Restaurants help define a place. The world’s great cities are known for their dining rooms: Maxim’s in Paris, Katz’s Deli in New York, Chez Panisse in Berkeley. And Charlottesville is no different. l But behind a restaurant’s feel are its customers, particularly the cast of characters who regularly pull up a seat. l So who are Charlottesville’s restaurant regulars? What keeps them coming back, sometimes every day, over years or even decades? l To answer these questions, C-VILLE set out to four popular local dining spots. There, we met The Walrus, had a grammar lesson, learned about the Pro Jets and watched a kid take a nap. Though the reasons for loyalty are varied, it’s clear there are several homes away from home among Charlottesville’s restaurants.
Bar exam
Two decades later attorney J. Benjamin Dick still cross-examines the C&O experience
When Dave Simpson pushed the $4,000 tab across the bar, “The Walrus” got what he deserved. Original owner Sandy McAdams had sold the C&O to Dave Simpson in 1982 and, after six years of putting everything on his tab, The Walrus had some accounts to settle.
“It was all those bottles of champagne I bought for every good looking woman I saw,” The Walrus laughs tonight, as he nurses a Stoli and soda. (Sometimes, he switches it up with a martini). He’s sitting at his usual spot at the end of the long wooden bar by the fish tank, directly across from the vodka—Absolut, Finlandia and Stolichnaya, and the gin—Tanqueray, Beefeater and Bombay. Hunched over an empty plate, slightly crumpled white linen napkin in his lap, J. Benjamin Dick, or simply Ben, as his friends call him, holds court from his barstool, the back of which bears a shiny brass plaque engraved with his moniker.
At the tables squeezed into the small, dimly lit, wood-paneled room with a white linen tablecloth and simple flower arrangement adorning each, Dick’s fellow diners (and drinkers) talk softly. At one table, a well-dressed older woman smoking a clove cigarette remarks to the waitress, “I love to have vegetables with my martini.” A few tables over, a group of intellectually inclined young men discuss the letters of Schoenberg and Kandinsky.
Dick pays little attention to the restaurant beyond the bar. At 56, he is a stocky man with round features. He sports a khaki baseball hat and navy polo shirt, both emblazoned with the Foxfield emblem. Occasionally, Dick, who has been president of Foxfield for 25 years, takes hold of the brim of his hat and pulls it down more firmly onto his head.
“I’m very familiar with ABC rules,”
he laughs.
“Yeah, he’s the big kahuna, though you’d never know it looking at him!” says Chip, tonight’s bartender.
Dick’s feet relax on the footrest of his barstool and his legs are slightly spread. He has just polished off an early dinner of artichoke pate (“the best pate in the world, if you like garlic”), followed by salmon over tablouleh.
“I remember the day when you could come into the C&O and every day was a new menu. That was the exciting part about it—seeing what they would do next,” he says.
“He notices every time he comes in,” says Chip of Dick’s attention to the menu.
Ben shrugs, “I’m a regular.”
“He’s a total regular,” says Chip.
Fake plants sway inside the fish tank, casting a greenish light on the left side of Dick’s face. The two glass toys through which a fat white goldfish and two neon tetras swim lazily were both hand-blown by Chip. One toy is a glass fish that sits belly to the bottom of the tank and the other is a “C” on top of an “O.” It’s the light from the tank that attracts Dick to this spot. When he’s not talking, he’s reading. “I read four papers a day,” he explains proudly, naming five: The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today, The Daily Progress, The Richmond Times Dispatch. “As I get older, I need more light,” he says.
A self-employed lawyer for 27 years with an office on Park Street, Dick has been coming to the C&O at least once a week for 24 of them. “The C & O, in many ways, is like family, after all these years,” he says, and he has represented the restaurant “whenever they’re in a jam.
“Usually when there’s some trouble with the government or ABC or some wayward customer that says he’s been served bad food or a bad drink. Of course the answer [in that case] is ‘No way!’ That was an easy case.”
