On a roll
So check out the latest benefit of restaurants on wheels: Popular food trucks are just a whim and a few interstates away from rolling into town.
Virginia native and Culinary Institute of America graduate Whitney Matthews started her high-end seafood truck, SpiceSea Gourmet, in September of 2012, but after three good years in San Antonio, she started feeling homesick. The solution? Drive her business to C’ville, where she’ll be about an hour from her hometown of Fort Hill.
“It’s close to my parents and close to the mountains,” she said. “It looks like Charlottesville is on the cusp of really opening its arms to food trucks. It’s a smaller scene, and there are no seafood trucks, so I thought maybe Charlottesville needed a seafood truck.”
That’s not entirely true—the folks behind Anderson’s Carriage Food House closed their brick-and-mortar biz on Barracks Road but still run a trailer offering mostly fresh seafood—but Matthews may indeed have found a niche. She’s used her gourmet education and two years of fine dining experience to craft a menu that includes Virginia-style crab cakes, shrimp salad, chowder, fried lobster mac-n-cheese and seafood sandwiches.
“I try to use local purveyors,” Matthews said. “In San Antonio, I really didn’t change the menu much. I have a different idea in mind for Charlottesville. Here it seems like people are interested in trying new things.”
SpiceSea Gourmet should hit our streets any day now. Find the truck on social media to keep track of its daily location.
JABA retires Vinegar Hill Café
About two years after it opened, the Vinegar Hill Café in the Jefferson School City Center will close its doors. The café is owned and managed by the Jefferson Area Board for Aging (JABA), and revenues went toward the organization’s senior meals program. The menu included smoothies, Greenberry’s coffee and homemade baked goods, plus lunch items like sandwiches, wraps and salads.
In a statement announcing the closure, JABA CEO Marta Keane said the decision resulted from ongoing difficulty creating enough business to make the restaurant self-sustaining. “After many marketing efforts and outreach for the past two years, we have concluded that this is not a business we can be in,” wrote Keane. The closing of the café, however, allows JABA to dedicate part of the space to the Mary Williams Community Center, one of many JABA-sponsored centers for seniors to gather for activities, classes and events.
“We’re very excited because it will give us an expanded opportunity to increase our membership as well as our activities,” she said.
The Jefferson School City Center is home to several local nonprofits. The community center, located in the building that formerly housed a historic African-American school, integrates recreation, health and education under one roof. Keane said she hopes the rest of the café’s space will become additional space for one of the other tenants, allowing it to expand as well.
The pasta nights and Chillin’ & Grillin’ events scheduled at Vinegar Hill Café have been canceled, but you can still pop in for a pastry or a cup of coffee between 8:30am and 3pm, Monday-Friday until the end of May.
Crozet Pizza founder dies
Bob Crum, who founded the renowned Crozet Pizza restaurant with his wife Karen in 1977, died on May 5. He was 73.
Crozet Pizza personnel announced Crum’s death on the restaurant’s Facebook page on May 7 and have since received an outpouring of support from the Crozet and Charlottesville communities, according to a company spokesperson.
The online announcement indicated Crum created Crozet Pizza on the idea that ingredients should be thoughtfully procured long before the “buy local” phenomenon took off. The five-table restaurant Crum launched in Crozet would go on to earn national accolades and spawn a second location at the Buddhist Biker Bar on the Corner. The two restaurants have been operated by Crum’s daughter Colleen and her husband Mike Alexander since 2004.
“Mrs. Crum perfected the dough, Mr. Crum perfected the sauce and he made every single pizza by hand for 31 years,” read the tribute on the Crozet Pizza Facebook page. “Together the Crums created a culture around Crozet Pizza that we know, love and very much appreciate today. Please join us as we offer support, kindness, prayers and a fondness for what Mr. Crum created in our community.”
Crum was honored with a memorial service on May 11 that included tributes from local community members as well as a representative of National Geographic, which once claimed Crozet Pizza made the best pies in the world. Members of the Crum family were unavailable for comment, citing bereavement.