Eatin’ almighty: Steve Carell is reportedly a big fan of Crozet Pizza’s half-pepperoni pie.
Almighty appetites
He’s a fantastically wonderful guy.” That’s the report on Steve Carell, star of the big-budget cinematic extravaganza Evan Almighty, from Uncle Charlie’s manager Deke Shipp. This week, Restaurantarama has stars in our eyes, as we go hunting for Hollywood in, of all places, Crozet. And boy do we find it! Word is, with the filming of Evan in full swing, movie types are crawling all over that town’s eateries. Make that “digging in on a semi-permanent basis.” Shipp says that, almost immediately after Uncle Charlie’s opened its doors on The Square in February, it began hosting a group of crew members who drop by almost daily for dinner and beers after long hours of set-building. When the now-famous ark (which, per the film’s plot, God orders Carell to build) was completed two weeks ago, Shipp says many of the crew came to Charlie’s for a wrap party. “The entire place was full and nobody was from Charlottesville,” he says. “We have pictures of 40 or 50 guys with Uncle Charlie’s T-shirts.” Yeah, but what about the star wattage? Charlie’s, Crozet Pizza and the Three Notch’d Grill all report Carell sightings. “Steve Carell was here last Friday,” says Jon Bray of Crozet Pizza. Steve apparently likes his pizza half plain, half with pepperoni! (Don’t ever let us hear you say you can’t get useful news from this column.) And Cathy Berry, from Three Notch’d Grill, says Carell once got take-out—“enough for four people.” Nobody’s seen God, though. (By which we mean Morgan Freeman, of course.) Various crew members seem to have chosen a restaurant to attach themselves to, though they’re not exactly stating their titles clearly: Berry says she’s friendly with the guy who “organizes all the vehicles,” while Shipp has gotten to know “Dave, the special-effects-makeup guy.” Shipp also told us a little yarn about being invited onto the Evan set. “We got to come up in the ark and go right behind the camera banks,” he says. “[Carell] walked up in full Moses garb and said ‘Hey, good to see you.’” It’s good to see all that extra business, too, say the restaurateurs. “The working crew, they’ll come here on Thursday or Friday to order 20 or 30 pizzas, so they can feed the whole crew,” says Bray. “It’s really odd for us to accommodate that in terms of ordering produce. But we won’t say no to the business.” Shipp is more succinct: “It’s going to be a real bummer to see them go.”
What’s brewing in ConAgra
In other Crozet news, Starr Hill Brewery is now fully up and running in the ConAgra building. Owner and master brewer Mark Thompson says that, after a year of rejiggering part of the gargantuan space, he’s ready to produce about 5,000 barrels of beer this year, up from 3,500 last year in the old W. Main Street location (where Starr Hill Restaurant still sits). That’s a big jump, but it’s nothing compared to the 30,000-barrel capacity Thompson says the new facility could potentially handle. “We are going to be the next national beer brand,” he declares. The 20-year plan is for Starr Hill to be distributed internationally. (Restaurantarama loves the smell of frothy-headed world domination in the morning!) Meanwhile, you’ll begin seeing more Starr Hill brews in stores around town, starting with Jomo Lager (which, as local beer lovers well know, used to be called Mojo—the moniker had to be scrambled due to a naming conflict with a Colorado-based brewery). The restaurant has gained a private-party room where the brewery used to be. And in three years or so, you can drop into the Starr Hill tasting room in Crozet and sample some suds on the giant building’s rooftop patio. “You can only imagine what it looks like out here as the sun sets over Jarman’s Gap,” says Thompson. Pretty nice, we bet—and even better with a beer.