Cardamom – C-VILLE Weekly

MarieBette expands its operations

MarieBette Café & Bakery has expanded its baking operations into a new building about a block away from the French café at 700 Rose Hill Dr. The satellite space has brand-new equipment, such as a gigantic four-deck oven that’s double the size of the one in the original bakery.

The bakery upgraded almost all its machinery to keep up with the oven, so the new space is home to gadgets galore.

“So basically, it triples our baking capacity,” says owner Patrick Evans of the expansion. The bakery upgraded almost all its machinery to keep up with the oven, so the new space is home to gadgets galore. There’s a bigger walk-in refrigerator, a larger mixer, a machine that specifically cuts and shapes rolls and a retarder/proofer that starts cold and heats up overnight, allowing pastries to go in the oven first thing in the morning. But the oven is the star of the show; instead of only being able to bake about 50 baguettes an hour, it can bake three times that many.

Evans says MarieBette will expand its offerings to include goodies for events such as weddings, plus different-sized breads and more rolls for restaurants. He also has more room to test new recipes, because the original bakery will continue regular operations.

“Everything there stays the same, and this has enabled us to explore new recipes and expand our wholesale; that was the main goal,” Evans says.

Cardamom closing

After a tumultuous ride since opening at the beginning of the year, Cardamom will close its doors in York Place June 30.

Owner Lu-Mei Chang says a new eatery will take over the space in July. Her Vietnamese restaurant has endured ups and downs, including offers to buy the space, and social media backlash for a pho pop-up menu, and Chang says this is the right time to hand the keys over. The new buyers had been eyeing the space since she opened, Chang says.

“It’s too big for me to operate,” she adds. “The timing was perfect.”

Even though the restaurant was not an official vegetarian or vegan restaurant, Chang received critical comments on social media for her decision to add meat to the menu after opening.

“This is no fun for me,” she says. “It’s time to go.”

Chang has no plans to open another restaurant in the near future, especially because the market is so competitive: “I might, but I don’t know. I don’t want to think about that now.” —Alexa Nash

Eater’s digest

Keep your eyes peeled for the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema opening at 5th Street Station in late July. It’s said to be 33,000 square feet of in-theater dining, drinks and upgraded seating, with one of the first Alamo Drafthouse Cinema premium large-format screens in the country.

On June 20, the Board of Architectural Review approved the building of a rooftop bar at Oakhart Social, located at 511 W. Main St. Owner Ben Clore says they plan to add a rooftop dining area, bar and additional kitchen. —Erin O’Hare

Cardamom dishes up contemporary vegetarian Asian food

Lu-Mei Chang can’t stay away from the kitchen, and we’re all better off for it.

Chang, who grew up in Taipei, Taiwan, started cooking when she came to Charlottesville 28 years ago. She worked at Eastern Standard, one of Charlottesville’s first Asian restaurants (located where The Whiskey Jar is now) for years before she opened Monsoon in 1992.

She sold Monsoon (now Monsoon Siam) in 2011 with the intention of taking a few years off from cooking to rest and repair her body. During that time, Chang taught the occasional cooking class at The Happy Cook and at Charlottesville Albemarle Technical Education Center and kept a steady blog, Cooking with Lu-Mei: Asian Cooking Adventures in Charlottesville, full of recipes for healthy Asian dishes, and tips on where to find the best ingredients for those dishes.

While she found teaching to be very rewarding, she missed cooking, and she just opened Cardamom, which dishes up contemporary vegetarian Asian food in the spot most recently occupied by Mican in York Place on the Downtown Mall.

In addition to Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar and The Spot, which both serve vegetarian and vegan cuisine, Cardamom is one of just a few vegetarian-only restaurants in the city.

For now, the menu is small, offering noodle salads and dumplings, and dishes like eggplant tofu with holy basil, deep-fried crispy eggplant and tofu with ginger-garlic sauce and holy basil served with brown rice; tofu balls with coconut-lime sauce, a deep-fried mixture of tofu, potatoes, mushrooms, spinach and holy basil, served with brown rice; and creamy leek soup with yogurt dressed with crispy mochi rice crackers and walnut oil. Dishes cost about $10, though most are less, and diners can order Vietnamese coffee and pots of tea as well.

Chang wants to show Charlottesville diners that with fresh ingredients, well-crafted sauces and the right seasonings, vegetarian food can be both delicious and exciting.

New beginnings

“I’ve always had an appreciation for things that operate on the plane that borders the absurd and the meaningful, like watching one of the original ‘Star Trek’ episodes where it’s totally camp but there’s also substance if you’re looking for it,” says restaurateur Hamooda Shami.

Shami, who owns 11 Months, the space for extended restaurant/bar pop-ups in the former Yearbook Taco location on the Downtown Mall, will walk that fine line between absurdity and meaning with the first 11 Months concept: Sorry It’s Over.

Yes, Charlottesville, for 11 months, we’ll have a restaurant/bar with a breakup theme.

“It’s a sad subject, but we’re going to have some fun with it,” Shami says.

Shami worked with Richmond branding and interior design company Campfire & Co. on the branding and remodeling of the space (and on the restaurant’s Richmond location as well). He says we can expect “tacky neon” and actual breakup letters on the walls, plus some posters of sensitive-sad icons such as Al Green and The Smiths. Chef de cuisine Johnny Jackson and John Meiklejohn of The Whiskey Jar have developed a small, contemporary new American cuisine menu that Shami says will emphasize “quality over quantity.”

Bar manager David Faina will create the cocktail menu, and Shami says they’re in talks with Three Notch’d Brewing Company’s Collab House to craft a special beer that would play off the restaurant’s theme.

11 Months Presents…Sorry It’s Over will open in early February, so keep an eye out for the pale pink sign with a cartoon heart crying three fat tears.

Good eats

Three local craft food producers and the farmers who provide them with ingredients were honored last month at the 2017 annual Good Food Awards, which are organized by California sustainable food nonprofit Seedling Projects and “celebrate the kind of food we all want to eat: tasty, authentic and reasonably produced.” Both JM Stock Provisions and Timbercreek Market took home awards in the charcuterie category, for beef tongue pastrami and duck rillette, respectively. Red Rooster Coffee Roaster, based in Floyd, was honored for its Washed Hambela coffee. The 193 winners in 14 categories were chosen from 2,059 entries submitted by top-notch food producers from all over the U.S.