Author: Preston Long

They go by many names. Some are so elusive, the names may as well be aliases. But they could be what saves us. They are, after all, where everyone comes together. Greeks and Turks, Muslims and Christians alike can all get behind the kebab (anglicized Turkish spelling), the kabob (Afghan version), the döner, and the gyro.

Michael Turk and his business partner, Tony, serve excellent döner kebabs (the Turkish grandfather of the Greek gyro) at Bazlamas, a trailer that they park between the amphitheater and Garrett Hall on Grounds at lunchtime, when school is in. You can also catch them outside of the brand new Champion Brewing Company on Sixth Street SE, Thursday through Saturday evenings. They use halal beef and lamb ground together and seasoned with oregano, thyme, black and marash pepper, and paprika. They pile in crisp vegetables and ladle on the thing that sets them apart —their sauce: a garlic yogurt base with Turkish olive oil, Turkish tahini, and four Turkish spices. It all gets rolled up in a warm homemade pita for $6.49 or served open face with side and drink for $9.99. There’s also a veggie option. Make it a point to find these guys. They’re on Twitter @bazlamas.

At the wise behest of the other occupant of this newsprint, Megan J. Headley, I sought out Angelo Vangelopoulos at the Ivy Inn, who it turns out is the direct descendent of gyro royalty. His father used to have the great gyro shop Icarus in Georgetown, D.C., before throwing in with Angelo to buy the Ivy Inn in 1995. The Ivy serves a small gyro as part of a lamb platter entrée. Angelo grinds pork, beef, and lamb together, spices it just so, bakes it in a pâté mold, then slices it into gyro units. Then there’s tomato, onion, cilantro, feta, and creamy tzatziki on pita. It’s marvelous. Only thing is, it’s $30.

Strict Virginia health regulations deter most döner and gyro purveyors from setting up rotisserie spits—which are common in big cities and across Europe—and carving the meat off the spit to order. “If the health inspector sticks a thermometer in the meat and it’s above 41 or below 135 degrees,” one chef told me, “you’ll have to throw it out.” So most make due with pre-cooked meats that they reheat on a griddle.

Ariana Grill Kabob House on West Main puts out a right fine gyro, but last time I was there I went for the kofta kabob, an Afghan delight of seasoned ground beef packed into links, skewered, and grilled. It comes on basmati rice with hot greens and fresh bread for $9.95.

Three months ago, Mansur and Mustafa, brothers of Turkish descent from Caucasus Russia, opened M&M Lounge and Restaurant where the Outback Lounge used to sit. They serve beef and chicken kebabs, chunks of meat marinated overnight in vinegar with onions, pepper, and “secret ingredients.” They don’t serve lamb kebabs because, Mansur reckons, “Americans tend to eat too slow for lamb. Lamb isn’t as good after it’s been sitting.”

Wait, Americans eat slow? I will pull the last flap of flesh that I just burned off of the roof of my mouth and, without so much as taking another breath, sink my teeth right back into the piping hot gyro that scalded me in the first place.

Anyway, the kebabs are grilled over charcoal and served on rice with a salad, homemade bread, and a dipping bowl of lemon juice and olive oil. As a platter, it’s $12.95, but you can get it in a wrap for $8.75.

Sultan Kebab is a Turkish restaurant tucked into a stealthy little strip mall at 1710 Seminole Trail. There is almost no chance you’ll happen to just notice this place as you’re whizzing up 29N, but it’s there serving up excellent halal lamb, chicken, and döner kebabs, plus a full menu of Turkish fare.

Whether you’re a vegetarian or the kind of person who will pull over at he faintest waft of smoking hickory charcoals, sometimes it’s not a bad idea to just lay off the meat for a spell. Revolutionary Soup and Eppie’s may earn top marks for vegetarian fare in Best of C-VILLE every year, but the choices for tasty meatless meals have come a long way of late.

The menu at Song Song’s Zhou & Bing, 108 Fifth St. SE, has three basic categories: zhou, salads and bings. Zhou (pronounced “joe”) is a thick soup that comes in two varieties. The first is the 10-grain (buckwheat, barley, wheat, and oats; a blend of rices; yellow millet; and the medicinal kickers, Job’s tear and Gordon Euryale seed). The other choice is the rice and celery zhou (sushi-grade rice, celery, and peanuts with a wolfberry additive). Both zhous are mild in flavor and benefit from the addition of red chili oil and pickled garlic cloves. Or, either can be sweetened with sugar and eaten as breakfast.

