Month: January 2015

Hello, Lampo

For a pizza place that turns out pies in a matter of minutes, we sure had to wait a long time for Lampo, the real deal Neapolitan joint that opened on Monticello Road last month. Loren Mendosa, Ian Redshaw, Mitchell Beerens and Andrew Cole promised a fall opening, and the fellas came through just before the official end of the season on December 22.

“It’s about taking the time to make sure it is done right,” Mendosa said.

While it appears Lampo is going to prove to be worth the wait, it’s worth noting that waiting is going to be the order of the day for the foreseeable future at the 21-seat restaurant. Its first few lunches and dinners featured packed houses accompanied by serious social media buzz.

“The support has been overwhelming in a good way,” Mendosa said. “The comments we have gotten from customers have been fantastic. There is just more demand than we ever thought possible.”

If anyone was concerned the pizzeria concept might hamstring the talents of the guys who helped make Michael Keaveny’s tavola one of the most popular restaurants in town, the Lampo menu should put them at ease. In addition to the quick-fired Neapolitan-style pizzas topped with creative combinations of artisanal ingredients (e.g. the “funghi,” which features two types of local mushrooms, garlic, cream and two cheeses), Lampo is serving up a rotating sandwich menu featuring wood-oven cooked “panuozzis” filled with the likes of porchetta, garlic aioli, broccoli rabe, calabrian chili and provolone; small plate antipastis like preserved swordfish, chickpeas, orange and fennel; and soon-to-be-house-made salumis. Cole’s well-respected eye for food friendly beverages puts Lampo’s cocktail, beer and wine menus right on par with the food.

And Mendosa said the team isn’t finished yet. In addition to keeping an ear out for constructive criticism as the kitchen finds its rhythm and dialing in the amount of dough he needs on a daily basis, he and his co-owners are planning to start doing takeout in the next week and hope to open a 25-seat patio before spring arrives.

“You can’t grow just by hearing everything is great all the time,” Mendosa said. “I’m my own biggest critic, but sometimes it’s nice to hear from my customers. That’s been part of my process as long as I have been in the kitchen, and I know the other guys feel the same way.”

Fresh from the fryer

Two Virginia Beach business owners are getting their ducks in a row to open up a new breakfast spot in Charlottesville. Rebecca and David Johnson are bringing Duck Donuts, a made-to-order donut franchise that originated in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, to The Shops at Stonefield early this year.

And by “donuts,” we don’t just mean a few glazed and chocolate-covered that have been sitting out on display for hours. Each donut is made to order—they fry it right there in front of you, and you have a selection of nine coatings and five toppings. Lemon icing with shredded coconut? Peanut butter icing with chopped peanuts? How about maple icing with bacon? Yep, that’s right—bacon.

“Someone comes in and says ‘I want a maple bacon donut,’ I’ll make it from scratch and give it to you,” Rebecca Johnson said. “You can’t get that anywhere else. We have Spudnuts here, and those are very good donuts, but ours are a little different.”

Johnson and her husband already own a couple of Duck Donuts stores in the Virginia Beach area, but soon they’re trading in their ocean for some mountains and moving here to focus on the new store. And once it’s up and running (they’re thinking March), they’ll start thinking about “trying to come up with a Cavalier donut to identify us with the area.”

Brookville, boxed

More great takeout sandwiches are coming to the Downtown Mall. Brookville Restaurant’s Harrison Keevil said he’s now offering Brookville Boxes, takeout meals featuring a daily sandwich special, chips, a bacon chocolate chip cookie and a pickle, as a way to get the restaurant’s signature sammies back in the mitts of fans who’ve been missing them since he stopped lunch service several months ago.

“My desire to bring everyone our awesome, huge sandwiches is back,” Keevil announced last week.

Keevil is offering his buffalo chicken sandwich on Tuesdays, house roast beef on Wednesdays, a Virginia muffuletta on Thursdays and a locally-sourced Cuban on Fridays. The weekend sandwiches, Brookville’s signature fried chicken biscuit with bacon, fried egg, frisée, hot sauce and maple syrup on Saturdays and a bacon, egg and cheese number on maple bacon pancakes on Sunday, will be served with cornbread, honey butter and seasonal fruit salad. Patrons can order the $14 boxes up to the night before pickup by phone or e-mail. Pickup is between 11am and noon during the week and from 9:30-11am on weekends.

