough room, amidst the plates, drinks, napkin dispenser and parmesan cheese, but somehow there always is. This, I think, signifies a good meal: not an elegant and carefully arranged table, but a cluttered and overflowing one. “Mange,” it says. Eat! Dig in!

I first went to Crozet Pizza when I was maybe 9 or 10, and I continued to go there sporadically throughout high school. When I went off to college, it was where my family would always go to welcome me back and to say farewell. It was, to a boy from Free Union, the closest thing to a neighborhood joint.

Little, as the cliché goes, has changed since Bob and Karen Crumb opened the restaurant in 1977. One wall is still covered with a thick layer of business cards, another with a map of the world that highlights all the places that Crozet Pizza shirts have traveled. The framed Sam Abell prints, the picture of Claudius Crozet, and the Lane and Western Albemarle High School Pennants, all still hang proudly. The choice of toppings is vast and includes squash, three types of olives, Portobello and Shitake mushrooms, eggplant and peanuts. I opt for plain cheese with fresh garlic and a Starr Hill Amber Ale, because the soul of a pizza joint is its crust, cheese and garlic. Plus I’ve only got $20. I make my girlfriend buy her own beer.

The pizza is hot (Memories of many a scalded tongue. Tonight will add one more.) and overwhelmingly fragrant—a bouquet of garlic and oregano. The color of the cheese is a kind of neon rust where it has bubbled up, and elsewhere a deep white flecked with green. The hallmark of Crozet Pizza is the freshness of its ingredients, everything chopped right now, homemade not in the pejorative sense, but in the sense that everything was made in the place where it lives. It tastes, my girlfriend says, “cared for.”

What can you get at Crozet Pizza for $20? Twelve-fifty for the medium pie and $2 for the (very) fresh garlic, plus $3.50 for the beer. The bell that rings when you walk through the door, and the vases full of fresh basil on the counter. The unsolicited “That is the best pizza I’ve ever had!” from the tall, white haired gentleman visiting for the first time. Crozet Pizza is the kind of place they make movies about, and the kind of place movies never get right. It will be, I predict, the last place to go when the suburbs march through the heart of old Crozet and they finish destroying western Albemarle County. That will be a black, black, day, and until it comes I plan on spending $20 a thousand times over trying to fit one more perfect pizza onto a crowded table.—J. Tobias Beard

What’s your fancy?

Head waiter Michael Lamutti leans in, eyes direct and tone gentle, to explain how the tasting menu works at Clifton Inn. We have pulled out our Fancy (but not Fanciest) Dress, the gent in a wool-blend jacket ripped from the pages of GQ and the lady (that would be your narrator) wrapped in a colorful silk shawl that instantly brightens a dark everyday sweater. We intend to lay exactly one $20 bill on the good people who serve the Inn’s restaurant, one of 456 establishments around the globe that have earned a place in the trés exclusive partnership of high-service, all-luxe restaurants and hotels known collectively as Relais & Chateaux. If Lamutti and his charming wine steward, Andrew Greene, found our mission outside of the main, discretion veiled their true response.

The tasting menu, Lamutti explained, means essentially that Clifton will accommodate any number of courses one might choose. So where three is listed as the minimum on the tall, slender minimum ($45 without wine), a lone course could be ordered for $15 (with 18 percent gratuity added in), if that is what the lady desires.

The lady does desire it, yes, thank you, and the lady will take a recommendation. (The lady finds it difficult to choose among dishes as elegant-sounding as Cioppino broth with seared sea scallops and Carpaccio of prime rib served with arugula and parmigiano reggiano. And, the prospect of bravely navigating solo through a selection of sweets such as Wisconsin mascarpone semifreddo with organic strawberry consommé and oatmeal-almond streusel or chocolate mousse and vanilla cream pavé leaves the lady at risk of losing her composure. So yes, thank you, please advise.)

And this is how we come to a single order of foie gras and duck confit agnolotti served in brown butter jus and dusted with cracklins. A lovely Sauternes (Chateau D’Arche ’03) is recommended, at which point, the man, sensing the woman’s depleted purse, gallantly offers to treat for a glass of same. The pairing, it will later be said, defines perfection.

At Clifton, then, $20 will procure for the hungry traveler a generous helping of elegant, seamless service, including the laying onto one’s lap of a crisply pressed dinner napkin from a dark-haired waiter whose sole task seems to be spreading this coverlet of linen in a graceful sweep that, remarkably, never threatens to embarrass either the diner or the attendant. But, what of the food?