Song Song’s also offers two salad choices. One is a marvelous celery and peanut concoction spiced with star anise, chili oil, and rice vinegar. The peanuts are cooked in a spicy broth first. I detest celery in general but I love this salad. And for those who dig on the ’shroom, there’s a muer salad of woodear mushrooms from northeast China.

Lunch at Song Song’s is, however, based on the bing. The bing is a stuffed pancake with three options: vegetarian, red bean, or pork and leek (the only non-veggie menu item). The veggie bing (1) is fantastic. Sweet peas, corn, and mild cheddar cheese stuffed into a pancake, pan fried in just enough soy oil. They come out golden brown and just short of crispy on the outside. There’s soy sauce and a great rice wine vinegar for dipping, as well as chili oil for heat. If you’re lunching with a devoted carnivore, the delectable pork and leek bing will sate their every need.

Proprietor Song Song is formerly both a scientist and business executive. Eager scholar and polymath that she is, when it came time for a more passion-driven career change, she studied the ancient medicine and healing properties of carefully prepared foods from her native China. She opened the restaurant last January to offer healing foods. Her menu will tell you exactly which malady each zhou benefits and prevents. And she went one step further: Using family recipes and tricks she picked up through her own experimentation, she made it all delicious.

Song does everything here herself and is a relentless perfectionist, hand-picking produce several times weekly to ensure the highest quality. Every menu item is $2.50. If you spend $10 here, you’re a glutton.

Around the corner at Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar, there’s an almost entirely vegetarian menu. Last time there I tried both the dahl and rice (2), and the falafel pita (3). Dahl is the subcontinental lentil soup staple and done quite well here. It comes with a sweet chutney paste and pita for scooping. The falafel wrap comes with an excellent mixed green salad lightly coated in a miso dressing.

For those who like a bar scene, Black Market Moto Saloon, at Meade and Market, has been an invaluable addition to the veggie options on the Belmont dinner landscape. It serves a terrific black bean burger. In the $11 range, the Saloon offers rib-shaped tofu chunks slathered in a tangy barbeque sauce. Both plates come with either fries (go for the garlic version) or a mixed green salad in vinaigrette. All very good.

For weekend brunch, we’re staying in Belmont. La Taza, at Monticello and Hinton, lays out a very nice veggie quesadilla (4) with pineapple, pico di gallo, tomato, cilantro, and black beans in a lightly grilled flour tortilla. If you need eggs, the La Banessa (5) is three corn tortillas rolled up with egg, tomato, onion, and green chili and topped with sour cream and a black bean purée. There’s a dollop of red sauce for extra oomph in the middle of it all.

This is more about reliability than quality. If you’re looking for something to eat at 1am, how exquisite can you expect the cuisine to be? First thing you need to know is that the place is open. And that alone really narrows the field. And we’re talking mid-week here. We can’t concern ourselves with Friday and Saturday amateur nights.

Downtown, The Box continues to expand its nocturnal promise. It switches over to the late-night menu at 10pm and serves until 1 or 1:30am. There’s a Vietnamese, bánh mi-style cold chicken sandwich: seasoned cold chicken, shredded daikon pickled carrots, cucumber slices, jalapenos, cilantro and spicy mayo, served on a small baguette. There’s also edamame and Kalbi wings, which are available only off and on. What The Box does best is the spicy gochujang, twice-cooked crispy chicken wings (1). They are shock-boiled to eradicate impurities, then deep-fried and slathered in a Korean fermented soybean, red chili, and glutinous rice paste-based sauce with chili oil, ginger, scallion, and black and white sesame seeds. It’s quite tangy and nicely cooled by the freshly made chard-scallion ranch dip. And it’s $6 for six wings.