It was his real family that first brought him to Charlottesville when he was 10 years old. He returned in 1974 after graduating from the T.C. Williams School of Law at the University of Richmond to take care of his ailing grandmother and stayed. “She was going to die any day. One thing led to another,” he says. “Nineteen years later she died. I was here all 19 years.” One of seven children (four boys and three girls) who are now scattered up and down the East Coast, Dick is the only one who has remained in Charlottesville. He’s got an ex-wife and two children—a daughter and a son—around town.
When the C&O opened in 1976 it doubled as a music club, and that was the early appeal for Dick. “I heard Sonny Rollins, the famous saxophonist, right back there,” he says waving his hand in the direction of the upstairs. “And Sarah Vaughan. Sarah Vaughan sat right there at the middle of the bar,” he points to the center seat, “for two and a half hours. Kept us spellbound.”
Music recurs as a topic throughout his conversation, clearly something Dick relishes. “A sacred tradition at the C&O I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed is that the bartender controls the music. You come in here three times a week and you hear three different types of music,” he says. Then, nodding in the direction of Chip, snappily outfitted in a moustache, suspenders and a short-sleeved dress shirt, “Chip, he’s the jazz guy…He also does, you know, the swing and the, what do you call ’em, the troubadours? You know, Frank Sinatra?”
At the mention of Sinatra, Chip chimes in, “Did you see that picture on the Internet of him when he got arrested? It was, like, 1949. He was, like, 18 years old. He got arrested in New Jersey for sleeping with somebody’s wife.”
“I didn’t know that!” laughs Dick. “That’s another thing, it’s a trivia bar…Lounge lizard.”
The days of “just tab it” are long gone, but the camaraderie is palpable. In the time since The Walrus was handed that $4,000 bill, he has probably wracked up as much, if not more, in Stoli and soda and artichoke pate. But it’s with pride mixed with nostalgia that Dick says, “I still got that [bill] up in my office. I’m going to frame it one day.”—N.B. 7/13/2004
Home away from home
For David Walker, Jr. Mel’s Café is a family setting
The engraving on a blue plaque hanging on the wall at Mel’s Café reads: “Presented to Melvin Walker and his family for loyal and unselfish acts of kindness to his old community.”
The “Pro Jets,” a summer weightlifting program for teenagers living in the Westhaven neighborhood, presented the plaque to Walker in 2001. It shares wall space with posters of the UVA basketball team and the Washington Redskins, beside other community awards Mel received from Tri-Area Foster Families, the Ebony Social Club, UVA’s Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, the Sunday Football Club and the 10 1/2 Street NW Neighborhood Association.
The name “Pro Jets” is a takeoff of “projects,” says David Walker, Jr., who founded the weightlifting club 24 years ago. Walker—no relation to the restaurateur—has been a lifelong fixture of the Westhaven neighborhood and a daily customer at Mel’s.
“I like to come here for the atmosphere. Mel and them is just like brothers. Marie is just like a mother to me,” says Walker, referring to Mel’s mother, who helps run the restaurant along with Mel’s brother, Arthur.
Now 49, Mel first opened, and then closed, his café on W. Main Street in the late ’80s. In 1995 he re-opened, and since then David Walker has eaten there almost daily, sometimes three meals a day. When he talks about his favorite items on Mel’s menu—ham and cheese omelets with mushrooms, fish with string beans and mashed potatoes, sweet potato pie and, of course, “the best burger in Charlottesville”—he speaks with affection and respect for a Westhaven brother made good.
“I’ve been getting food from Mel since I’ve been knowing him, for 30 years,” says Walker, 44.
Although he has no wife or children of his own, much of David Walker, Jr.’s life plays out within a web of family ties that define Charlottesville’s tightly knit African- American communities. When Walker goes to Mt. Alto Baptist Church in Howardsville, for example, his sister, nieces, nephews and cousins join him in the choir. When Walker’s not bagging groceries at Harris Teeter, he’s gathering kids from Westhaven for a bus trip to the swimming pool or the miniature golf course.
Walker was 3 years old when the City demolished his family’s house on Commerce Street and built the Westhaven housing project, in the name of “urban renewal,” in 1963. At Charlottesville High School he lettered in football, basketball and his favorite sport, baseball.
