Have your cake and eat it, too: The newly launched Sliced. Cake Bar offers homemade cake by the slice, buttercream shots and cake flights (like a beer flight, but with cake).
Co-owners Megan and Rock Watson got the idea after visiting a popular Dallas cake bar. Only Rock thought the sweet treats couldn’t hold a candle to his wife’s (she’s been making cakes for various events for 15 years). With use of a bakery space from a friend with Craft Cville, they were able to bring Sliced. to life.
Six flavors are on the Sliced. menu: lemon, strawberry, confetti, chocolate with chocolate icing, chocolate salted caramel and carrot cake, all made with organic ingredients. For a cake flight, customers can choose three sample-sized flavors. The Watsons plan to experiment with local booze in their buttercream shots, too.
Sliced. debuted at Early Mountain Vineyards on July 29. The lemon and chocolate salted caramel cakes were fan favorites—Rock says they sold out of both.
The Watsons hope to bring their concept to local markets and will post upcoming dates and locations on Sliced.’s Facebook and Instagram pages.
Eventually they hope to open a brick-and-mortar store and hire teenagers who are in the foster-care system or are at-risk as part of an internship program that teaches them about the bakery business. The couple has fostered and adopted children themselves.
“This is an opportunity for us to take something that we love doing and teach it and show it to others,” Megan says. Icing on the cake.
Not so sweet
According to a post published on Miso Sweet Ramen + Donut Shop’s Facebook page Thursday, August 3, the restaurant will close its doors for good on Friday, August 11, after two years in business. The post also mentions that Miso Sweet chef and owner Frank D. Paris III will soon work at Graduate Charlottesville.
Shenandoah Joe buzz
The Shenandoah Joe roastery and coffee shop on Preston Avenue is expanding, not only in terms of space but what it has to offer. The shop will nearly double in size and have more seating indoors and out, as well as a community cupping room, where Shenandoah Joe coffee experts will teach C’ville java enthusiasts how to taste (really taste!) their coffee and make a damn fine cup o’ Joe at home, among other things.
And good news for coffee-cravers: The coffeehouse will remain open throughout remodeling, which will incorporate the former CASPCA retail store next door.
“We’ll try not to close the doors and stop C’ville from being caffeinated,” Shenandoah Joe owner Dave Fafara says.
The coffee shop will top out at right under 6,000 square feet once the expansion is complete in late September, and there will be “a little more parking than before,” Fafara says.
“It’s gonna be pretty cool,” he adds. “It’s kind of like a wedding: something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.”
Neighborhood lunch
Serving a comforting plate of homemade casserole has a way of bringing people together, and The Haven is doing just that with some help from Downtown Mall denizens who sometimes go unseen. The Haven will serve homestyle meals to the public on Wednesdays beginning in mid-September, and café staff (servers and hosts) will be guests of the day shelter.
Diana Boeke, director of community engagement at The Haven, says the inspiration to serve lunch once a week to the public came from Our Community Place in Harrisonburg, a homeless and in-need shelter like The Haven. The Haven offers breakfast to the shelter’s guests daily, but Boeke says there is more need for community interaction.
“For those people who are sort of in a state where they can’t engage with society very regularly, [these meals] create a sense of purpose and community in their life,” Boeke says.
Eight Haven guests have signed up as waitstaff to gain job experience. There will be two invitation-only soft launches for the lunch program in August.
The meal—a choice of salad or soup, a meat or vegetarian entrée and a dessert—will cost $10, all of which will go to The Haven.
“All of our guests are your neighbors, too, whether you see them here, or you see them on the street or you don’t see them at all,” Boeke says. “They’re a part of the Charlottesville community.”