Miller’s kitchen serves until midnight, but to be safe order by 11:30pm. Options under $10 are sparse but include the Texas chili bowl and the fried green tomato salad, which a very discriminating vegetarian I know loves. Sliding in right at $10 is the small muffuletta, a New Orleans sandwich classic made with a variety of Italian cold cuts—ham, capicola, salami, mortadella, pepperoni—and provolone and Swiss cheeses. But the thing that sets the muffuletta apart is an olive salad spread that involves a variety of minced olives, olive oil, sweet peppers, capers, vinegar, and Italian herbs and spices. The whole thing is piled in the middle of a heavy, round roll with a texture and consistency akin to focaccia. They could probably find a fresher, fluffier brand of roll but the sandwich still hits the spot when most every place else is closed.

On the Corner you’ve got the White Spot, which will consistently hook you up until 3am. The Gus burger (2), a decked out slider with a fried egg on top (probably used more effectively over the years as a hangover prevention than cure) is world-famous and has more web-posted photos than Lindsay Lohan. I tried the gyro sandwich last time and it wasn’t bad. The gyro meat is pre-sliced and packaged and seared on the griddle, but then put together with much gusto: tomato, onion, feta cheese, and tzatziki sauce on a nice, spongy pita. And the fries are top notch. I mean, there’s nothing wrong here.

A couple doors down, Littlejohn’s New York Deli serves all manner of specialty sandwiches of its own design, from clubs to reubens and more, and it’s open 24-7. The menu has subs of most every description from cheese steak to meatball. You can have ’em hot, cold, toasted or not. Pretty much all of it is under $7. There’s a pita pizza among the vegetarian options, but stick with the sandwiches. Littlejohn’s also knows to have a smattering of sauces on hand to ameliorate pretty much any situation.

And don’t discount the Waffle House option, again a 24-7 standby. I was in the Deep South last week and they are impossible to avoid. I took a London chef friend for breakfast Thanksgiving morning. He had The Texas sausage melt and hash browns smothered and peppered (3). Then sulked for the next three days because I couldn’t find the time to take him back. I opt for the patty melt and potatoes done the same way. The coffee is also better than any greasy spoon.

If every restaurant in the world served only pho, that would be fine by me. Pho is the Vietnamese beef noodle soup sensation that has been sweeping the nation the last 10 years or so. Charlottesville has been a latecomer to the pho scene, but there is one place doing it exactly right. Saturdays and Sundays from noon until 5pm, Lemongrass (at 14th and Wertland streets NW) serves the best pho in central Virginia.

Using a West Coast style beef broth as the basis for the beef pho (1) recipe, Saigon native Hiep Pham and his wife Mai, proprietors of Lemongrass, can manage to put the complex concoction on the menu for only 10 hours a week because of the huge kettles and two-day preparation required to brew this wondrous ambrosia in their small kitchen. Serving it only on weekends “is the only way we can maintain a certain quality,” said Hiep, an inspired pho enthusiast. The broth, anchored by beef knuckle, star anise, cinnamon, ginger root, cloves, onions, and scallions and filled out with slices of lean angus beef and rice vermicelli, is an aromatic and sublime blend and goes for under $8. You can pile on basil leaves, bean sprouts, lime, and jalapeño slices at your discretion. And a healthy dose of sriracha sends the whole thing into orbit. There’s also a chicken version.

Moto Pho Co. on West Main Street opened its doors in August and I ran there. The place looks and feels great, emits pleasant aromas and has cool outdoor tables. But after a few visits, giving it ample opportunity, there are a few vexing issues: inconsistent broth; an overpowering and salty fish sauce; and, inconceivably, on my last visit, the chicken pho came lukewarm.

As the chilly night air bears down, you’re going to need some mid-week options and hot soup variety. Bangkok art school graduates Kitty (who grew up in her family’s Bangkok restaurant) and Pooh, both formerly of Tara Thai, took over Monsoon Siam, at Market and Second streets NW, last July and offer a passel of steamy noodle broths. They serve basic chicken and beef noodle soups, but they really let their stride out with their Tom Yum (2) and Guay Teaw Moo. Both soups have very similar stocks based in chicken, vegetables, and fish sauce. The Guay Teaw Moo is spiced with ground and blended Thai red pepper and galangal root—something like a more pungent ginger root—and has an explosive hot and sour thing going on. They lay in nice cuts of lean pork, meatballs, bean sprouts, and a dusting of ground peanuts. This stuff is supreme and goes for $8.95. The Tom Yum is distinguished by the addition of a sweet red curry paste, which makes it a tad, well, sweeter. It’s topped off with cilantro, scallions, and mushrooms. The Tom Yum comes with chicken or tofu at $8.95. And, if you’re ready to drop $13 for soup, the Tom Yum has a seafood option.

