Cheesy goodness: In the intro to her cookbook Hot Cheese: Over 50 Gooey, Oozy, Melty Recipes, Polina Chesnakova writes: “…something happens when you apply heat to curds: a setting of the stage. A bubbling pot of fondue, a half wheel of raclette as it blisters and caramelizes under a grill.” To salivate even more, break out the brie and tune in to the Virginia Festival of the Book’s Shelf Life series, which features Chesnakova in conversation with cheese expert Sara Adduci (formerly of Feast!).
By Sam Padgett
Considering our broad food and drink world, it’s difficult to imagine a single dish that could represent the city’s local food scene. Charlottesville, on account of its geography and demographics, has a more dynamic selection of foods compared to the seafood-obsessed southeastern part of the state and metropolitan areas of Northern Virginia. However, difficult as it might be to identify the dish of the city, a panel of four judges assembled by the Tom Tom Founders Festival made the executive decision that it is the humble ham biscuit.
Leni Sorensen, a culinary historian and the writer behind the Indigo House blog, sees ham biscuits as an inevitability of living in Charlottesville. Sorensen moved here later in life, and the ubiquity of ham biscuits made an impression on her. “They’re everywhere,” she says. “They’re a part of every cocktail party, every museum opening, every kind of festive occasion. I personally know people who would not dream of having a party without ham biscuits.”
Besides its abundance, Sorensen sees the ham biscuit as something that cuts across all spectrums of dining, from gourmet to everyday. Locally, the adaptability of the ham biscuit is extraordinarily clear.
Specialty foods store Feast! has a 2-inch li’l cutie of a slider-style ham biscuit made with local sweet potato biscuits, local ham and a dollop of Virginia spicy plum chutney.
Timberlake Drugs makes its traditional version with a fluffy white biscuit and ham, and there’s the option to add egg and cheese, too.
JM Stock Provisions tops a buttermilk-and-lard biscuit with tasso (spicy, smoky, Louisiana-style ham) and a drizzle of both honey and hot sauce.
The Ivy Inn uses Kite’s Country ham, a sugar-cured ham from Madison County, served with hickory syrup mustard.
The Whiskey Jar also uses Kite’s ham and offers the option of adding egg and cheese.
Ace Biscuit & Barbecue, Fox’s Cafe, Tip Top Restaurant, Commonwealth Restaurant & Skybar, Keevil & Keevil Grocery and Kitchen, Bluegrass Grill & Bakery and plenty of other spots that we don’t have room to name here have ’em, too.
What’s your favorite local version of the ham biscuit? Tell us at eatdrink@c-ville.com.
Luddites might want to steer clear of Champion Brewing Company’s new ML IPA, which debuted last week during the Tom Tom Founders Festival. In conjunction with local startup Metis Machine Learning (the “ML” in the name), Champion’s newest beverage was designed via computer. Using machine learning algorithms, information about the nation’s top 10 best-selling IPAs, as well as Charlottesville’s 10 worst-selling IPAs, was fed into a program that output the desired parameters for the theoretical best IPA.
While there are plenty of variables that make up the taste of the beer, they analyzed the beers’ IBUs (International Bittering Unit, a measure of bitterness), SRM (Standard Reference Method, a color system brewers use to determine finished beer and malt color) and alcohol content.
The results for each variable were 60, 6 and 6, respectively, possibly stoking more fear of a machine uprising.
Michael Prichard, founder and CEO of Metis Machine, wants to quash those fears. “All we really wanted to do was arm the brewer with some information they could work with,” he says. “It’s still a craft; we don’t want people to think we’re trying to replace the brewer.”
Hunter Smith, president and head brewer at Champion, confirms: “At the end of the day, all I was given was some parameters. After that, it was brewing as usual.”
Prichard and Smith met at a machine learning talk about a year ago, and they decided to collaborate; it seemed appropriate to have the ML IPA ready to serve during the innovation-focused Tom Tom Festival.
The ML IPA, which could stay on the menu after Tom Tom if the demand is there, is, according to Smith, a “spot-on typical IPA.”
Back in February, we reported that Market Street Wineshop owner Robert Harllee had decided to retire and sell his shop at 311 E. Market St. to two longtime employees, Siân Richards and Thadd McQuade. Market Street Wineshop 2.0—now called Market Street Wine—will open this weekend, with an open house from 1 to 4pm on Saturday, April 21.—Erin O’Hare
Strung with holiday lights and equipped with an espresso machine and other warm drink-making accoutrements, a 1974 cherry red Citroën H Van parked inside Main Street Market will start serving early-morning beverages and snacks this week.
