Mark Cosgrove received the “best birthday present ever” when he turned 29 a few months ago. His former father-in-law, W.C. Winkler, called him that day and said, “Want to open a restaurant?” It was the chance of a lifetime for Cosgrove, a native of Virginia who spent several years traveling around the country and cooking at such varied locales as Colorado, New Orleans, Williamsburg, Northern Virginia and here in Charlottesville at our own Millmont Grille before giving up the cooking business, first to sell cars and then to hock halibut at the Whole Foods seafood counter. Cosgrove says he had grown disillusioned with the restaurant industry and working alongside people who “just weren’t as passionate about food” as him.
 Irish eyes are smiling: Co-owner and chef Mark Cosgrove (background), co-owner W.C. Winkler (right), and Operations Manager Andy Kielar are the faces behind Fardowners. The name pays homage to the Irish immigrants from southern Ireland—“far downers.” |
“The only way I’d do it again is if I could do it my way,” he remembers thinking. When Winkler offered him just such an opportunity, Cosgrove grabbed his old friend and experienced food service manager and bartender, Andy Kielar (most recently of Rapture), to join him and Winkler in the plunge back into the food fire. The result is Fardowners (a reference to the Irish immigrants from southern Ireland—“far downers”—who worked for the Blue Ridge Railway Co. back in ye ol’ days of Crozet). The family-friendly restaurant opened on The Square in Crozet on December 17. The location is the former site of Flavor’s Café, which came and went practically before the ink on Restaurantarama’s July 24, 2007 column about the spot was dry.
Winkler, a previous owner of several other nonrestaurant businesses and mostly recently an employee of Crutchfield, says he spotted the available space and thought, “What does Crozet not have?” Initially, he says, he thought an ice-cream shop was the way to go, but after getting in and seeing the spacious digs and the lovely wood bar, a full-scale, sit-down restaurant seemed the obvious choice.
But filling a niche was still important. Cosgrove references all of the successful restaurants nearby—Three Notch’d Grill, La Cocina del Sol, Crozet Pizza, Uncle Charlie’s Smokehouse—and says, “We didn’t want to do something someone else is doing—that’s no fun.”
What they ended up with is not, despite the Irish-sounding name, an Irish pub, but what Cosgrove calls “contemporary comfort food”—in other words, lots of sandwiches and salads in the $6 to $12 range and entrees in the $9 to $18, with interesting spins on down-home staples, such as grilled meatloaf with wild mushroom demi-glaze, maple-glazed duck breast and BBQ tofu.
Restaurantarama has high hopes for this place. For one thing, as opposed to some of the previous establishments at this locale, this one seems to understand the three legs on the stool of restaurant success: They have the money guy, the chef guy and the manager guy all present on the premises and fully engaged. And for another thing, they are playing the increasingly important “eat local” card, having stocked the bar with Starr Hill and Blue Mountain brews and lots of local wines, and stocked the kitchen with produce and fresh herbs from Brightwood Vineyard and Farm in Madison. Even the tofu is local—it comes from the Twin Oaks commune in Louisa. Now that is grassroots.
Quick bites
Hey, did you know that Outback Steakhouse, that national chain best known for the badunkadunk butt-breeding Bloomin’ Onion, has a gluten-free menu? Even more shocking to us was discovering a two-hour wait last Saturday night when we tried to take a gluten-free friend to our own Outback in the Albemarle Square Shopping Center. Lucky for non-gluten-free folks, at least, that new Italian-style restaurant Olivaté (which we profiled in our December 11, 2007 column) has opened across the parking lot, and we bet they will happily accommodate some of that overflow.
In other brief news, it looks like another frozen-treat franchise is going to give it a go on the Corner—a Rita’s is coming to the old Tropical Smoothie location on University Avenue.
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