Café 88 on Preston Avenue serves a simple, hearty, and very solid beef noodle soup (3) Fridays and Saturdays. There’s bok choy, a heaping helping of roast beef chunks and hefty egg noodles in a zesty beef broth. It’s basic, and nowhere near the flavor adventure of the above-described servings, but comfort food at its finest, nonetheless.

Worth the drive is Pho So 1 on Rigsby Road in Richmond’s West End. Its broth is as good as I have tasted anywhere and I’ve slurped up enough pho—from Seattle to Southern California, from London to Houston, Texas (regrettably not Saigon—not yet anyway)—to float a cruiseliner. Pho So 1 really ramps up the fragrant elements of the broth and offers umpteen varieties, including tendon, tripe, and a chicken pho, Pho Ga. But it’s closed on Tuesday, which I have forgotten twice already.

I’ve eaten tacos from propane-fired griddles outside my apartment near downtown Los Angeles, and from the street grills off Garibaldi Square while mingling with mariachis between sets in Mexico City. I’ve partaken of the ubiquitous taco stands of Texas and the cozy Mexican diners on the north side of Chicago. It doesn’t make me an expert, but it does establish some frame of reference within which to evaluate well-prepared al pastor wrapped in a perfectly pressed and grilled corn tortilla.

If I am qualified at all, it may be because I have for years subsisted, in more cities than I can recall, on a budget that would make a college freshman struggle with the choice between a month’s supply of Ramen noodles or Xeroxing the pertinent chapters of an essential textbook from the school library’s reserve copy. But I’ve always tried to get the most panang for what was often my last buck, so to speak.

At the Saturday City Market, Mexican Tacos serves impeccably prepared steak (spiced with the guajillo chili), pork, chicken, chorizo, and vegetarian tacos at the corner of Water and First streets, for $2.75 a pop. There’s a lady deftly hand-flattening and grilling corn tortillas one by one, staying only a few tortillas ahead of the incoming orders. The chorizo—the spicy, loose-meat, Mexican pork sausage—they blend and grind at home. Someone is steadily pan-searing chicken on site. They top these beauties off with pico de gallo, and lettuce with a sprinkling of queso fresco, a soft, moist cheese. Then there’s perfectly mild but tasty green sauce on each one, if you choose. The City Market’s last day is the Saturday before Christmas, but it returns in early April.

Over on East High Street is La Michoacana. Edgar Gaona, eldest son of the family operation, reckons they have been at the present location for four or five years, but started out in a food truck more than 10 years ago, back when he was a lad of 10 or 12.

“The health inspector said we were the first taco truck in town,” he said. Gaona’s mother, whose family recipes fuel the operation, is a native of Michoacán, a province west of Mexico City. Similar in style to Mexican Tacos, La Michoacana makes its own tortillas as needed and makes the chorizo from scratch. It offers a broader range of options for $2.25, including tongue, tripe, and barbecue tacos. The kicker here is the restaurant’s three sauces. The milder red and green sauces are jalapeño-based, but the hot green sauce packs its punch with the chili de arbol. There’s also a very spicy, stoutly-pickled carrot, onion and jalapeno garnish, which is not for the faint of tongue.

As good as those tacos are, I would still opt for La Tako Nako, a neon-belighted trailer parked alongside Hydraulic Road near Commonwealth Drive. The tortillas may be store-bought, but you don’t pick your burger joint because it bakes its own buns. Plus, it’s good to double up the corn wraps to absorb the savory grease from the carne asada and pork tacos. Hey, where there’s fat, there’s usually flavor. Tako Nako lays grilled onions you might expect to come on an Italian sausage over each $2 serving, along with cilantro and some solid homemade salsas. You can feel the tangy, meaty juice hit the back of your throat before you even chew the first couple bites. It’s the kind of savory you just want to drink down in shots, not wanting it to end as the last bits of meat are making their way down your gullet. Plus, there’s a certain charm about eating two or three of these succulent masterpieces among the banter of the almost exclusively Spanish-speaking clientele in the neon glow of a damp chilly night.