Tag: Bowerbird Bakeshop

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Culture Food & Drink

Go ahead, bake our day

Norkeita Goins launched Caked Up Cville and uses bright, imaginative ingredients that make her cupcakes stand out. Photo: Staff Photo

By Chris Martin

Based on the astonishing number of bakers and bakeries in Charlottesville, the city appears to have a voracious appetite for carbs. A quick search on Google lists almost 30 area bakeries, cake spots, bagel makers, patisseries, and farmers’ market stands that offer a wide variety of floury treats. What follows is a sampling of a few of them. 

Norkeita Goins of Caked Up Cville began baking to pass the time when she was furloughed at the beginning of the pandemic. “I started baking again, posting on Facebook, and I made an Instagram,” says Goins. “It seems like it happened overnight…it doesn’t feel like a whole year has passed already.” Goins uses abstract layers of bright buttercream, curated sprinkles, and gold details in sweets that stand out. For fall, she’s planning a pumpkin oreo cheesecake cupcake, and will incorporate Chinese five-spice powder into her bakes to accentuate the season’s flavors. Goins takes orders via cakedupcville.com, and her creations are on Instagram @cakedup_cville. Catch her at the City Market on November 6.      

Drew Reynolds is one of the talented bakers who works at Bowerbird Bakeshop. With a line cook origin story, he made bread at C&O Restaurant, on top of food prep and dinner service. His penchant for pastry landed him a gig at Albemarle Baking Company, and as his time and his experience increased, so did his creativity. Reynolds’ current offerings include a spiced pear butter and marsala zabaglione eclair, an Italian-style whipped custard piped inside pâte à choux, macarons, and more. Peep him on Instagram @druhoo_98. 

Mary Schwartz got her start by working in the front of house at Charlottesville’s Sweethaus cupcakery, and was baking in her spare time before she began working at the Ivy Inn a few days a week to learn more about pastry. When it became clear that breadmaking was her passion, Schwartz made the jump to Albemarle Baking Company, where she’s been developing her talents for the past four years under the mentorship of bakery owner Gerry Newman. 

Schwartz says Newman has taught her to see the fruition of fermentation, and understand the daily changes in the dough. She says that “seeing the racks filled and the bread looking good,” it’s satisfying, “knowing that what we did was the right thing.” Schwartz is currently developing a pickled grape loaf by pickling local grapes with white vinegar, tarragon, and garlic, and utilizing them in the levain. Find her on Instagram @maryfschwartz.

In another realm of delicious things, Sidney Hall of Moon Maiden’s Delights creates plant-based and gluten-free pastries. She mills, soaks, and sprouts the specialty seeds, nuts, legumes, and flours she uses, and, with incredible mindfulness to nutrient density and wellness, she creates an option to indulge without compromise. “I so delight in being able to share delicious, gentle food with folks who have different dietary restrictions, as I myself have been on a healing journey for some time,” says Hall.

She says she’ll be bringing her signature turmeric black pepper coffee cake back to the IX Art Park Saturday market. She also loves to work with carob in the fall, and its complex caramel and coffee flavor might be the perfect complement to a cardamom and green apple pastry that she has in the works. Look for Hall at IX, or Moon Maiden’s Delights on Instagram @moon.maidens.delights. 

Vincent Derquenne is not simply a baker, he’s one of the chef-partners behind Bizou, Luce, Bang!, The Space, and Crush Pad Wines, along with Tim Burgess. What you may not know is that Derquenne has been producing all the croissants for Bizou’s brunch for the majority of the past 10 years—by hand. Humbly, he says he’s turned over croissant production to a recently purchased sheeter, but transitioning from hand lamination is no easy feat for the French chef. Derquenne can be found all over C’ville, hopping between his restaurants, and if you’re lucky, you might hear tales of his time cooking at the Eiffel Tower. More on Derquenne at bizoudowntown.com.

