When people look back on 2021-2022, what will they think of?
Okay, other than that.
With a little luck, it will be the new coffee shops, bakeries, and lunch counters that braved the elements to open their doors to the city’s hungry and thirsty. With a little luck, it will be that elegant cake they brought to a small gathering, that brilliantly executed latte they grabbed while strolling the Downtown Mall, that picture-perfect main course they enjoyed with a friend.
Because with a little luck, the following nine restaurants and cafés will be some of our new favorites for years to come.
New to the coop
Birdhouse is the brainchild of an architect and communications pro, but you’d never know it for the inspired rotisserie chicken flocking out of their small kitchen.
Occupying the old Ace Biscuit & Barbecue space on Henry Avenue (Ace relocated one street over in 2020), Birdhouse roasts free-range, organic Cornish cross chickens on the spit before adding a glug of olive oil and more seasoning—sumac, which hits acidic, is the not-so-secret ingredient—and crisping the skin to order.
Tim Popa, who handles communications for a design firm by day, charts Birdhouse’s chicken work, while former architect Liz Broyles builds out the rest of the menu. Small plates like roasted squash and green pozole soup gird the chicken-focused offerings. Broyles says the pozole “is the one thing I feel like I could eat every day and never get sick of.” Birdhouse sources the soup’s hominy from heirloom bean supplier Rancho Gordo in Napa, California, soaks the kernels in-house, and marries them with a tomatillo-based broth infused with poblano and jalapeño. Cilantro and rotisserie chicken finish the dish—“lots of layering,” Broyles says.
Birdhouse currently gets its chicken from Shenandoah Valley Organic in Harrisonburg, but Popa and Broyles are working to find local farmers to provide other bird breeds. “We’re still playing with things and don’t necessarily have a strict thing we’re going to adhere to,” Broyles says.
A sweet spot
There’s a saying about too many cooks in the kitchen, but lucky for Cake Bloom, the same hasn’t proven true for bakers.
Susan Sweeney moved her cake business from the West Coast to Charlottesville in late 2019 and quickly pivoted to a home-delivery and small-party format due to 2020’s setbacks for wedding and other large-party suppliers. Sweeney’s sisters, Elizabeth, Mary, Sarah, and Paige, then joined the team, bringing to the turntable a variety of backgrounds and expertise in baking, event planning, and design.
Together, the Sweeneys have launched a new brick-and-mortar, cake-and-bubbles bar to pair their passions for baked goods and sparkling wine.
At the former Snowing in Space location, the sisters covered the former tenant’s Caddyshack murals and created a bright, modern atmosphere that’s modeled after a retail/restaurant hall down under. “We have a sister (and business partner) living in Australia whose recipe ideas, aesthetic, and sense of humor infuse everything we do here,” Sweeney says.
And if you try only one thing when you hit the new Cake Bloom bar, make it the five-slice sampler of the Sweeney’s rotating seasonal signature flavors, which, she suggests, you pair with a bottle of Cava Aurelia Brut Nature Gran Reserva.
FARMacy Café
Wife-and-husband team Jessica and Gabino Lino have taken fusion to the next level with FARMacy Café. Not only do they blend Executive Chef Lino’s native Mexican food with Italian, Indian, Asian, and classic American comfort influences, but they also try to make it as nutrient rich as possible.
Jessica Lino (née Hogan), who’s worked nearly every job in hospitality on top of spending years in retail, started FARMacy as a superfood smoothie delivery service, then bought a food truck with her husband (boyfriend at the time). They began focusing FARMacy on local, organic, superfood Mexican fusion and opened their new restaurant in the CODE building courtyard earlier this year.
FARMacy’s best seller is the Super Naan Taco: garlic Indian-style flatbread stuffed with organic al pastor pork, “super guac,” lettuce, minced kale, cilantro, onion, feta, and sour cream. The café’s just started offering breakfast items, as well, like a burrito with local eggs, chorizo, avocado crema, raw pepper jack cheese, minced kale, and black beans. “So full of flavor—it’s a great way to start the day,” Lino says.
Wine buzz
Nick Leichtentritt founded the business that would become Milli Coffee Roasters in 2012. Tragically, he died seven years later at the age of 34. The business survives today, though, having been shepherded through the hard times by Leichtentritt’s wife, Nicole, and later sold to regular Milli Coffee patron John Borgquist.
It was Borgquist, the coffee conglomerate’s somewhat accidental successor, who launched Milli Second Café & Wine Bar in December last year. Another new CODE building culinary destination, Milli Second adds alcoholic beverages to the group’s repertoire; Borgquist suggests trying the rotating Virginia wine flight. “It shows off the best of local wines, including wines that are tough to find anywhere but the winery itself,” he says.
Of course Milli Second still offers the goods in the grinds, like pour overs using micro-lots of green coffee roasted 100 grams at a time. It’s “coffee you’d otherwise have to get on an airplane to taste,” Borgquist says.
Milli Second has more to roll out in the coming months, but its Thursday night free wine tastings have already been a hit, Borgquist says. The wines are new every week, and like the café’s Virginia wines and micro-lot coffee, they’re drinks you’d have a hard time landing anywhere else.
Say “cheese!”
Ask a few chefs what they like to eat at home. They’ll likely say something simple but delicious, made with great ingredients treated gently, respectfully, properly. For cheesemonger Carolyn Leasure and chef Zack Leasure, the answer is deliciously predictable.
