Bavarian Chef – C-VILLE Weekly

Introducing paffles to Charlottesville

Kathryn Matthews has been obsessed with American breakfast since she was a child, growing up in Grimsby, a small fishing town on the northeast coast of England. Her grandparents would sometimes take her on vacation to Florida, where they’d eat waffles and fluffy American pancakes, which are quite different from the unleavened, more crêpe-like English pancakes. Sometimes, they’d pour batter onto a griddle or into a waffle iron and make the treats themselves.

Matthews has brought her love of sweet American breakfast to 214 W. Water St. with the opening of Iron Paffles and Coffee. She started working as a chef at 16 before studying hospitality and beverage management at university, and has been making paffles—puff pastry baked on a waffle iron—on her own for a while now, though she can’t exactly take credit for inventing the paffle (a quick Google search a few years back showed her as much).

Once Kathyrn Matthews, who grew up in England, got a taste of American-style breakfast, she set out to capture those flavors by creating a puff pastry-waffle hybrid known as the paffle. Photo by Tom McGovern

Savory breakfast nuts might want to try the Iron Glory, a paffle topped with local bacon, sausage and cheese omelet topped with sriracha mayonnaise, and those with a sweet tooth might go for the Rise ’N’ Iron, a blueberry paffle covered with cream and local hickory syrup.

For lunch (or perhaps dinner) Matthews and executive chef Dan Giovanetti will cook up paffles such as the Iron Master (southern-fried local organic chicken breast, mac ’n’ cheese and local spring mix) and the Iron Bean (black bean, sweet potato and quinoa patty and finished with smoked salsa). Craving something sweet? Try the Hail Iron—orange cheesecake paffle topped with local strawberry sauce and flaked almonds—or the Peanut BAE, a gluten-free paffle with vegan chocolate ganache and peanut butter whip. The paffles can be made with a special vegan and gluten-free batter for an extra $1.50. Even with the extra charge, nothing costs more than $9, and can be devoured on-site or made to go in a special cardboard paffle carrier that allows for maximum nommage and minimal mess.

Iron will be open Monday through Thursday from 8am to 4pm, Friday from 8am to 8pm and Saturday from 10am to 8pm; breakfast will be served until 11 each day, but the Cini-Bacon paffle, made with maple cinnamon cream, candied pecans and bacon, will be on the menu all day.

Tom Tom nom-noms

It’s Tom Tom time, and you know what that means, food fans: nearly a whole week of food trucks, beer tents, cocktail competitions and celebrations of Charlottesville’s farm-to-table culture.

Throughout the week, restaurants such as The Bebedero, Citizen Burger Bar, Heirloom, Rapture, Oakhart Social, Tavern & Grocery and others will appeal to locavore palates with pre-fixe menus that emphasize local ingredients and artisan food producers.

A dozen mixologists will vie for Tom Tom’s top mixologist title with custom festival cocktails made from locally sourced ingredients and served all week at participating restaurants. A panel of judges will consider the creativity, presentation, originality and taste of the submitted cocktails and name their favorite. But don’t worry, the voice of the people will be considered as well—a popular vote will be held to determine the crowd’s favorite boozy beverage (vote online at tomtomfest.com/craftcocktail). Here’s just a taste of what’s to come: Alley Light’s Micah LeMon will make a Sunday Sermon, made with John J. Bowman Virginia Bourbon, housemade vermouth (local sassafras, wormwood and King Family Chardonnay), Amer Picon and Kubler Absinthe.

At the City Market Iron Chef Competition at 10am on Saturday, chefs will have 30 minutes to tour the market, purchase ingredients and cook a 100 percent locally sourced brunch dish in the hopes of wowing the three judges.

Who will be named this year’s Iron Chef Competition champion at the Tom Tom Founders Festival? Photo by Tom McGovern

Find out who’ll be named Charlottesville’s top red hot chili prepper during the Downtown Chili Showdown at the Main Street Arena on Saturday from 11:30am to 3pm. Restaurants, community groups and individuals will compete for people’s choice and judges awards.

And last but not least, local food trucks will rally around Lee Park for the Friday, Saturday and Sunday block parties. Get your fill of good eats from Bavarian Chef, Got Dumplings, Blue Ridge Pizza Co., Mouth Wide Open, Wonderment, Carpe Donut, DanJo’s KettleKorn and others.