After high school, Walker signed to play A-division minor league baseball with the Bluefield Orioles in West Virginia. After two weeks, the Hagerstown Suns called Walker up to play in the AA division. Then, he jumped to the AAA division—one step below the majors—in Rochester, New York, for six weeks before breaking his foot trying to stretch a double into a triple.
“I never got drafted after that,” he says. “But I had already played my ball, so I was satisfied.”
After he returned to Charlottesville in 1983, Walker worked with the City’s Parks and Recreation Department. All the while, he used his spare time to organize activities for Westhaven children.
Besides the Pro Jets, he still organizes car washes to help kids raise money for UVA’s basketball camp. With the support of John Halliday, director of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library, and former City Councilor Meredith Richards, Walker brings the local bookmobile to Westhaven and hosts a combination pizza party and reading session for the kids.
To keep the boys’ attention, Walker employs techniques he learned from his best friend, former Army drill sergeant Gary Stinnie, who died 10 years ago. “You use the cadence in your voice, to keep their mind straight,” says Walker.
He’s munching fried mozzarella sticks at a glass-topped table near Mel’s door, as lunchtime customers pass in from and out to the steaming afternoon glare. A construction worker ambles in, cradling a hardhat beneath a massive, tattooed forearm. He gazes down at Walker, tosses him the cool nod young men use as a greeting. Walker smiles.
“I’ve been knowing these kids since they were small,” says Walker. “I’ve changed their diapers.”
Walker’s C-VILLE interview draws teasing from his surrogate family behind the counter. “When you’re a big star, don’t forget about the little people!” laughs Mel’s mother, Marie.
“Don’t worry. Hey, I’m the little people,” says Walker.—J.B. 7/13/2004
Java with Junior
Carol Ross and her little guy find plenty of room at C’ville Coffee
When you enter C’ville Coffee, the aroma hits you right away. It isn’t the same scent of freshly ground beans that permeates the air of your average coffee shop; it’s a little different. At first, the place is steeped in the smells of Vietnamese cooking from the back-room kitchen. Then there is something more intangible, but, all the while, immediately familiar—a scent that, were they to make an incense of it, might simply be labeled “Children Playing.”
For local photographer Carol Ross, 38, and her son Austin, 2, C’ville Coffee is a great place to play. They visit the eggshell-colored Harris Street establishment (located off the always-busy McIntire Road) up to six times a week to soak up the family-friendly environment. “We probably come here more because he wants to,” Ross says, nodding to Austin, a wild tuft of hair with a gray Spider-Man t-shirt, who somersaults around the room, making his way to the Kids Corner where an approximately 10′ wooden anchor functions equally well as a balance beam, hopscotch board and wrestling mat for a rambunctious brood whose parents dine nearby.
Ross credits owners Toan Nguyen and Betsy Patrick with giving the restaurant its great energy and a cosmopolitan “best-of-both-worlds” ambiance. “It’s diverse—it feels like it’s outside of Charlottesville,” she says. “You see Asian, Indian, Latin, black, white…”
Nguyen, born in Vietnam and raised in Brussels, Belgium, says he and wife Patrick, both UVA alumni, spent time in San Francisco and Paris before returning to Charlottesville to raise their children. They opened C’ville Coffee four years ago, hoping to provide a place where the City’s many groups could gather together. “Everyone’s welcome, from the little toddler to businesspeople to students,” says Nguyen.
Boasting a menu as diverse as its clientele, the restaurant serves up multinational specialties like French crepes and create-your-own noodle bowls with grilled lemongrass tofu, chicken and beef—not to mention an entire chalkboard list of gourmet American sandwiches.
While Austin has a peanut-butter and jelly by the Kids Corner, you’ll find Carol Ross sitting on a wicker sofa with the more mature Turkey Lurkey, an earthy slice of California piled with turkey, red onions, cucumbers, sprouts and the denouement: a creamy, delicate goat cheese spread. Her husband Monty, a filmmaker who with Spike Lee has produced films like Malcolm X and Clockers, prefers the decadent Berry Turkey, with maple turkey on country wheat bread, Brie, mayonnaise, cranberry sauce and lettuce.
