Au revoir
What’s up with all these fine dining spots making big changes? Glass Haus Kitchen transitioned to private events last year, Savour recently up and moved to a bed and breakfast in Louisa, and now L’etoile is closing as a restaurant to focus exclusively on catering.
“We’ve been trying to handle both the restaurant and catering at the same time, and we’ve just found that it’s too hard to put our personal touch on both,” L’etoile co-owner Vickie Gresge said.
The French-Virginian style restaurant on West Main Street, which opened in 1993, will remain open until Saturday, September 27. After that, Gresge said she and her husband Mark Gresge, who’s the co-owner and executive chef, will continue to use the kitchen for L’etoile Catering events until the space is sold. As owners of all the fixtures, equipment, and furniture, they’re selling it as a turnkey restaurant through commercial realtor Stu Rifken, and they expect it to move quickly.
“Someone’s going to want to buy it,” Vickie Gresge said. “It’s such a great spot, but it’s a waste of a location if we use it for catering.”
After more than 20 years in the restaurant biz, Gresge said she and her husband are nostalgic about the transition. But with two kids and a potential space with a kitchen that’s much more conducive to catering, focusing entirely on special events is what makes the most sense.
“I like being involved in special events like weddings, and being a part of major life events,” Gresge said. “I also like just going into the event knowing exactly what you’re going to be doing. Sometimes restaurants can be up and down, busy or slow, and it’s hard to prepare for it.”
L’etoile Catering will continue to offer French-inspired classics, and Gresge said the menu will be more flexible than at the restaurant.
“It might be anything from a backyard barbecue to a five-course meal, or just a simple chicken salad luncheon,” she said. “We’ll cater it to whatever the event is.”
What comes after No. 3?
Two newcomers to the restaurant scene have purchased the Corner space formerly known as No. 3 and rebranded it as Poe’s Public House. Joe Fields and Mark Graham, operating as NLT Partners, purchased the bar and grill last spring from restaurateur Andy McClure (of The Virginian, West Main, and Citizen Burger Bar) and have since remodeled and reopened with a focus on bringing in more than just the UVA bar crawl crowd.
“It’s a brand new menu,” manager Kyle Miller said. “There’s no more frozen food. Everything is fresh and made in-house.”
The Edgar Allen Poe-themed menu items include standards like chicken wings (“Raven Legs”), burgers (“The Bells Burger”), and fried chicken (“Poe Man’s Southern Fried Chicken”), as well as more outside the box offerings like fried pimento cheese, a sandwich featuring braised pork and seared pork belly, and an ahi tuna salad.
Miller said the new menu, as well as a fresh coat of paint, new booths, and a reworked restaurant layout, are intended to attract more lunch and dinner patrons from the University and medical center before 10pm, after which darkness and the undergrad crowd will inevitably make Poe’s look a lot like No. 3.
Lunch goes south
Your pork-filled power lunches are no more, as Brookville Restaurant served its last mid-week, midday dinner on September 12. The Southern-inspired restaurant’s acclaimed chef Harrison Keevil said the lunchtime closure will allow him to spend more time with his family (he’s soon welcoming his second child) and focus his energy on Brookville’s brunch and dinner menus.
“It’s giving me extra time to expand the dinner menu,” Keevil said. “We just brought in half a cow, and it’s allowing me to go more in-depth with our whole animal butchery program.”
Keevil insisted the sandwiches on his lunch menu, which have developed a bit of a cult following, will still be available whenever possible to “fulfill [his] desire to have awesome sandwiches on the menu.” The Brook-
ville fried chicken sandwich will be a mainstay on both of the remaining menus, he said.
Tequila time
The windows of the former El Puerto downtown are still covered in paper, but we got a peek inside, and the new owner’s overhaul of the space is coming along. Restaurateur Hamooda Shami, who owns three Carytown restaurants, stumbled into the space by accident when he stopped in for a quick lunch in the spring. Weeks later the owner of El Puerto handed him the keys, and Shami began conceptualizing Yearbook Taco, the second rendition of his Richmond spot Don’t Look Back.
He described it as a Mexican-inspired dive bar. It’ll serve up tacos made by Nate Gutierrez of Nate’s Taco Truck (who’s established a bit of a cult following in Richmond), plus dozens of tequilas and house-made margarita mix. The menu will also include burritos, quesadillas, and nachos, but Shami said the carnitas and fish tacos have been the best sellers at Don’t Look Back.
As for the seemingly random and decidedly non-Mexican name, Shami said he wants Yearbook Taco to feel like a real local spot, not just the extension of the Carytown restaurant, and he plans to decorate the walls with old-timey yearbook photos. He’s already got several ready to be framed and posted, and anyone who’s willing to give their own yearbook photo to the cause gets a free taco.
No official opening date yet, but Shami’s aiming for sometime in October.
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