Categories
Culture

From scratch: Bowerbird Bakeshop opens despite tough times

Bowerbird Bakeshop’s Earl Vallery and Maria Niechwiadowicz feel fortunate that they’ve been able to move out of a rented kitchen and into their new space at the Tenth Street Warehouses. Photo by John Robinson

Bowerbird Bakeshop debuted at Charlottesville City Market’s annual holiday market in late 2017, at a shared table on a side row that got little foot traffic.

Pastry chef Earl Vallery had just moved to town after helping launch Whisk bakery in Richmond, and before that, teaching at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Austin, Texas. He had about $300 and the desire to have a bakery of his very own.

That cold Saturday morning, Vallery put up a homemade cardboard sign and covered his half of the booth with signature treats: matcha mint cookies, chocolate vortex cookies, and imaginatively flavored French macarons. He hoped that, eventually, Bowerbird might have enough of a following to warrant a bricks-and-mortar shop, complete with a kitchen, small eat-in area, and pastry cases packed with all sorts of delights.

It didn’t take long. After finding investors and raising money via a GoFundMe earlier this year, Bowerbird—now a team of three—is moving from its rented kitchen at Trinity Episcopal Church’s Bread & Roses space to the Tenth Street Warehouses.

It’s an odd time to open a bakery, acknowledges Vallery as he sits in the nearly finished space, light bouncing off of the metal appliances and the pristine glass pastry case. But the ball was already rolling when the pandemic hit: the lease was signed, the equipment ordered, and Vallery, who also received a small Paycheck Protection Program loan, couldn’t back out.

Instead, he adjusted. Bowerbird currently participates in the contactless Saturday market and delivers online orders direct to customers’ doors on Saturday mornings. With sales down and the bakery not opening to eat-in customers right away, Vallery couldn’t hire the staff he’d planned for, so he and his business partner and pastry assistant Maria Niechwiadowicz are tackling all the bakes and sales…in addition to finishing the bakery build-out.

“It’s tiring, figuring out all these ways to reinvent yourself,” says Vallery, who knows other small business owners share that fatigue. But he hesitates to complain, expressing his gratitude for his customers (and his understanding landlord). “I’m grateful we have something.”

Niechwiadowicz shares those feelings. But “sometimes it feels a little unfair that restaurants and long-standing businesses in Charlottesville are closing [and] we are opening,” she says. She is optimistic, though, about what Bowerbird can offer by maintaining ties with the Bread & Roses food ministry (Niechwiadowicz served as the program’s kitchen manager until recently), donating to other nonprofits like City of Promise, and partnering with local farms and food makers.

Even when the shop opens, Bowerbird will continue to participate in the City Market. “That’s our bread and butter,” says Vallery.

In addition to the macarons, cookies, galettes, and savory nest egg muffins that marketgoers have come to love, there will be cakes, custards, Danishes, and more. Vallery also promises breakfast items like smoked salmon on an everything croissant.

He may struggle sometimes to celebrate the occasion because “what we make, it could be considered a luxury,” but when Vallery talks about the feeling he gets from baking, his voice brightens, and he repeats, “I’m just so grateful.”

Categories
Living

Liquid gold: Local cidery and coffee roaster garner national awards

The Harrison apple, an heirloom variety once thought to be extinct, was reintroduced by Tom Burford of Albemarle CiderWorks—and used to make an award-winning cider. Photo: Courtesy Albemarle CiderWorks

On Friday, January 17, Albemarle CiderWorks and Mudhouse Coffee Roasters scored top honors in the 2020 Good Food Awards in San Francisco. Among more than 2,000 entrants, the cidery and coffee producer were regional (South) winners in their respective categories—ACW for its Harrison cider, and Mudhouse for its Geisha Moras Negras roast. Bestowed annually by the creators of Slow Food Nations, the awards recognize “players in the food system who are driving towards tasty, authentic, and responsible food in order to humanize and reform our American food culture.”