Monty Ross docks himself near the anchor by a tot-sized orange table-and-chair set, transferring a pile of children’s classics from the floor to a tiny bookshelf and helping to refill a Tupperware container brimming with toys—all of which scream for a hefty dose of Lysol. Across the room though, it’s Carol Ross’ infectious laugh that you can’t help but catch, as she tells how, a year and a half ago, she and Monty left the fast-track Los Angeles lifestyle to be near family and raise Austin. It wasn’t long after moving to Charlottesville that they found their way to C’ville Coffee and were charmed by the welcoming atmosphere.
“Austin pretty much grew up there,” says Ross. “He was an infant when we started going and I just remember when it was really peaceful and he would just sleep and we’d hold him and order coffee. Now he’s running around there and knows it really well.”
Carol Ross also looks forward to a time when Austin is old enough for a babysitter, when she and Monty are able to relax in the mysterious “Adult Zone.” C’ville Coffee’s Adult Zone, on the farthest end of the room from the Kids Corner, is partitioned off by an ornate black, metal gate, with a sign that decrees “Children must be accompanied by an adult.” Inside, under the shade of a palm tree, people read quietly from the selection of books in categories like “Career,” “U.S. Travel” and “Winston Churchill.” Covering the back wall, a large mural in bright, acrylic colors shows an African-American woman serenely sipping coffee at a lavish red table.
Outside the Adult Zone, as Austin snatches the pillow from a wicker chair for a quick nap on the floor, the faint trumpet burst of Jean-Joseph Mouret’s Rondeau has Carol Ross raving about the music: “You can hear Miles Davis, Brazilian, Mozart, Billie…” Brazilian is her favorite—it was the perfect soundtrack for “Exposed,” a photography exhibition she hung at C’ville Coffee last August.
Photography is now a primary focus for Ross, who says she did commercials in a previous life. In June, her show “Souls of Our Feet” was on prominent display at The Mudhouse on the Downtown Mall. She’s also working on a book of photography, which she hopes will be out for sale by early 2006. When that happens, don’t be surprised to find a copy gracing the shelves at C’ville Coffee. Says Nguyen: “We want to be like the Charlottesville living room.”—B.S.
Far from the edge
Tavern regulars are not “peripheral” people. Just ask breakfast mainstays Ken and Beverly Beirne
A cramped grill, just behind the bar, on which sits a giant vat of butter—we’re talking like 10 pounds of whipped fat here—is where Lyndsay Feggans does his thing. As the primary grill chef at The Tavern, a venerated greasy spoon on Emmet Street, Feggans is a virtuoso with the spatula, tapping out a rhythm among various simmering omelets, pancakes and piles of home fries and bacon.
The system at The Tavern, which opened in a previous, largely unchanged iteration 50 years ago, is decidedly old school. As a result, Feggans has no computerized system to aid him as he tracks as many as eight omelets at a time. Yet Feggans, who wears a white toque cocked to the side under his sizable curls, and has a lanky, smooth manner that makes him look like Snoop Dogg in middle age, maintains order in his sizzling domain.
Feggans flicks a Swiss cheese-stuffed omelet onto a plate, and passes the grub to a waitress just two minutes after the order arrives on a hastily scribbled slip. He’s quick at the grill, perhaps too fast, says Tavern owner Shelly Gordon. And though Gordon does not hesitate to praise Feggans, who has worked at The Tavern for at least a decade, he says one other Tavern chef exceeded his grill skills.
“I had one better than him,” Gordon says. “He died on me … cancer ate him up.”
Besides being handy with a spatula, Gordon says Feggans and the previous grill maestro, who died at 36, shared the same two faults: drinking Budweiser and smoking on the job.
The open dining room of The Tavern sits under a barn-like roof with eaves stained alternately blue and orange. On the outside of that roof is The Tavern’s auspicious double-sided slogan, “WHERE STUDENTS, TOURISTS, & TOWNPEOPLE MEET.”
