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The figs of Fifeville: The neighborhood’s secret bounty ripens in the summer heat

A fig tree sprawls to the edge of the sidewalk on Sixth Street in Fifeville. Photo: Eze Amos

My first intoxicating taste of a freshly picked fig took place in the formal garden at Villa Vignamaggio, in Tuscany. Frozen in Renaissance times, the setting had a surreal beauty to it, the kind you see in period pieces—like 1993’s Much Ado About Nothing, which was filmed at Vignamaggio. The villa’s owner, a lawyer from Rome, reached up into the tree, plucked a ripe fruit, and asked, “Would you like a fig?”

Following his example, I held the stem with my fingertips and bit into the flesh of the green-skinned bulb. I had grown up on Fig Newtons, with their chalky pastry wrapped around a too-sweet gummy filling, and I had sampled figs in fancy New York restaurants, usually with a bit of goat cheese and a balsamic-vinegar reduction. But the musk-and-honey flavor that filled my mouth at Vignamaggio made my eyes roll back in my head. I knew the experience could never be replicated. I feared no fig would ever taste as good.

Then I came to Charlottesville. And on a typically steamy summer day, I sat with my sister on the back porch of her house in Fifeville, drinking cold white wine in the hot air.

“Wanna go pick some figs?” she asked.

“Where, in Italy?” I replied.

“Nope,” she said. “Right up the street.”

I took the last swig from my glass, my sister grabbed a little wire basket, and within minutes we were gently pulling soft little orbs from the branches of a sprawling tree near the corner of Fifth and West Main streets. I looked around furtively, afraid that we’d be arrested. Even though the tree stood on the property of a shuttered restaurant, the angel on my shoulder told me we were trespassing and stealing.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Just pick.”

As I have discovered since then, fig trees thrive in Fifeville. The one near Fifth and Main became a popular community resource, but the owners of Little Star removed it last year because it was crowding their outdoor dining space (bummer). Walk along Fifth, Dice, Sixth, Sixth-and-a-Half, and Seventh streets, and you will see at least a dozen fig trees, tucked up against houses, looming by sidewalks, peeking over fence tops. Out of public view, in residents’ yards, even more figs grow. In mid-July most of the fruit is green, hard, and no bigger than your thumb. But as July stretches into August, the figs swell and ripen—the green skin showing a little purple—and the Fifeville fig harvest commences.

Devin Floyd, founder and director of Charlottesville’s Center for Urban Habitats, confirms that the fruit trees thrive in certain pockets of the city, including Fifeville and Belmont, where “marginally Mediterranean” growing conditions exist. This may be because of the sparse shade and sloping terrain, which drains well. “[Fig trees] need a dry and hot microclimate to do best,” Floyd wrote in an email. “I planted one in a south-facing lawn in Belmont. Ten years later, it is still kicking.”

Floyd is quick to point out that figs are a non-native species. Many sources cite California as the birthplace of the fig industry in America, but the fruit’s history there is rocky. In 1881, thousands of cuttings of the Smyrna variety were imported to the Golden State from Turkey. However, the trees bore no fruit until 1899, when the fig wasp, shipped in from the Middle East, performed the pollination that the Smyrna requires in order to produce.

Meanwhile, in Charlottesville, figs were already growing, thanks to—you guessed it—Thomas Jefferson. Touring the south of France in 1787, he wrote, “The most delicate figs known in Europe are those growing about this place.” Two years later, he received and planted 44 cuttings from France—including the Marseilles variety, which is the most common in Fifeville and does not require pollination by a wasp to bear fruit. Through sharing with local and out-of-state friends, Jefferson became the Johnny Apple Seed of figs.

Having collected about five pounds of fruit from the Fifth Street tree, my sister and I scurried home. She pulled a disc of Pillsbury pie dough from the refrigerator and set it on a cookie sheet. She smeared the dough with several tablespoons of apricot preserves (she said she sometimes uses lemon curd, instead), cut the figs into quarters, and arranged them in concentric circles atop the jam. After crimping the edges of the dough, she baked the galette (oh, so French!), and mouth-watering aromas wafted out of the kitchen.

The experience was unexpectedly moving. My body was in Fifeville, but my mind traveled to a villa in Tuscany.

Fig trees thrive in certain pockets of the city, including Fifeville and Belmont, where “marginally Mediterranean” growing conditions exist.