Albemarle CiderWorks’ Harrison cider took top regional (South) honors at the annual Good Foods Awards in San Francisco. Photo: Courtesy Albemarle CiderWorks

As the name suggests, the ACW cider is made from the Harrison apple, an 18th-century variety that fell out of use and was thought to be extinct until its rediscovery in the late 1970s. Years later, ACW’s Thomas Burford became the first contemporary orchardist to cultivate the yellow, black-speckled Harrison, and today it is widely grown and popular among cider makers (but too ugly for supermarket sales).

The story of Mudhouse’s award winner begins in 1960, when the Geisha coffee variety was introduced in Panama. Mudhouse sources its beans from a third-generation family farm there. Grown at an altitude of about 5,400 feet, the fruit is hand-picked by migrant laborers from the Ngäbe-Buglé indigenous region, and it is quite precious. Eight ounces of Mudhouse’s Moras Negras will set you back $75. That’s more than most of us would be willing to pay. But at the 2006 Best of Panama event, an executive from Vermont’s Green Mountain Coffee remarked, “I am the least religious person here and when I tasted this coffee I saw the face of God in a cup.”

If you’re into that sort of thing, you can buy the stuff at mudhouse.com.

Speaking of awards…

Five local vineyards wowed the judges at the 2020 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, securing prestigious awards and doing the Monticello American Viticultural Area proud. Jefferson and Barboursville vineyards, Veritas Vineyard & Winery, and Trump Winery earned Double Gold designations for five wines, and newcomer Hark Vineyards was the only Best in Class winner from Virginia, singled out in the classic packaging category for its 2017 chardonnay label design. The Chronicle’s annual event is the largest in North America, drawing 6,700 entries from 1,000 wineries this year. Judges dole out Double Gold medals sparingly but found worthy recipients in the Jefferson Vineyards 2018 viognier, Barboursville’s 2018 vermentino, and Trump Winery’s 2016 meritage (a red blend consisting primarily of cabernet franc). Veritas nabbed two double-golds for cabernet franc bottlings, the 2017 reserve and 2017 standard in the $40-and-over and under-$30 categories, respectively.

This is nuts!

Sorry, fans of dairy alternatives like soy and almond milk, you may have to adapt to new terminology. A bill just cleared the Virginia House Agriculture Subcommittee defining milk as “the lacteal secretion, practically free of colostrum, obtained by the complete milking of a healthy hooved mammal.” The measure is intended to protect the commonwealth’s dairy industry from the surge in popularity of plant-based “milk” products. The legislation is moooving up the lawmaking food chain for further consideration.

Munch madness

C-VILLE’s Restaurant Week 2020 kicks off Friday, January 24, with 40 restaurants offering three-course meals for $29 or $39 (plus tax and a huge tip, please)—and presenting some tantalizing dishes. We’ve got our hungry little eyes on a few, including: Little Star’s seared rockfish with escarole, chipotle, manchego, and pimento fundito; Fleurie’s pan-roasted Polyface Farm chicken with braised cabbage and bacon; Kama’s grilled Virginia oysters with uni butter; 1799 at The Clifton’s rainbow trout with sweet potato, kale, and orange emulsion; Three Notch’d’s truffled mushroom ragout with potato gnocchi, vegetarian bordelaise, baked kale, and pecorino; and to top things off, Common House (aka Vinegar Hall)’s buttermilk panna cotta with persimmon jam. A portion of the proceeds benefit the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank, so eat up!

Bird is the word

Bowerbird Bakeshop, that is. The team behind the City Market stalwart recently announced a brick-and-mortar location at the Tenth Street Warehouses this spring. On Monday, co-owners Earl Vallery and Maria Niechwiadowicz surpassed their $5,555 GoFundMe target (by about $500) to defray part of the $70,000 start-up costs. Ten percent of all donations above the goal benefit City of Promise, the nonprofit working to empower underserved populations in Charlottesville.

Movin’ on up

It’s last call at Ace Biscuit & BBQ’s Henry Street location. The charming storefront next to Vitae Spirits will close on January 26 as the kings of carbo-loading move to bigger digs at 600 Concord Ave., just a couple of blocks away. No opening date at the new location has been announced.