Rich, glazed, dressed but not “saucy,” the two inspired crowns of al dente pasta (agnolotti we are told, means “priest’s hat,” which accounts for the folded shape of the pasta) balance the soft, slightly piecey filling. If foie gras could be said to be swaddled, it would be in this dish. Yet another waiter, the charming Katherine, brings bread to the table, unbidden, because, she suggests, we don’t want to bypass the jus. And she is right. The final expression of the fowls’ forward flavors (woodland in tone), the jus rewards some sopping up.

Did we clean our plate? You bet your sweet bippie we did. And after we took care of the bill (just under $20), we left, if not exactly with drum-tight bellies, nevertheless full from the caring presentation and classy reception that surrounded our entire, one-dish experience.—Cathy Harding

Where the money went

Basic Necessities
2226 Rockfish Valley Hwy.
(Rte. 151), Nellysford
361-1766

Clifton Inn
1296 Clifton Inn Dr.
971-1800

Crozet Pizza
5794 Three Notch’d Rd.
(Rte. 240W), Crozet
823-2132

Integral Yoga Natural Foods
923 Preston Ave. #H
293-4111

Mesob Ethiopian Cuisine
104 14th St. parking garage
963-9700

Michael’s Bistro
Second floor of 1427 University Ave.
977-3697

Orzo Kitchen & Wine Bar
416 W. Main St., in the Main Street Market
975-6796

UVA graduation, or what’s known as Final Exercises, is a grand affair any way you measure it. Whether you count the 5,900 degrees awarded in May or the estimated 45,000 friends and relatives who come to witness their conferment, Charlottesville is packed to the brim every year for this 178-year-old tradition. The only thing more impressive than the number of graduates and the visitors who descend upon Grounds might be the number of cookies it takes to try and keep them fed. After all, a hot spring day can make any Wahoo hungry. Here are some of the advanced preparations UVA Catering made for this year’s ceremonies.

UVA Catering has many more jobs on its plate than Final Exercises. The young and the older in groups big and small are showered with service, not to mention tons of food and drink.

Number of “petite gourmet” cookies prepared: 17,000

Number of “bakeshop” cookies prepared: 4,000

Gallons of lemonade: 400

Gallons of iced tea: 2,000

Bottles of water: 4,000

Pounds of golden pineapple: 400

Pounds of cantaloupe: 400

Pounds of honeydew: 400

Pounds of strawberries: 400

Source: UVA Department of Media Relations

art

Fuzzy art, it turns out, is something of a relief. This show’s title, says curator Patrick Costello, refers vaguely (fuzzily?) to the soft texture of the fabric that’s one of the collection’s favorite materials, and to its “warm and fuzzy” emotional slant. Though the Bridge, like most gallery spaces, tends toward the architecturally hard and chilly, the show manages to evoke both sunlit Saturday-morning cartoon sessions and a deeper sense of human capacities. Costello and his co-curator Andy Jenkins, both UVA students, organized another impressive show at the Bridge last spring; Costello says “Fuzz” (in which Victoria Long joins their team) aims to raise the bar. It does so with a smile.

The exuberant Fuzz art exhibit at the Bridge pops with the joy of its creators and the pleasure of hands-on art, from drawings and knittings to piñatas by Kristin Smith (pictured).

What’s to be happy about? Well, the fact that it’s fun to make things. These artists—locals plus out-of-towners from New York to Miami—are still in close touch with an instinct to lose oneself in creating that most people shed after childhood. Tiny gestures, not grand ones, fill the room. Kristin Smith, for example, contributes two magnificent piñata-like sculptures covered in hundreds of small scraps of colored paper, while Alvaro Ilizarbe’s drawings look like blocks of tiny lines from afar. Up close, they are a mass of text bits, each in its own hand-drawn font: “Don’t play no games,” “Food pyramid”—a visual analog of mental cacophony, like the inside cover of a savvy 10th-grader’s notebook toward the end of a long school year.

The sense is that most of these artists are young (though one, Harvey Fuell, is a self-taught 81-year-old World War II veteran from Richmond) and, having grown up in an irony-soaked culture, they make work that acknowledges that stance in a reassuringly relaxed way. It’s as though the aggressive emptiness of, say, Pop Art has been not rejected but reimagined by the next generation. The marriage of irony and joy is clear in Kevin Hooyman’s drawings, a highlight of this show. Some are cartoonish watercolor-and-ink figures: animals, birds, a Pan-like creature with a flute and large leaves for ears. Others are simpler and more poetic, expressive but not sentimental: Two delicate white storks are suspended on a white page, one saying “Almost nothing is happening/ I feel like I am waiting but I don’t know what to wait for,” and the other answering, “You are confused/ Everything is happening right now.”