Through sharing with local and out-of-state friends, Jefferson became the Johnny Apple Seed of figs.

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Living Uncategorized

Eat, drink, repeat: A new chapter for Starr Hill, and other tasty news

Starr Hill Brewery plans to return to its Charlottesville roots next year, anchoring the multi-vendor food hall at Dairy Market, now being built on Preston Avenue. Rendering: Stony Point Design/Build

We thought summer was a time to relax. Not afraid to admit it—we were wrong. Restaurant openings, the arrival of a hot new chef, a unique Parisian-style wine-and-food event, and the return of a familiar player on the Charlottesville scene show that there’s no time like the present to charge ahead. Never mind the heat. A little sweat is good for the heart and soul. And the appetite, too,

A Starr is reborn

Starr Hill Brewery will celebrate a homecoming of sorts when it opens in 2020 at Dairy Market, now under construction on Preston Avenue. Although the brewery’s flagship is in Crozet, Starr Hill first operated as a music venue on West Main in Charlottesville, and featured acts like My Morning Jacket and the Avett Brothers from 1999 to 2007. Starr Hill’s departure from the city coincided with its incarnation in Crozet—in the former Conagra frozen food plant—where the emphasis shifted to beer, but music also remained on the menu. At the Dairy location, says Duke Hill, Starr Hill’s VP of sales, the music “will be local singer/songwriter focused” and “complement the overall feel of the room.”

It’ll be nice to have Starr Hill back in town—occupying 4,200 square feet inside and a 1,000-square-foot patio, no less. A five-barrel brewing system will allow the brewer to experiment with small-batch beers, as it joins 14 other Virginia food-and-drink purveyors, and artisans, following the food hall model found in other cities.

Before moving to Crozet, Starr Hill operated as a music venue on West Main Street from 1999 to 2007. Photo: Courtesy Starr Hill

Wining and dining

Will and Priscilla Martin Curley promised ambitious offerings when they became owners of the Charlottesville Wine Guild earlier this year, and they are about to deliver. Their debut event, Bar Naturel, is a pop-up wine bar with a Parisian-style menu by chef John Shanesy of Commonwealth Restaurant & Skybar, and baked goods by the chef’s brother, Scott Shanesy, of She Wolf Bakery in New York City. Will Curley will serve wine by the glass and bottle from a list hewing to the “naturel” theme: wines made with native yeasts and grapes that are organic, biodynamic, and sustainably grown, including a super-trendy orange wine too. The menu, with small to large plates priced at about $8-20, will feature French cheeses, housemade charcuterie like boudin noir and paté champignon, oysters on the half shell, sardines with goose fat and apricots, and the traditional delicacy lièvre à la royale, made with wild hare, foie gras, and polenta. Intrigued? You can satisfy your curiosity from 6-11pm, July 12, 19, and 26, at Citizen Bowl, 223 W. Main St., on the Downtown Mall. 202-4223, wine guildcville.com

Special sauce

A top food destination in Staunton is The Shack, domain of Ian Boden, twice a semifinalist in the James Beard Best Chef Mid-Atlantic category. Boden’s inventive use of Southern ingredients shines in dishes like grilled pork loin with fermented sweet potato grits, guinea hen with Carolina gold rice and butter beans—and also in The Shack’s sorghum yellow mustard barbecue sauce. Bloomberg Businessweek magazine recently chose the sweet-but-zippy stuff as one of the nation’s five best BBQ sauces in a taste test by 30 editors, declaring, “It’s equally at home on duck breast or baby back ribs.” Pick some up at The Shack (and use the 80-mile round-trip drive as an excuse to stay for dinner), or order online at theshackva.com/shop.

Open-and-shut cases

The Shops at Stonefield’s Midici: The Neapolitan Pizza Company has disappeared from the websites of both the restaurant chain and the shopping center, and no one is answering calls at the upscale joint. Evidently, the Charlottesville shop has gone dark, and we hear it will be replaced by an outpost of Matchbox, the Washington, D.C.-based wood-fired pizza conglomerate. Meanwhile, in the Pantops Shopping Center, Mi Casita has opened, offering “Latin American breakfast, burritos, tacos, pupusas, and much more,” according to its website. A fan of the new restaurant called C-VILLE Weekly to rave about Mi Casita’s food, which is centered on the cuisines of El Salvador and Honduras (hence, the pupusas). Finally, Madison’s Early Mountain Vineyards welcomes a new executive chef, Tim Moore. A sous chef for the past seven years at the renowned Inn at Little Washington, Moore steps into the kitchen at Early Mountain on the heels of Ryan Collins, now of Little Star on West Main Street.  