“I owned an artisan cheese shop in D.C., and I would bring home all these delicious cheeses from small farms,” Carolyn Leasure says. “We would make grilled cheese.”
The couple’s home kitchen experiments—with different toppings, compound butters, cheese combinations—led to some happy customers when Leasure began offering the sandwiches at her fromagerie. C’ville got its first taste of the results when ooey gooey crispy opened in the CODE building in mid-February.
If you’re a first-timer, what should you request when you come to the counter? You could go with one of the flavorful, hearty salads, like the Blustery Fall, with roasted celery root, arugula, celery hearts, lemon-soaked currants, toasted hazelnuts, brie, and sherry vinaigrette. But you’ll probably end up with something ooey and gooey. Leasure suggests the brie, truffle butter, and crushed potato chips cheeser. Her husband’s favorite is the fontina val d’aosta, coated and crisped with sage butter. “It’s so simple but so delicious,” she says.
You’re welcome
Kitty Ashi needed more space. Fans of her family’s Thai delicacies at Monsoon Siam had asked for years about catering services and a place to host special occasion dinners. But the beloved restaurant just wasn’t big enough to answer the call.
Ashi had her eye on a spot that could pad her Thai empire, though, and along with her brother and his wife, a chef, she opened Pineapples Thai Kitchen in the old Coca-Cola building last year. “I loved this space so much when it was still Timbercreek Market,” she says. “And it’s been empty for a long time.”
Pineapples have strong ties to southern Thai food and represent hospitality. Welcoming patrons to the Pineapples Thai Kitchen menu are appetizers like the Punim Pok Pok Salad, with green papaya, grape tomatoes, string beans, roasted peanuts, and spicy lime dressing, and Num Tok Pork Belly, with red onion, scallion, cilantro, spring mix lettuce, and dressing in a rice cracker bowl. Standout entrées are the crispy chicken with roasted cashews and the biyani style yellow curry with bone-in beef rib, served with roti. For those who like their yum yum with a side of pain pain, the Southern Heat brings it with minced chicken, kaffir lime leaf, yellow curry powder, rice paper, and steamed veggies.
French twist
Rachel De Jong has worked as a pastry chef for some of the world’s most accomplished culinary personalities—Ludo Lefebvre, Patrick O’Connell—but Cou Cou Rachou is her first solo gig. Here, she’s creating seasonal cakes, traditional French pastries, and inspired breads by elevating the classics with her own natural, organic style.
Cou Cou Rachou doesn’t offer a set menu; the pastries rotate almost daily, giving De Jong freedom to flex her creativity. She’s in the process of optimizing her cake production, so while she loves making custom cakes to order, she plans to rotate three options seasonally going forward. Coming soon are choices like pistachio and citrus and chocolate mousse with red fruit jam.
De Jong says several Cou Cou Rachou pastries are quickly becoming fan favorites and difficult to take off the daily list. For a past/present hybrid, check out the French onion croissant, inspired by Lefebvre’s renowned soup of the same name and oozing with caramelized sweet onions, thyme, black pepper, bay leaf, and local cheese. Or go sweeter with a croissant that features frangipane (almond pastry cream) spiked with loads of fresh citrus zest.
The secret to de Jong’s decadent croissants? “The two biggest things are patience and beurre d’isigny,” she says. Aka: “French butter, from Normandy.”
Answer the call
Laura Fonner made her name as one of Charlottesville’s best chefs at Duner’s, where she settled in for many years turning out acclaimed, upscale-but-accessible, American-fusion fare. Since leaving the Ivy Road restaurant, Fonner’s bounced around a bit, but great talent usually finds its place, and for Fonner, that place may well be Siren.
Focused on American- and Mediterranean-inflected seafood, the new Ridge Road dining room (in the former Shebeen space) is part of the Champion Hospitality Group, which now has five in-demand restaurants under its um-beerla. Fonner, who’s a mother of three and former “Guy’s Grocery Games” winner, has held various roles with Champion since summer 2020.
The Siren menu is short and simple, opening with soups and salads, such as the crispy fried lentil falafel with tzatziki, quinoa tabbouleh, and feta on mixed greens, turning to shareables like curried yogurt-marinated grilled shrimp with harissa tomato jam and crispy fried chickpeas, and crescendoing with entrées like rockfish with kabocha squash gnocchi, mushrooms, and lemon beurre blanc.
More to love
Justin van der Linde’s come a long way since he launched his Smoked BBQ Co. food trailer almost a decade ago. Back then, his stock-in-trade was a 250-gallon offset smoker and all the pulled pork, ribs, chicken, and beef he could crank out. Now, he’s expanded his culinary point of view to a wider selection of comfort food and sandwich styles.
“We don’t invent many new items,” van der Linde says of his new venutre, Taste Shack. “We just like to make a run at the classics our way.”
Those classics include a housemade pastrami; van der Linde and his team start with a whole brisket, brine it, season it, smoke it, and pile it on a classic Reuben or in the Shack Pastrami, with Swiss cheese, cole slaw, tomato, onion, bread and butter pickles, and Shack Sauce. Then there’s the steak and cheese made with hand-trimmed, thin-sliced rib-eye. “Every steak is made to order, and we use a signature roll that we get direct from New York,” van der Linde says. “We are probably the only place in town using real rib-eye.”