Coffee expert and Feast! employee Sara Goldsmith will be running the show, selling locally roasted coffees and coffee drinks, lemon ginger honey soothers, lavender London fog steamers, bone broths and mulled apple cider made from local fruit. There will be snacks, too, such as cheese toast, cinnamon toast, local hard-boiled eggs, cinnamon honey Greek yogurt and fresh fruit. Before joining the Feast! team, Goldsmith managed and consulted for boutique cafés in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Open at 7:30am daily, Monday through Saturday, the van will close in mid to late afternoon. Goldsmith says she eventually hopes to be open on Sundays, too.
Feast! specialty food shop owners Kate Collier and Eric Gertner own the van, which will be parked permanently across from Feast! at 418 W. Main St. They say that the van was originally built to sell artisan cheese at farmers markets in Bordeaux, France—the large glass case in the front of the it was created specifically for housing and displaying cheese, Goldsmith says.
Closing time
After more than 25 years of serving California-style Mexican eats in Charlottesville, casual cantina restaurant Baja Bean on 29 North will close its doors on December 16 and abandon the Charlottesville market altogether.
Baja Bean Co. owner Ron Morse opened the first Baja Bean in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1989, and it was so small it didn’t even have seating, Morse recalls. He brought the restaurant to the UVA Corner in 1992, then opened the 29 North location 12 years ago.
The Corner Baja Bean, once a popular spot for karaoke, closed in May 2013, and though Morse owns two other Baja Beans, one on West Beverley Street in Staunton and another in Richmond’s Fan District, he says the closing of the last Charlottesville location “is pretty depressing.”
“It’s not financially working out anymore,” says Morse of the restaurant, which has about 10 employees, some of them longtime Baja Bean employees, and business has declined over the years as 29 North has been built up. Now that places like Hollymead Town Center and The Shops at Stonefield have “lots of decent restaurants,” says Morse, people aren’t making the drive further down the road.
Both the Richmond and Staunton Baja Beans will remain open, and Morse has two more restaurants in Richmond (Station 2, a burger joint; and Postbellum, a chef-driven new American cuisine spot), plus two others in the works.
Morse, who has raised his family in Charlottesville, says that he loves the energy of the city and is sad to leave the market, particularly because of the community relationships the restaurant has forged. Over the years, Baja Bean has sponsored recreational sports teams, charity golf tournaments for Camp Holiday Trails, fundraisers and burrito days at local schools, and has catered events for many others.
Morse says he would rather hand over the place to “an angel” instead of closing it altogether, but despite the holiday season, that angel hasn’t yet appeared.
There’s a rooftop wine garden in town, but blink and you’ll miss it.
On Fridays from 4-7pm and on Saturdays from 1-6pm, now through October 22, Feast! is hosting a pop-up wine garden with Blenheim Vineyards in the Main Street Market tower, a cozy, open space with bistro tables, padded benches and some excellent views of the city.
Tracey Love of Blenheim says the vineyard approached Feast! about doing the pop-up. It “was based on wanting our wines to be easily accessible and approachable to folks visiting from out of town and for those living in Charlottesville,” she says. “Even though our actual tasting room is only 15 minutes south of town, that is sometimes too far for people that don’t have means of transportation or time to make the trek.”
Feast! owner Kate Collier was eager to utilize the space, which Feast! has had for about a year and a half and uses for gift box production during the holiday season. “We felt bad hiding it from the public for so long,” she says.
Rooftop wine sippers have their choice of Blenheim’s chardonnay, Painted White (a blend of chardonnay, viognier and sauvignon blanc), merlot or cabernet franc. The wines cost $6 per glass, and between $17 and $25 for a bottle. A tasting flight of all four wines costs $6, and you can bring your glass to Blenheim’s tasting room at a later date for a free glass of wine, Collier says.
Customers can purchase food at Feast!—salads, sandwiches, cheese and charcuterie—to take up to the garden, or you can buy small snack packs, such as Virginia cheese straws, dark chocolate with cranberries, roasted Marcona almonds and tart cherries, or wasabi crisps with Virginia peanuts for between $4 and $8 at the bar.