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Living

Thirst ’n howl: Wild Wolf opens second location downtown

Nelson County's Wild Wolf Brewing Company will hold the grand opening of its downtown Charlottesville location on June 2. Photo: courtesy Wild Wolf Brewing Company.

The door, kitchen, and taps are open at Wild Wolf Brewing Company’s downtown location, hard by the railroad tracks on Second Street. The brewery and restaurant’s soft opening in the former Augustiner Hall and Garden space precedes an “official” debut on June 2.

But there’s a hitch: Due to federal regulatory snags, the Wolf can’t yet serve its own beer, a lingering mess caused by the government shutdown (remember that?). One manager said he’d been informed that the ban would be lifted on Independence Day. Oh, the irony. In the meantime, while shiny nano-brewing vats stand idle in the dining room, patrons will have to settle for frothy beverages by Deschutes, Champion, and Three Notch’d, among others.

Chef Chris Jack, formerly of Staunton’s Zynodoa Restaurant, says the Wolf’s Charlottesville menu—as opposed to the one at its flagship, in Nellysford—has been “upscaled” to fit in the mix of culinary offerings nearby on the Downtown Mall. “Out in Nellysford, we do a lot of wood-smoking, but we wanted to try something different here,” he says.

So, while you can still get a corn dog ($6) for your kid, you may also tuck into a Candy Bar Steak ($28), with creamy risotto, carrot and roasted beet purée, heirloom carrots, and orange crème fraiche. A good ol’ cheddar burger will set you back $13.50.

Patrons may sit at outdoor tables shaded by bright red umbrellas (the patio shakes a bit when trains roll by), or duck inside, where the interior is dark, sleek, and industrial, with corrugated steel walls, exposed ductwork and ceiling trusses, and lots of wood surfaces. Four big-screen TVs hang above the U-shaped bar, so this will be a haven for sports fans—and eventually, fans of Wild Wolf’s own beer.

Take two

The smallest restaurant in Charlottesville, The Flat Creperie, has re-opened. Soon after it was offered for sale in a March 22 tweet, Elise Stewart became the third owner since the popular spot first opened in 2005. The menu is suitably short at the charming ivy-covered brick box on Water Street, with four sweet and four savory offerings. We tried the Summer Veggies crepe, a thin doughy wrap stuffed with chopped red pepper, mushrooms, zucchini, olives, tomato, feta, and caramelized onions—a tasty, two-handed meal for $8.

Nibbles

Just in time for the heat wave, Greenberry’s Coffee Co. is offering a line of canned cold-brew coffees. Root 29 is open for business at the DoubleTree by Hilton Charlottesville, with small and large plates served in a glass-walled room with a long bar and a trippy fake fireplace. Early Mountain Vineyards will soon announce the arrival of a new chef to fill the role once held by Ryan Collins, now of Charlottesville’s Little Star. Patisserie Torres, the sublime pastry shop of Serge Torres, formerly of Fleurie, is shuttering after less than a year in business. The boutique Oakhurst Inn (owned by C-VILLE Weekly co-founder Bill Chapman) has revealed the imminent arrival of Oakhurst Hall, an annex with eight guest rooms and—most importantly—the Chateau Lobby Bar, where craft cocktails, light fare, and live music will be on the menu.

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Living

Friendly takeover: Local writer and photographer to reopen Milli Coffee Roasters

John Borgquist, a longtime customer of Milli’s, will reopen the shop June 1 with the help of Sophia Milli Leichtentritt, a sister of the original owner, Nick, who recently passed away. “The best decision for the shop was to keep it open and keep Nick’s vision alive,” says Borgquist. Photo: Eze Amos

On a sultry day in late May, John Borgquist and Sophia Milli Leichtentritt sit at a table in Milli Coffee Roasters, at the corner of Preston Avenue and Ridge McIntire Road. Outside, traffic swooshes by in the glaring sunlight, but inside it’s dark and quiet, except for the intermittent buzz and whir of power tools—the shop is getting a touch-up. A wide strip of black-and-white photographs, portraits of customers taken by Borgquist, line the walls.