It’s resolution season, and a pair of local business owners are hoping to capitalize on the influx of interest in all things healthy that rolls around every January. If all goes according to plan, made-to-order juice bar and health food counter Cville Juice will be open by the end of January.

“It’s a healthy thing,” said co-owner Kilian Graham, who’s joined forces with former UVA basketball player and fellow self-proclaimed health nut Sean Singletary. “People hit the gym January 1, and we’re making it easy for them. People love easy stuff in the wintertime.”

Graham, a longtime Charlottesville resident who’s worked at more than a dozen restaurants and delivery services, was working on the Ix Art Park when the idea for a juice bar counter and delivery service emerged. He was inspired by his father who, after years of neglecting to take care of his body, made the switch from the “standard American diet” of fast food and soda to a fruit- and veggie-heavy diet. Graham admitted to rejecting healthy foods himself when he was younger, but he said he evolved into a believer that nutrition is the key to overall health.

Graham said he was inspired by his father, who quit drinking and spent the remainder of his life helping others make the transition to healthier lifestyles before he died in July.

“A lot of the reason why people had other problems was that they were not properly nourished,” he said. “They were eating fast food, junk food, stuff that’s easy to get. It’s about really getting to the root of the problem.”

Singletary, who played several years of professional basketball after graduating from UVA in 2008, described his athletic career as “injury-plagued,” and said he didn’t always take the best care of his body.

“The last three or four years I’ve been more focused on how I eat and treat my body,” Singletary said. “People in this town have really accepted me. I think me coming back and helping Kilian with the business will be kind of giving back.”

Cold-pressed fruit and vegetable juice is not new to Charlottesville, nor is a menu with items like granola, hummus and lettuce wraps. What makes Cville Juice different and appealing, Graham said, is the convenience of it.

“It’s easier to not eat healthy,” Graham said. “And I want to just put an option out there that, if you want to eat healthy, I’ll make it just as easy as anything else.”

There’s no space for tables and chairs at 201 E. Main, the juice bar’s Downtown Mall spot next to the Paramount Theater*, but a window-side counter facing the Mall allows for some mingling and people-watching while sipping on a Hangover Helper (green apple, cucumber, kale, ginger, lemon and aloe vera juice) or Thirst Quencher (watermelon, pineapple, lemon, and aloe vera juice). The lucky people who live or work within an eight-block radius of the shop will have delivery via bicycle or on foot available; Graham said he likes the idea of a larger delivery circle, but he doesn’t want to leave a carbon footprint, or make customers wait longer for their order because the delivery guy is on the other side of town. For everyone else, there’s the curbside service, which allows customers to order ahead of time, pull up next to the store and pick up their snack or meal without even getting out of the car. Like a drive-thru, minus the fires.

As for the juice, Graham said he doesn’t plan to bottle and distribute any time soon. He’s a consumer of local bottled juices himself, he said, but he wants to give customers a more personal and customized experience. The menu features concoctions like the Liver Flush juice, a combination of apple, beet, kale, celery, lemon and ginger, and the Jump Start smoothie, with apple, beets, ginger, garlic, carrots, vitamin C, spirulina, echinacea, goldenseal, B-complex and banana. But customers can also build their own juices and smoothies, using up to three fruits and vegetables and add-ins like bee pollen, vega protein powder and ginseng. 

Juice and smoothies are no longer just for the bendy yoga instructors and crunchy granola heads, and Graham is banking on the ever-growing popularity of healthy menu items to make Cville Juice the new go-to spot for “fast food.” People are getting increasingly more interested in what they’re putting into their bodies, Graham said, but not everybody necessarily has the time or means to cook an organic meal or juice down a few pounds of apples and kale themselves.

“With the bottling, because of the expiration date, they can only have so many varieties,” Graham said. “People love to create their own stuff. They can create whatever they want, and we’ll still make it taste good.”

*This story initially incorrectly said the juice bar was located on Market Street.