Kardinal Hall brings the biergarten to a new level

Oktoberfest may be the ultimate celebration of food and beer. Here in Charlottesville, though, the festival’s signature Bavarian fare can be hard to find. Enter Kardinal Hall. Opened last year by the team behind Beer Run, the beer hall and garden filled a gap in Charlottesville dining with food and drink it calls “Alpine.” Truth be told, Kardinal Hall does not tout strict traditionalism in its eats and suds, but instead blends in a healthy dose of innovation, with great results.

Two area experts on these topics are Jerome Thalwitz and Jason Oliver. Classically trained at restaurants in Bavaria, chef Thalwitz has spent the last three decades running the Bavarian Chef, the destination-worthy Madison restaurant founded by his parents, where German classics join inventive specials. Oliver, meanwhile, is brewmaster of Devils Backbone Brewing Company, among our country’s most acclaimed brewers of German-style beers. What better companions for a Kardinal Hall dinner during Oktoberfest?

Oliver calls German food “perfect for beer,” especially crisp pilsners, which he says counter the sourness of Bavarian pickles, and the fat, salt and spice of sausages and charcuterie. Take the charcuterie board that began our meal. On a large rectangular wooden board, piles of savory country pork pate, pastrami of Free Union Grass duck and smoked Autumn Olive Farms ham lay beautifully beside small white bowls of assorted house pickled local vegetables, which I consider among the best in town. “I respect that they use a lot of local ingredients,” said Oliver.

If German food is perfect for beer, so too is German beer perfect for food, and Kardinal Hall has the best selection of German beer in town, along with an assortment of American craft beer. “German beer is so approachable,” said Oliver. “It’s beer for the people!” The Rothaus Pils was such an ideal beer pairing for our charcuterie platter that Oliver said it was like another ingredient in the food. From food back to beer back to food, “there’s a seamless enjoyment of eating and drinking,” he said.

Next came a nod to tradition: a plate of Oktoberfest sausages with spaetzle and local oyster mushrooms. The sausages were from Binkert’s, the same Baltimore producer used by the Bavarian Chef. For one of them—weisswurst—Thalwitz requested a side of currywurst sauce, thus creating one of his favorite classic German street foods. Also a standout was the spaetzle, which reminded Thalwitz of dishes he made in Bavaria. “Paired with Weihenstephaner Festbier,” said Thalwitz, “it was a superb combination.” Other sausages on the menu are also well-sourced, from The Rock Barn and Sausagecraft.

Kardinal Hall’s chef Thomas Leroy is not from Germany but from France, where he trained before coming to Charlottesville to run adventurous kitchens like Bizou and Zinc Bistro (now closed). He has been with Kardinal Hall since even before it opened. “Leroy’s skill set, experience running a variety of kitchens and familiarity with classic European techniques made him a natural fit,” says Kardinal Hall co-owner Josh Hunt.

And so, while Leroy has the skills to nail the classics, he often breaks from tradition with playful riffs. This is the aspect of Kardinal Hall that Oliver likes best. It’s the same approach he uses for Devils Backbone beer: “inspired by tradition but not handcuffed to it.”

The signature pretzels, for example, are made fresh daily, and with a glistening golden crust, look just like ones you’d see in Bavaria. They even come with obatzda, a classic Bavarian condiment of brie, ricotta, mustard, onions and paprika. Take a bite though, and you’ll discover a twist. For the dough, Leroy uses a house sourdough starter. While atypical, Thalwitz thought it added a nice, subtle flavor to the pretzel.

A further break from tradition is Leroy’s favorite thing on the menu, and perhaps the dish of the night. For the spice-rubbed brisket sandwich, Leroy coats brisket in mustard powder, paprika, onion and garlic, smokes it for three hours, and then braises it in beer and broth for seven more. The brisket rests on Amoroso rolls from Philadelphia and is topped with mustard remoulade and a German slaw of red cabbage. Thalwitz said the delicious slaw was just like the one at Bavarian Chef, all the way down to the caraway seeds that studded it. “We serve it with practically everything,” he said. And, he loved the sandwich’s ingenuity, combining traditional themes like Bavarian slaw and Philly cheese steak rolls to create an “excellent, modern dish.”

In fact, that captures the whole experience. As Thalwitz said after our meal: “Kardinal Hall has the feel of going to a traditional German biergarten while tweaking old-world foods with local, trending ingredients.” Or, as Oliver put it, “Kardinal Hall is an American beer hall that takes its inspiration where it wants to, not where it has to.” Prost to that.