It’s impossible not to feel the heaviness of the mood, which is also written in Borgquist and Leichtentritt’s stoic expressions. The two have known one another since 2012, when Leichtentritt’s brother Nick and his wife, Nicole, opened the coffeehouse, giving it Sophia’s middle name. She was just 12 at the time, the youngest of the six Leichtentritt siblings. Nick was the second oldest of the tight-knit family, a charismatic figure who passed away suddenly and unexpectedly on February 17.

“He was a lot of things to me,” Sophia, 19, says, her eyes glistening. “He was a mentor—that gave him some room to be hard on me. But he was also soft, like a big brother should be.”

Milli’s closed after Nick died, leaving hundreds of devoted customers without the gathering place they had come to love. But Borgquist—who first visited the coffee shop less than a month after it opened and quickly became a regular—decided to fill that void. In a video posted on Milli’s Facebook page two weeks ago, Borgquist, 37, stood beside Nicole Leichtentritt and announced that he would be buying the business.

“The best decision for the shop was to keep it open and keep Nick’s vision alive,” says Borgquist, who plans to reopen Milli’s on June 1.

“It is difficult,” Sophia says, remarkably keeping her composure. “But John is a phenomenal person. I don’t think there’s anyone better to pass the baton off to.”

Nick was open and generous with his emotions, and with Milli’s he created a nurturing haven. You can learn this by reading the comments on the GoFundMe page, Jesse’s Bright Future, created for Nick and Nicole’s 4-year-old son. As of May 24, donations had reached $24,766 of the $30,000 goal.

“Milli Coffee Roasters was pretty much my second home and the place where my friends and I became family,” one donor wrote.

“I was always struck by the obvious love and affection the Leichtentritt family exudes,” wrote another.

Those feelings drew Borgquist to Milli’s, where he became a thread in the fabric of the coffee shop’s culture. In addition to his gig as a photographer, Borgquist is a freelance writer under contract with a financial publisher. He often worked at Milli’s, sipping coffee with his laptop propped open on the table.

Borgquist says he’s planning a few changes: Milli’s will offer fruit smoothies and blended coffee drinks, and exhibit local artists’ work, starting with a show of Paige Speight’s paintings.

“The shop is certainly going to develop over time,” Borgquist says. “But Nick was a good friend of mine, and I don’t want to mess up the spirit of Milli’s.”

Milli Coffee Roasters, 400 Preston Ave., 270-9706

Updated 9:21am May 30, 2019: In an earlier version of this story, the sister of the late Nick Leichtentritt, Sophia Milli Leichtentritt, was misidentified. We regret the error. 

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Abode

Form and color: Christina Osheim’s sublime ceramics

Osheim’s aesthetic reflects mid-century modern style and her Scandinavian roots. Photo: Christina Osheim

Christina Osheim distills a wealth of fine arts education and diverse influences into her ceramics. She studied at Minnesota’s St. Olaf College, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the Cranbrook Academy of Art before establishing her Charlottesville studio, Möbius Keramikk, at 1740 Broadway St. Her wheel-thrown objects (cups and tumblers) and items with stenciled patterns (plates and tiles) show great skill and originality. But her one-off cast pieces set her work apart.

“These objects—they are cast, but they are canvases,” says Osheim, a third-generation Norwegian-American. “My duty as an artist is to create patterns in color that highlight their three-dimensionality.”

Hence the word Möbius in her studio name: It refers to the poem “Möbius Strip” by French surrealist Robert Desnos, and to the flat-but-twisted loop associated with the infinity symbol as well as the transition from two to three dimensions.

Discovering her creations online or at events, customers have taken note, and orders pour in from across the United States all the way to Paris.

What do people see in her art? Modernism, surrealism, elegance and simplicity. These attributes stem from her Scandinavian roots, her education in sculpture, her time at Cranbrook (the “incubator” of mid-century modernism), and influences including director David Lynch, sculptor Louise Bourgeois, and assemblage artist Joseph Cornell.

A sense of playfulness is also evident. Osheim tells the story of once creating a ceramic chamber pot—a reference to Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain,” a porcelain urinal submitted, but never displayed, at the 1917 Society of Independent Artists show in New York.