The setup is temporary, but Collier says that other vineyards and cideries have expressed interest in doing something similar at Feast!’s rooftop garden. Stay tuned for future pairings.
Special delivery
Keevil & Keevil Grocery owner and chef Harrison Keevil loves Champion Brewing Company beer so much he’s made four sandwiches—available exclusively for delivery from his store to Champion beginning Thursday, October 6—to pair with it. “I wanted to highlight the amazing things the Champion brew team is doing,” Keevil says, and make food that would “bring out the essence of the beer.”
He’s made a chicken tikka masala burrito with Carolina gold rice to pair (if you choose) with the Missile IPA; a beer-braised sausage sandwich with housemade beer mustard and sautéed onion to go with the Shower Beer; a braised beef sandwich with carrot salad and beer cheese for the Black Me Out Stout; and a roasted chicken wrap with Carolina gold rice, romaine and ranch to pair with any of the lighter beers on tap. Keevil is currently developing a vegetarian sandwich option as well.
At Champion you can call in or text your order along with your name, and you’ll have your $10 sammy within an hour—Keevil & Keevil will deliver on the half hour, from 30 minutes after Champion opens until 7pm Mondays through Saturdays.
These sandwiches are exclusive to Champion, but Keevil & Keevil will soon offer hot in-house sandwiches—such as bahn mis and burgers.
Send your food and drink tips to Erin O’Hare at eatdrink@c-ville.com.
Charlottesville may be known for its wine, weddings and incomparable admiration of Thomas Jefferson, but perhaps all this time we’ve been missing the city’s real gem: cheese.
This past week, two C’villians, Nadjeeb Chouaf of Flora Artisanal Cheese at Timbercreek Market and Sara Adduci at Feast!, took home first and third place respectively at the Cheesemonger Invitational, held in Long Island, New York.
“It really speaks volumes to how big food is in Charlottesville,” Adduci says. “Out of probably 50 competitors, two of the top three are from this tiny town.”
The competition, which includes events such as a blind aroma testing, cutting the exact weight of cheese by eye, speed-wrapping cheese and creating 150 perfect bites ahead of time, culminates in a final stage performance for the six finalists.
“Honestly, my first thought was ‘finally!’” says Chouaf on winning after his fourth trip to the invitational. “I like to tell people every competition has about six to 10 people who have a chance to win, and it’s just about who shows up that day. I was lucky enough to show up that day.”
Chouaf credits Ian Redshaw of Lampo for helping him create the bite of a crispy lamb mortadella cornet, stuffed with kunik, drizzled with an emulsion of pickled garlic scapes and spruce tips and topped with a pomegranate seed that helped him win the competition.
Related links: Learn what these cheesemongers’ favorites are
He compares cheese culture to the way people used to approach wine. He says customers would stay away from what they didn’t know because they felt they didn’t have the knowledge to talk about it. This is why cheesemongers, he says, are so important.
“We’re there [in the shop] to be educators and to tell the story of the cheese,” he says. “We want to help match the perfect cheese to each customer and start a conversation, to start a relationship.”
Adduci couldn’t agree more. “We want to guide you to the cheese you’ll love, that will impress your mother-in-law or your friend Joe down the way who just wants a simple cheddar. We want to help you step out of your cheese box.”
Turkish delight
Sultan Kebab has been trying to leave its location on the corner of Route 29 and Rio Road since last year, and the Route 29 construction was the final push, says co-owner Deniz Dikmen. At last, the only Turkish restaurant in Charlottesville has found its new home, a space roughly three times the size of its original location, in the Treehouse, on the corner of Garrett and Second streets.
The restaurant, which opened in 2012, continues to serve its signature Turkish dishes but with roughly 25 percent more menu items, including Turkish-style lamb chops and a larger vegetarian and vegan menu.
Tasty tidbits
Sweet summertime…It’s finally July and the fruit’s all here. The Pie Chest is transitioning to its summer menu with lots of blackberries, cherries and peaches from the Local Food Hub. Better with age…The “sugaristas” at Paradox Pastry celebrated its fourth birthday June 12, by posting a photo on Facebook of all the cookbooks that served as inspiration before the cafe opened. Last-place winner…Despite coming in dead last behind Williamsburg, Virginia Beach and Harrisonburg in a Twitter poll about where Sugar Shack Donuts’ next location should be, the franchise will be making its way to Charlottesville. The company says, “It’s a definite without a definite timeline.”