Tom Dilello is in his eighth year as a Charlottesville waiter—which makes his career more than twice the average restaurant’s lifespan. He’s worked at Martha’s Café, Northern Exposure (where Dilello says a lot of local restaurant workers got their start), Papagayos ("the guy put a quarter million dollars into it and didn’t know what he was doing—it was a total flop"), Maharaja, Blue Light, Mas and Zocalo. These days he works at Maya and Petit Pois.

After eight years as a waiter in Charlottesville, Tom Dilello has a mind lit up with many tricks of the trade, and one philosophy: "The criteria for the job is really just liking people."

Dilello, 51, got an electrical engineering degree at Virginia Tech, but he found after working five years at the Naval Research Lab in Alexandria that he wanted more free time. He moved to Charlottesville in 1986 with friends to do artwork and says he grew pot for money. Not until 2000 was he called to serve. He describes his work in his own words.—Will Goldsmith

"I never waited tables in high school or college. The idea to wait tables came from a lot of my friends who were doing it. My daughter had just come to live with me and I couldn’t be living like a frugal artist any more. And my daughter was waiting tables out of high school at Keswick. She’s the one who showed me how to do a wine opening and all that.

"The criteria for the job is really just liking people. If you don’t like people and you get really bitchy—if you’re sensitive to the way people treat you, you’re not going to make it at all. It’s being able to get down and communicate with everybody, read them—you have to be able to do that. Seeing how they react to your comments and making them feel comfortable, see the kind of service they want. Sometimes people are really Christian Right and I’m not, and you still just have to make them feel good. I just love people.

"Sometimes you talk to them and you can tell, ‘Well, I’m going to be treated like an indentured servant tonight.’ Some come across as really nice and all of the sudden they start treating you really mean. And they get meaner and meaner and they’re just really trying to make you angry, so what I’ve gotten really good at is, ‘Oh, you’re going to play that game with me?’ and just shower them with more kindness and more kindness and just do every little stupid thing that they want you to do—and they end up getting mad. It’s hilarious.

"We had this one family over at Zocalo, must have been 15 people. And they claimed their family owned a restaurant and it was really good. So they all ordered steak and they all wanted it well done. Well done in this town —it’s not going to be cooked dry, it’s still going to be a little pink. Our chefs don’t like to destroy meat. So we brought it that way, just barely pink in there. And they were like, ‘God, you expect me to eat this, I wanted well done.’ So we tried it a second time—a whole table a second time. Put all the meats back on the grill a little bit longer. And it was still good, there was no pink left but it was still tender, and they still go, ‘This is not well done.’ So we take it back a third time and cook it up like dried shoe leather and gave it back to them. It’s hilarious, man.

"There was one time where I did get thrown for a loop. This guy was so mean I couldn’t believe it. This guy goes, ‘Do you expect me to eat this shit?’ And he mentions the owner’s name and he’s just like, ‘This is full of shit,’ blah blah blah blah blah. Everybody in the restaurant literally stopped talking. I couldn’t say a damn thing. He had lobster ravioli, which was really good actually. And his wife is just trying to calm him down. I just stopped dead in my tracks and said, ‘Can I make you something else?’ He’s like, ‘No, just take this shit away from me.’ Later I tiptoed around the table, gave him a check. He gave me a 20 percent tip. But man, I just didn’t have a handle on that.

"I’ve waited on him since too, actually. I don’t think he remembers me, though. I give the guy poor service every time.

"It always seems to happen when it’s the busiest. Actually, waiters are at their worst when it’s really slow and they get bored and they just give bad service. When it’s busy, that’s when you get a better level of service, actually. Everybody sits down at once, it’s such a challenge. That’s what I love about Petit Pois. When it gets really, really busy, what we call ‘bean in the weeds,’ just run run run run run; you’re always a half step behind. That’s the fun part, I think. That’s the challenge, to see how fast you can go.

"Part of what I love about the job is you can make decent enough money so that you can travel at the same time. If you want to take off, if your shifts are covered, you can go. I probably travel a good two and a half, three months a year. I’m really into Mexico and Central America. I used to go a lot to Europe, but I’ll probably never go back there again. It’s so First World. Wal-Marts everywhere.

"The wealth factor here just makes it so you can actually make a good living here waiting on tables, you really can. A lot of shifts you’ll get $150 to $200 a night. Bartenders in this town at good bars make $300 to $500 a night. This town doesn’t seem to get the fluctuations of the economy either.