It’s difficult to sum up what makes Osheim’s ceramics so compelling. But a line on her website (mobiuskeramikk.com) gets close: “Her work explores the concepts of ‘high’ art in everyday objects with humor and intellect.”

We agree, and feel fortunate to have Osheim as part of Charlottesville’s arts community.

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Abode

A family home: The couple retired near Keswick, but the kids are always welcome

Tucked into a hardwood grove, the house lives up to its nickname, A Walk in the Woods. Photo: Peter LaBau

After meeting in college, the couple got married and pursued their respective careers—she as a librarian and he as a patent attorney—living for many years in Delaware. About two years ago, when the time came for them to retire, there was little question they’d end up near Keswick, specifically, on a piece of land connected to her mom and dad’s farm.

“I distinctly remember when I first came to visit her family,” says the husband. “I thought, wow, what a nice area. There’s a lot of nature, and yet it’s not far from Charlottesville.”

The rooms on the main floor sit on the same level, easing transitions as one moves from one part of the house to the next. A partial ceiling defines the kitchen and dining areas. Photo: Peter LaBau

Many years ago, her parents had bought the land where the couple’s new home now stands to protect the views. But having a few acres to situate a house and having one built for you are two very different things. “I had never worked with an architect—that’s just not me,” she says. “I’m a librarian!”

Ah, but librarians are good at research, and after many hours of looking at architects’ websites, she discovered Charlottesville’s Peter LaBau of GoodHouse Design, which specializes in residential design. “I talked to Peter, and we had a comfortable rapport,” she says, adding that LaBau’s co-principal, Jessie Chapman, was also a key player in the project.

“We agreed on that point,” he says. “And my personal preference just happened to be to live in a house in the woods—so that’s what we have.”

The home lives up to its nickname, A Walk in the Woods.

“It’s in the woods, but there’s a lot of light,” she says. “Every morning I wake up and look outside, and the fields and the forest present different colors. It makes me want to go outside, but because of the openness of the design and the large windows, there’s a feeling of being outside without having to go there.”

Also, having grown up in the area, she had spent time in many local friends’ houses, historical ones that had been added onto over the years. “There were a lot of different levels, steps up or steps down into different rooms,” she says. “I knew we didn’t want that—we want this to be our last house, so ease of movement from one room to the next was an important consideration.”

In the master bathroom, natural stone tiles pull together all the surfaces, including a painted vanity, built-in wood bench, and textured tile shower walls. Photo: Peter LaBau

The rooms on the main floor sit on the same level, easing transitions as one moves from one space to the next. But the house isn’t uniformly horizontal. It presents three primary upper volumes—the garage, the bedroom wing, and the loft above the main living area. “We wanted enough space where, when everyone came to visit they could have some alone time and close a door,” he says.

Guest bedrooms on the first floor and in the loft accommodate frequent visits by the couple’s sons. “One is married, one is engaged, and one is dating,” she says. “No grandchildren yet—but we have plenty more room.”

Technical considerations

Before construction began, LaBau and associate Victor Colom staked out the proposed position of the house. “So, we knew the direction the front of the house would be facing,” the husband says. “Peter is deep in thought. Finally, he says, ‘Wait a second. We need to rotate this whole thing 10 degrees to the right—that is the view you want.’”

The couple agreed that the architect was right—just like he was about many other technical and design considerations. “It is a house designed to look like it evolved out of the site,” she says.

Because of that organic feel, the couple considered cladding the exterior in reclaimed pine or cedar. Then the husband asked colleagues at work about the materials. “They said, ‘Oh, the woodpeckers! You’re going to attract every one from miles around.’”

Also rejected was a roof made entirely of raised-seam metal, even though the couple both liked the sound of rain falling on such a surface. But after the husband visited a friend in North Carolina who had a home with a metal roof, and overhanging oak branches, the couple backed off of the idea. “When the acorns were falling, it sounded like gunshots going off,” he says.

Regardless of the roof (it’s shingled, by the way), the couple still loves the secluded feeling of living among so many trees. “It’s zoned rural, and it remains rural,” she says, noting that the closest neighbors are a quarter to a half mile away. “When the trees leaf out, you don’t see light from the neighbors’ houses at all.”

