Comal restaurant – C-VILLE Weekly

Where and what we’re eating and drinking now.

Hickory Hill Store

BBQ, gas station, cheap eats

This no-frills roadside stop offers solid, reasonably priced pork and chicken barbecue slow-cooked on hickory and oak in smokers on the asphalt lot out front. What you have here is a convenience store with a kitchen, a counter with a few barstools, and a country music soundtrack. Sides and salads (including one made with smoked chicken) are housemade and unfussy, like you’d eat at a backyard cookout.

Service: Cheerful, quick

Space: Country store, linoleum floors

Apps/entrées: $1-2/$5-10

Drinks: Beer and soft drinks

Reservations: Not accepted

6:30am-6pm, Monday-Friday, 10am-5pm Saturday, 777 Monocan Tr., 293-0703

Early Mountain Vineyards

Farm-to-table, fine dining, great wine list

Chef Tim Moore spent more than seven years at the famed Inn at Little Washington before his recent arrival at this pastoral Madison winery. His small but dynamic menu changes frequently and delivers sophisticated fare to match Early Mountain’s next-level wine offerings. On a recent visit, local roasted beets with fromage blanc and Asian pear were served in an earthy sauce made from foraged black walnuts, and shrimp were brightly flavored with coriander, dill, parsley, and a lime vinaigrette. Surprise touches, like the peanuts in a dish of local pork belly with poached Virginia apples and braised cabbage, sealed the deal.

Service: Chatty, good pacing

Space: Large, farmhouse industrial, fireplace

Apps/entrées: $6-10/$12-26

Drinks: Wine

Reservations: Accepted; exploretock.com

11am-6pm, Wednesday-Monday, 6109 Wolftown-Hood Rd., Madison, (540) 948-9005, earlymountain.com

Comal

Mexican, upscale casual, Belmont

Former Mas Tapas manager Benos Bustamante and staff pay homage to the food of his childhood in Oaxaca, Mexico. The showpiece dish is the mole negro con pollo, which like many other menu items is homey yet refined, with great depth of flavor and chili-pepper heat that comes on slowly and never overwhelms. Standouts when we visited included pork tenderloin tamales with a garlic sauce and green salsa, pan-seared salmon tacos with pico de gallo and guacamole mousse, seared shrimp with a purée of roasted black beans and avocado leaves (think, basil), and braised pork ribs with guajillo mole and Caromont Farms queso fresco.

Service: Friendly, attentive

Space: Cozy, colorful

Apps/entrées: $8-12/$15-18

Drinks: Wine, beer

Reservations: Not accepted

5-10pm, Tuesday-Saturday, 816 Hinton Ave., 328-2519,
comalcville.com

Worth the wait: Blue Moon Diner ready to return…almost

The highly anticipated reopening of the Blue Moon Diner is still…highly anticipated. A call for applications to restaff the West Main Street restaurant, which closed in May 2017, went out a few weeks ago, noting that employees would be strapping on aprons sometime in August.

Now comes word that the Brooklyn-based duo, Charming Disaster, has been booked to play at the Blue Moon at 8pm September 26. We could not confirm the exact reopening date (the answering machine at the diner still says “hopefully this August”) but it better be before September 26!

Charming Disaster is a fitting act to kick off a new chapter for the quirky spot, where vinyl was always spinning behind the bar and musicians periodically played gigs. C-VILLE Weekly described the reopening band’s music as “folk tunes with a cabaret twist,” and a press release notes inspirations including “the gothic humor of Edward Gorey and Tim Burton, the noir fiction of Raymond Chandler, and the murder ballads of the Americana tradition.”

Cheerfully dark, a little theatrical… Just like the Blue Moon.

Open-and-shut cases

As C-VILLE Weekly first reported via Instagram and Twitter, a new Mexican restaurant run by Benos Bustamante, who recently left his post as front-of-house manager at Mas, will open at 816 Hinton Ave. No date has been set (we sense a theme), but Comal is currently testing recipes—and if the food tastes as good as it looks on Instagram, we’ll be there on opening night, whenever that is. Comal takes over the space recently vacated by the clearly misnamed No Limits Smokehouse. Also reaching its limit: Seafood at West Main, which has announced it will close up shop at the Main Street Market on August 31. Owner Chris Arseneault says he’s moving upstream to Jessup, Maryland, to join the sales team at Reliant Fish Company.