Plus ça change

Less than a year after taking the helm at Gordonsville’s Rochambeau, Michelin-starred chef Bernard Guillot has returned to France, citing personal reasons. But the restaurant won’t miss a beat, as Jean-Louis and Karen Dumonet step in to fill the void in early February. The couple met long ago at cooking school in Paris and have been collaborating on restaurants all over the world for 35-plus years. Their latest project, Dumonet, was a popular French bistro in Brooklyn.

It’s mai-tai o’clock somewhere

Now that it’s actually cold outside, Brasserie Saison is hosting a Tropical Tiki Getaway so you can mind-trip to a warm, sandy beach. The intimate downstairs Coat Room will be decorated like a luau (we see a fake palm tree in our future) and paper-umbrella cocktails will be served. Wear your Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops. 6-10pm, Thursday, January 30. 111 E. Main St., Downtown Mall, 202-7027, brasseriesaison.net.

Categories
Living

Big mac attack: Pastry chef brings the baked goods

You can find Earl Vallery’s Bowerbird Bakeshop’s creations, including matcha mint chocolate chip cookies and macarons in interesting flavors like Thai coffee, at the City Market holiday market. Photos by Paul Whicheloe

Pastry chef Earl Vallery is new to Charlottesville, and there are a few things you should know about him. 1) He loves bread. “I think it’s the most amazing food. I could eat it every day of my life,” says Vallery, who went to culinary school for bread-baking before turning to pastry (he helped launch Whisk bakery in Richmond). 2) His brand-new Bowerbird Bakeshop will sell matcha mint chocolate chip cookies (“if a Thin Mint and a chocolate chip cookie had a baby…” Vallery says) and double-chocolate vortex cookies (a naturally gluten-free meringue-based cookie that’s crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside) at the City Market holiday market. 3) Vallery loves a good French macaron, and 4) He’ll make macs for your holiday party. Vallery has a smorgasbord of interesting macaron flavors lined up, too, like Thai coffee (Italian buttercream filling flavored with coffee, condensed milk and cardamom); another with Earl Grey-infused chocolate ganache; and a classic pink-shelled vanilla macaron with rainbow sprinkles. Get at him at bowerbirdbakeshop@gmail.com for wholesale order info.

Pucker up

Charlottesville’s beer scene will get funkier this Friday, November 24, with the opening of Three Notch’d Brewing Co.’s sour house at 946 Grady Ave.

Most Americans are familiar with beers made from a very specific kind of yeast, says Three Notch’d founding brewer Dave Warwick—a yeast with a clean finish and a soft, fruity flavor. But other yeasts, such as wild yeasts, can add a funky flavor to brews. It’s fun for brewers to play with different yeasts and flavors, but it can be difficult to brew sours, Warwick says, because the yeasts required for sours are airborne and if not contained to a single room, can “go wild, so to speak, and infect” cleaner beers with that funky, sour taste.

Warwick says that for opening weekend, the sour house (which has been in the works for about a year) will have about a dozen sour beers on tap, including the Galaxy Table Beer, a low-alcohol, crisp, easy-drinking sour that gets its tropical fruit flavor from the Australian-grown galaxy hop, and Eat A Peach, a sour brewed with lapsang souchong smoked black tea, fermented on top of peach puree and aged in oak barrels.

Sours are “wonderful, wonderful, beautiful beers,” says Warwick, adding that they go well with many fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices. Fans of dry, red wines high in tannins might be surprised at how familiar the flavor profiles will taste, he says.

Cherry on top

A couple months ago, a C-VILLE reader said Cocoa & Spice’s triple chocolate chunk brownie was the best thing she’d eaten in Charlottesville all year (and she doesn’t even like chocolate). Get one of your own for $6—warmed up and smothered in two toppings of your choice, such as salted caramel sauce and toasted coconut—on Saturday, November 25, during the chocolate shop’s brownie pop-up fundraiser at the City Market’s holiday market from 8am to noon, and again from 3 to 6pm at Cocoa & Spice’s retail location at 506 Stewart St. One dollar from every brownie sold will benefit the Charlottesville Derby Dames.