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Abode

Back to nature: A graphic artist creates a great escape in Nelson County

A balcony perches outside the third-floor, which is used as a meditation room. Beneath the exterior cladding, foam panels envelope the house, increasing its energy efficiency. Photo: Prakash Patel

The graphic artist, web designer, and bookbinder worked in Charlottesville for many years, running her own business. She shifted gears, taking a full-time job at a non-profit. But after a while, she wanted to get back to being her own boss, and to find a way to spend more time in the country, gardening, hiking, communing with nature, and meditating.

The south-facing roof rises up to the top of the second floor, creating an open interior space with natural surfaces including wood and locally quarried soapstone. Photo: Prakash Patel

She envisioned a minimal, modern, energy-efficient home with a studio, situated on plenty of land to grow her own food. Armed with sketches of her dream home, and a conviction to live sustainably, she called on a former client, architect Chris Hays, of Hays + Ewing Design Studio. When Hays learned what she wanted, he thought immediately of builder Peter Johnson, and the collaboration began.

“It was a very dynamic process,” Johnson says. “The client had strong ideas for the home, and Chris was quick to draw them. I’ve worked with him many times. When he draws out his plans, even in preliminary stages, he puts them into CAD so they are easy to envision.”

The client also had a nice chunk of property, 94 acres with a perfect spot to build. “It was a house to be located on top of a hill with a nice view out to the west,” Hays says. “We were looking at a smallish house, but on the other hand, she was interested in getting up high to see the property.”

All indicators pointed to a vertical space. “We went through a few ideas before we came up with something we were excited about,” Hays says. “We came up with a third floor that she could use to meditate, and also look out at the land and all of the wildlife.”

After a few design iterations, Hays and the client agreed that they’d devised a good scheme. “She said that it really felt right for the place, which is one of the greatest compliments we could get,” Hays says.

Building a modern dream home

The fundamental idea of verticality was reinforced by the client’s desire to install a radiant-heat oven that can also be used to cook. Made by Tulikivi, Finland’s largest stone producer, the soapstone-clad unit is so large and heavy that it requires its own concrete footing and foundation. It also contributes to the home’s energy efficiency. A single firing with split wood provides 12 hours of heat.

One firing of the gray soapstone oven on the first floor provides heat for 12 hours. It is beautiful but, practically speaking, largely redundant, because the house is also heated via solar power. Photo: Prakash Patel

For practical purposes, the Tulikivi is largely redundant—ample energy for heating is provided by solar panels on the south-facing portion of the roof (more on that later). But the oven is quite beautiful, a tall rectangle of mid-gray stone with a cylindrical stainless-steel flue that shoots up through the open-plan home and exhausts through the roof.

“It has emotional and psychological benefits, in terms of the warming,” Hays says. “You also have a cooking compartment up above the main hearth, which has a glass door. From the bathroom, you can see out to the oven and the flames inside.”

Hays also designed the staircase to convey heat from the first floor to the third. This provides warmth throughout the house—including the studio on the second floor—when it’s cold outside, and when temperatures climb, windows on the top floor can be opened to let heat escape.

The roof is a key element of the design, rising up to cover the second floor, flattening out, and then zigzagging down to form a porte cochere. Photo: Prakash Patel

Now, about the roof. On a conventional home, the roof may simply be a cap on a box, but here it’s a key element of Hays’ design. From the south extremity of the structure, the roof climbs at an angle to the top of the second floor; solar panels cover this part of the surface. After flattening out and reaching south, the roof drops more or less straight down, and then completes its zig-zagging journey with an L-shape that encloses the porte cochere, which also serves as the woodshed.

Viewed from the east or the west, the roof establishes the clean, modern feel of the home. The rather simple exterior finishes—horizontal red cedar siding on the east and west walls, and rectangular fiber cement  panels on the north and south—enhance this aesthetic, as do the plentiful (and large) windows.

Beneath the exterior cladding lies an envelope of thick foam slabs, which seal and insulate the structure. “We did blower and duct-blaster tests and were very pleased with the results,” Johnson says. “The house is tight.”

Inside, finishes selected by the client lend a natural feel. “I wanted to go really organic—oak floors, maple cabinetry, porcelain tiles,” she says. “The central space is all enclosed in plywood. It’s like there’s a treehouse in the center of the house. The counters are soapstone that was quarried right nearby the house.”