Though Gordon gladly points out three grammatical mistakes in the sloppily emblazoned phrase, when asked if he plans to fix the mistakes he replies, “Hell no.” Gordon, his employees and the Tavern’s many devotees aren’t keen on changes to the classic greasy spoon. About the only changes Gordon has made in the 24 years since he switched from being a regular at the diner to its owner, are a stuffed deer and buffalo head and the occasional camouflaged canoe, which he has raffled off in the past.
On any morning visit to The Tavern, which serves breakfast and lunch and has two beer taps, one is likely to see clusters of hung-over, separate-check requesting students, visitors from out of town and a healthy dose of townpeople. The Tavern’s scads of regulars, some who eat at The Tavern at least once a day, are enlisted from all three of the slogan’s groups.
Across the barn-like restaurant from Feggans’ grill station is a wall of small booths, all with straight wooden backs. Given the prodigious serving sizes at The Tavern, the booths seem a little tight.
At one of these booths is Bruce Bond, who has been both townie and student, of a sort, in his thousands of visits to The Tavern. Soon after his grandfather introduced him to the joint 43 years ago, Bond, then a student at Lane High School in Charlottesville, learned that a townie teen could open quite a few social doors by impersonating a UVA student at The Tavern.
“I was a first year student from the time I was a freshman in high school,” Bond says. “I went to more frat parties in high school than in college.”
Since those early UVA co-ed cruising days, Bond has continued to enjoy image tweaking at The Tavern. Wearing a Harley baseball cap to breakfast on this recent morning, Bond, who goes on hunting trips with Gordon, says he’ll take the townie cliché all the way by wearing his hunting duds in the restaurant. But he also sports a coat and tie on some days. And, back in ’96, Bond had his wedding reception at The Tavern, “band and all.”
Bond and other regulars rave about the food at The Tavern. Like a professional football player, the omelets and pancakes at The Tavern come big and fast—fulfilling the mission of any great pancake house. But a discerning diner can taste the difference in the Tavern’s home fries, biscuits and ham from their equivalents at chains and other lesser restaurants. The reason: Gordon’s crew prepares these and other foods from scratch, peeling the potatoes, cutting the ham and baking the biscuits in the room behind the restaurant’s former drive-up window.
But the food is not all that steers Bond to keep coming back:, “These guys do an outstanding job,” he says, gesturing toward the grill cooks and waitresses. “You can’t drive these people out of here with a stick of dynamite.”
Gordon confirms that his employees often serve long stints at The Tavern, adding that many have been fired and rehired during their tenures, some as many as four times.
Regular firings at The Tavern are not evidence of an imperious boss, however, but rather that Gordon believes in second chances. The only two unpardonable offenses for an employee are stealing and dropping the F-bomb.
On one recent Monday morning, Ivy residents and hardcore Tavern regulars Ken Beirne, 59, and his wife Beverly, 46, grab a table at the restaurant and order pancakes—Ken’s with two eggs, over-easy, and Bev’s with walnuts. They wave hello to another couple, also regulars, and Bev politely whispers, “She’s a school teacher.”
“The cooks, waitresses, they’re all like family,” says Ken, who first started eating at The Tavern in 1984, as Helen, a 23-year Tavern vet, glides around, repeatedly filling up Ken and Bev’s coffees—not needing to ask which Beirne prefers decaf. “It’s a cultural sort of meeting place.”
Both Beirnes say Tavern denizens cross an elusive and rare line of social contact where customers begin acknowledging Tavern workers and fellow customers around town, ask about each other’s kids and hang out together in the restaurant. “The people that come here are not peripheral people,” Ken says.
The Tavern is the type of place where Ken, when noticing that the wait staff is overwhelmed, will step up and carry the coffee pot to waiting cups around the restaurant.
Bev says the couple has the ability to move anywhere at this point, but that The Tavern, ACAC and other community gathering places keep them in Charlottesville.
“If this place were to close down, I think there would be a lot of unhappy people,” Ken says. A few minutes later their check arrives. It runs to just over $9.—P.F. 7/13/2004