"It depends which night is the best. I’d probably say Saturday night—but sometimes Tuesdays. Sometimes you get a Paramount show, you can do really well. Friday night you can get the tourists. People will come in here at Petit Pois, ‘Can I get a hamburger?’

"I don’t like tourists at all. But the locals here are awesome, they treat you right. You have a small relationship with them because you know each other and some of them I’m on a first-name basis with, and it’s nice, you know? You don’t really have much of a problem with tipping in this town. The regulars always tip right—unless they’re regular foreigners.

"Chefs can be tense, and some owners, but those sort of people—I just tend to stay away from. I don’t like working with people like that. That’s part of the reason that I choose where I’m going. I like the idea of working somewhere where it’s more of a family scene, as opposed to an authoritarian scene. Mas, Zocalo, Petit Pois, Maya—everybody just sort of knows what to do and they do it. You don’t have these little stupid rules hanging over your head, people bitching at you. Shit like that.

Family-scene places are hard to find. Everybody in the restaurant business knows everybody, so you don’t want to fuck up, you know? If you don’t do the job right, you have a hard time moving on to other places.

"Still, we all have an off day. But when you’re working in a family-style restaurant, people pick up your slack. Your friends will pick it up for you. You’ll do the same for them at some point.

"Good food is a memorable experience. Good food is like good sex, it’s like the second best thing. I totally take pride in being a part of that experience."

The sandwich can tell us a lot about a person. For instance, in its earliest days, the sandwich said something like “you’re a compulsive gambler who’s caught a hot streak.” But since those days, it’s grown into a symbol of the workaday laborer, a mark of a nation on the move along its interstate system, a coin of the commoditization of meals…it has evolved into something called a “wrap,” which, obviously, is not a sandwich at all but archetypical bastard. Sandwiches are ever-present, from low-end food joints that advertise with a single word along a long-forgotten highway (“EAT”) to a vessel for foodie delights. Whatever your choice, though, your sandwich speaks loud and clear to what and who the eater is, where he comes from and whom he desires to be.

Grilled PB & J
Blue Moon Diner, $2.95

Blue Moon Diner’s Grilled PB & J

Though you haven’t yet moved out of your parents’ house, you have, however, learned to light the stove. Good for you. Now it’s onwards and upwards, sandwich-wise. For you, the difference between lunch and dinner obviously lies in the use of a skillet, and not much else. Soon you’ll be on your way to true haute cuisine—that is, toasting your Pop Tarts.

Smoked Turkey Rollup
Zazus, $5.49

Zazus’ Smoked Turkey Rollup

This is not a sandwich, which means by this standard you are not a person.

Crab Melt
Carving Board Café, $5.75

Carving Board Café’s Crab Melt

So, you’ve recently taken a step up the “melt” ladder, a status level above tuna. Congratulations. You’re probably comfortable occupying the space between “diner” and “bistro,” which will probably soon be branded as its own market segment called “distro” or “biner” or some other dumb name. And you’re not from Maryland, because a crab bore does not order the pricey little crustaceans in the middle of the mountains. So you’re spicing it up a bit with the crab, but the melt gives away the fact that cloth napkins still make you nervous.

Mediterranean Cheese Steak
Basil Mediterranean Bistro, $6.25

Basic Mediterranean Bistro’s Mediterranean Cheese Steak

You’re a little bit Philly, a little bit Lebanon. That said, you’ve probably been shot at more than once. Your sandwich tells the room that you’re comfortable around $6.00 coffee drinks, but you’ve probably had your hands wrapped around a baseball bat a time or two. And you don’t play baseball, if you catch our drift. This is a sandwich that commands respect, regardless of frilly toothpicks.

The Godfather
Pacino’s, $6.75

Pacino’s The Godfather

Please. You don’t have to prove that you’ve memorized all three movies. We believe you. And despite what you may think, doing the wedding-day scene with a mouthful of salami does not get you any closer to sounding like Brando.

Panettone “Monte Cristo”
Bistro at Boar’s Head, $12

Bistro at Boar’s Head’s Panettone "Monte Cristo"

Rumor has it that this sandwich will live up to its namesake and disappear from the menu soon. Regardless, you know when the sandwiches are priced on the dollar, you’re dealing with a patrician. While munching on this combination of ham, turkey and three-berry jam, you can probably tell us down to the year and vineyard what wine goes with such a meal. And you’d be right. From your golf tan down to your skinny legs, you’re a man or woman of leisure through and through. That is, if you’re eating this on a weekday. If you’re not, you’re probably at brunch, most likely hung over, and you ordered this because it came with fries.