The client now has the country place she envisioned, with plenty of room for planting outdoors. “My mom always said two things about me: My eyes are bigger than my stomach, and I always bite off more than I can chew,” she says. “I guess that’s why I ended up with a one-and-a-half-acre orchard and garden.”

The client just added chickens to the mix (“Oh, and I have to build a coop,” she says), and she plans on getting goats and honey-producing bee hives. Her enthusiasm and energy are seemingly endless.

“It was a lot of fun working with her, because she cares a lot about design,” Hays says. “It was very much like a partnership. Peter, the builder, was also very invested to get things exactly right. We were a good team.”

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Living

For the health of it: Smoothies (and yoga) join the menu on the Corner

Corner Juice's menu isn't completely organic, which "gives us the opportunity to make [our offerings] a little more accessible to a wider variety of people," says co-founder Julie Nolet.

By Max Patten

The Corner on West Main Street has long been the go-to spot for burger bars like Boylan Heights, convenience store eats à la Sheetz, and late-night carbo-loading fixtures such as Insomnia Cookies. Yet times are changing, and smoothies and organic juices have recently joined the mix, as the demand for food that is both healthier and more environmentally conscious increases.

The Juice Laundry was founded in 2013 by UVA law grad Mike Keenan. Inside, natural materials and a clean, open environment makes for an interior that contrasts starkly with that of adjacent businesses. The menu—which includes cold-pressed juices, nut milks, and even vegan mac and cheese—is also very much on trend.

“We have more than just juice and smoothies,” says Julie Nolet, the co-founder of Corner Juice, a Juice Laundry competitor that offers not just food but also yoga classes. She started the business with the help of Joseph Linzon, co-owner of Roots Natural Kitchen, another healthy eating option on the Corner. Corner Juice partnered with Elements, a Charlottesville yoga studio, to round out its wellness appeal. “The best thing to pair with healthy food is healthy living,” Nolet says.

And vegan students are not the only ones buying smoothies. “We also see a fairly large number of persons who are either patients or visiting patients at the hospital,” says Cliffe Keenan, who works at The Juice Laundry and also happens to be the founder’s father. Keenan says he frequently explains the shop’s origins to curious customers. “They appreciate what the backstory is,” he says. “Some people assume this must be a chain. No, it’s not a chain.”

Corner Juice also finds itself at a nexus of local and student activity. “We get people that are visiting Charlottesville because of the Rotunda and UVA,” Nolet says. “We’re actually opening up a second location downtown so hopefully we’ll then get more of a different kind of client base.”

Beyond sharing vegan appeal through their food, both The Juice Laundry and Corner Juice & Yoga advocate sustainability. The Juice Laundry has no trash cans, prompting customers to divide their waste among three bins, and Corner Juice & Yoga has chutes for discarding materials that are recyclable or suitable for composting.

Cliff Keenan says his son “wants to make sure that we leave as gentle of a footprint as possible,” in contrast to the Corner’s older establishments, which still use styrofoam containers and plastic straws. Both Corner Juice and The Juice Laundry also encourage reusable bottles.

The two businesses occupy slightly different niches. The Juice Laundry justifies its higher prices, in part, with an in-store graphic showing the chain of ingredients that goes into its food. “We’re also 100 percent organic,” says Keenan. By contrast, Corner Juice’s menu is not completely organic. “That gives us the opportunity to make these healthy foods a little more accessible to a wider variety of people,” says Nolet.

Both businesses’ success suggests the wellness and sustainability model is more than a trend. “I think we’re on the edge of a way that many more people, especially young people, are starting to look at how they consume things,” Keenan says.

Corner Juice’s menu isn’t completely organic, which “gives us the opportunity to make [our offerings] a little more accessible to a wider variety of people,” says co-founder Julie Nolet.

Max Patten is a staff writer at The Cavalier Daily.

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Abode

Heart of the townhome: A bright kitchen anchors a modern rowhouse

Dark features such as the dining table, bar walls, and cabinetry hardware accent the room, where white stone, tile, and painted surfaces dominate. Photo: Virginia Hamrick

The Charlottesville woman grew up in California wine country—St. Helena, to be precise. Her home, where she lived until she was 16, had a farmhouse feel: open, airy, and not fussy in the least. It was a place for family and friends to gather and literally see one another, without too many walls getting in the way.

She and her husband, a Charlottesville developer—working with interior designer Jeannette Andamasaris, a principal of Brooklyn-based Figure studio—have created just such a space on the first floor of their three-floor townhome. It is one of many standing cheek-to-jowl along the railroad tracks east of the Downtown Mall. Made of white-painted brick, the couple’s home is classic and fresh, intentionally evoking an urban rowhouse, with large south-facing windows opening up a façade that might otherwise feel monolithic.

The front door opens to reveal a single volume, with a high ceiling and a sight line directly to the large kitchen island, a rectangle formed by three slabs of white stone. It is leathered marble, the wife explains, and when you run your hand over it you can feel the texture created by the slightly raised gray veins. The surface is also porous and not too shiny—a polished finish would exude a certain formality, the opposite of what the couple wants.

“There are going to be watermarks, wine stains, splatters of tomato sauce,” she says. “Fine with me! This is a home, not a museum.”

A sink with dark matte fixtures punctures the marble, which connects visually with the material that forms another rectangle, this one affixed to the rear wall and concealing the exhaust hood above a Wolf six-burner stove. Above concrete countertops, white subway tile climbs all the way to the ceiling and surrounds two large windows. The same tile comprises the backsplash of the bar adjacent to the kitchen island, a design choice that connects the cooking space to the bar, which transitions into the dining area.

The latter is simply a dark wood table with six chairs, subtly set off from the kitchen by a long, tubular light fixture that hangs from the ceiling and has an industrial look. The move from the dining area to the living space, in the front of the room, is also seamless.

“We just really wanted an open space with maximum light,” says the wife, who, with her husband, has a nearly 3-year-old daughter and three dogs. “We love to cook as a family, and sit down and eat as a family, and just hang out with the dogs.”

And for all of that, they have the perfect space.

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Abode

Wonder wall: An expansive pine façade melds beauty and functionality

The simplicity and uniformity of the wall enhance the other primary quality of the apartment, namely, openness. Photo: Virginia Hamrick

There’s an air of mystery about the renovated third-floor apartment on the Downtown Mall. A wall of rough-sawn reclaimed white oak treated with bleaching oil runs nearly the entire length of the main room, interrupted only by the rectangular opening that accommodates the black-glass stovetop, kitchen sink, and counter space for food prep.

A gentle push unlatches sections of the wall, which open to reveal key elements of the apartment, such as the bathroom. Photo: Virginia Hamrick

It’s a bold design feature, the materiality of which is complemented by the plank floors, also reclaimed white oak but smooth and stained slightly darker. Scanning the wall, a visitor can’t help but think, where is everything? The bathroom, pantry, dishwasher, cabinets, refrigerator, freezer, and drawers to hold silverware and cooking utensils? Also, what about the HVAC ducts, utilities, and wiring that makes this place work?

Architect Jeff Bushman smiles slyly. He presses a section of the wall and a door pops open, revealing the fridge and freezer. I’m starting to get it. “Where’s the bathroom?” I ask. He nudges another panel. It unlatches with a click-click and swings open to a bright, spacious bathroom with a glass-walled shower. “We needed the central wall to be functional,” says Bushman, of Charlottesville’s Bushman Dreyfus Architects. “But we didn’t design it just to hide things. It fits with the clean, pared-down look we wanted.”

The simplicity and uniformity of the wall enhance the other primary quality of the apartment, namely, openness. The floor-through view is uninterrupted from the front, which overlooks the mall, to the back, which faces Water Street. The staircase leading to the loft bedroom is made of perforated steel, a porous barrier separating the dining area near the rear of the apartment from the assemblage of living-room furniture up front. In the bedroom, six light wells open up the peaked ceiling, offering a leafy, eye-level view of tall oaks on the mall.

The view is unfettered from the rear of the apartment, which faces Water Street, to the front, which overlooks the Downtown Mall. Photo: Virginia Hamrick

The thoroughly modern feel of the space runs counter to the historic nature of the building. Constructed in 1843 at 118 E. Main St., it and its neighbor, 114 E. Main St., are the oldest structures on the mall. Bushman says the apartment building required “a deep, frame-up restoration,” but he was proud to have done it. “We stripped everything back to the bones, so you could see all the original brick,” he says. He points to the exposed red-brick wall beside the staircase that connects the small entry space and the main floor. “That, right there, is your truth wall,” he says. “It’s an important part of the story.”