Tag: Food & Drink

C-VILLE Weekly’s food and drink writing includes the weekly columns All You Can Eat and the Working Pour, in addition to the most comprehensive food and wine writing in Charlottesville.

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Living News Uncategorized

City regulations could have an effect on new breweries

Hunter Smith, founder of Champion Brewing Company, says the new city brewery regulation could “disincentivize someone from locating in Charlottesville in the first place if they are going to be hamstrung down the road.” Photo by Eze Amos

Breweries have been popping up around Charlottesville like mushrooms after a rain. About a dozen beer producers are now located within an easy drive from town. But curiously, only four breweries are actually located within the city’s limits: Champion, South Street, Three Notch’d and—the newest addition in September—Random Row.

In the middle of a regional beer boom, a new city regulation on breweries was slipped into a zoning regulation change last winter. Nobody seems to know whose idea it was, but it was would-be brewer Julie Harlan who first noticed that new microbreweries within Charlottesville will have to derive at least 25 percent of their revenue from on-site retail sales.

In August 2012, Harlan bought an almost 1,500-square-foot foreclosed  home on Forest Street for the shockingly low sum of $17,700, which allowed her to purchase the property with cash. Located a few blocks from Bodo’s Bagels on Preston Avenue, it is zoned B-3, which is a flexible zoning status that allows for use as either residential or commercial purposes.

“I was looking down the list of zoning options and microbrewing was on the list,” says Harlan. “My niece had gone to Piedmont and studied viticulture and she suggested brewing. …I would take care of the business and we could have a small, woman-owned nanobrewery. …It seemed like a good idea because everything I read about the Virginia laws seemed like they were going in the direction of less regulation.”

Three Notch’d Brewing Company President Scott Roth says the brewery is expanding its operations into a larger space at IX Art Park next year that will include an outdoor beer garden and an event space. The company will keep its Grady Avenue facility for production and storage. Photo by Eze Amos
Three Notch’d Brewing Company President Scott Roth says the brewery is expanding its operations into a larger space at IX Art Park next year that will include an outdoor beer garden and an event space. The company will keep its Grady Avenue facility for production and storage. Photo by Eze Amos

The 25 percent requirement was tacked on to a change in law that Three Notch’d Brewing Company requested. Previously, breweries within Charlottesville were limited to a 15,000-barrel annual cap for production. As Three Notch’d has won fans both locally and around the region for its inventive range of beers, demand has increased beyond the 15,000-barrel limit and the company was concerned about possibly having to relocate outside of the city. Its owners asked that the limit be raised to 30,000 barrels, and the city agreed.

Three Notch’d’s management team realized they would need the increase as they prepared to move into a new, larger space at the IX Art Park that will include an outdoor beer garden and an event area (they will maintain their existing space in the old Monticello Dairy on Grady Avenue for storage and production).

“When we were contemplating the move it was necessary to ensure that we wouldn’t be regulated in terms of the amount of barrels we can produce,” says Scott Roth, president of Three Notch’d Brewing Company. “The city was very understanding and took a good look at the code and understood the need for a few changes.”

“We have been busting at the seams in our current location and wanted to find a more permanent home where we could focus on maximizing our production facility without being so hindered by space constraints,” Roth says. Three Notch’d’s new presence at IX will include “food and beer in a relaxing atmosphere that is comfortable for everyone, including families.”

But the changes aren’t settling well with everyone seeking to become part of the beer industry. The new 25 percent requirement has given Harlan pause and may scuttle her plans to open Charlottesville’s fifth brewery (C’ville-ian Brewery closed in October after two years in business). To start, she doesn’t understand how it would be enforced.

“Are the sales net or gross?” she asks. “I’m also worried, would we be pushing beer to make the 25 percent? Like, we’d be looking at the clock thinking we would like to close now but we haven’t made our 25 percent. …There’s no clear guidelines. How do you report it? What if you don’t make your 25 percent quota? Is there a penalty? Is it a zoning violation? Do they shut you down? …I couldn’t find anyone who could give me any reason behind the 25 percent, which would help me understand where they were going with it.”

Julie Harlan had planned to open a microbrewery on her Rose Hill property, until she learned a city code added last winter requires 25 percent of her revenue to come from on-site retail sales. Photo by Eze Amos
Julie Harlan had planned to open a microbrewery on her Rose Hill property, until she learned a city code added last winter requires 25 percent of her revenue to come from on-site retail sales. Photo by Eze Amos

Brian Haluska, principal planner for the City of Charlottesville, has a few answers.

“The rationale for the 25 percent requirement is that if we are permitting these facilities in our commercial and mixed-use districts, they need to incorporate a ‘front door’ that contributes to the activity on the street,” says Haluska. “Our commercial and mixed-use districts are intended to have activity at the street level. The fear was that without some sort of on-site sale requirement, a microproducer could locate in the commercial or mixed-use zone, have no on-site sales, and have all of their beverages leaving on trucks out of the back. That is a bottling facility—which we allow, just not in the commercial and mixed-use zones.”

Andrew Sneathern, former assistant commonwealth’s attorney in Albemarle County who is now in private practice specializing in alcohol-related law, says the likelihood of a company being a bottling-only facility is small.

“The costs of being in the city of Charlottesville versus, say, Waynesboro, for example, would be completely disparate,” he says. “I think you could probably pick up for about $3 a square foot in Waynesboro for a bottling facility. In Charlottesville you couldn’t come anywhere near that, so the chance of that happening is extremely small.”

Nor does Haluska’s concern make a lot of sense to Hunter Smith, owner of Charlottesville’s Champion Brewery and co-chair of the Government Affairs Committee for the Virginia Craft Brewers Guild.

“Any brewer would tell you that you would be nuts not to have the retail component,” says Smith. “If you’re going to have some retail component, chances are it will be a large portion of your sales early on. It’s as you grow that it becomes of concern.”

Real estate and rent in Charlottesville are so expensive that it would not typically make economic sense for someone to open a facility that only brews and bottles without selling retail. Such a facility could easily be opened in another county with cheaper land and closer access to a highway, like Devils Backbone’s outpost in Rockbridge County.

Breweries have a special legal status under Virginia state law. Most businesses that serve alcohol are required to sell a certain amount of food as well. You can’t legally open a business that is only a bar in Virginia—it also has to be a restaurant. But breweries can sell their own beer at the same site where they brew without being required to offer food.

And those on-site sales are something that small to mid-sized breweries value. A beer sold directly from the brewery keeps all of the profit in-house. All beer sold to other restaurants or retailers is required under state law to pass through a third-party distributor and then to the point of sale. Each business needs to make a profit and marks up the beer along the way. Normally, a small Virginia brewery will sell as much beer as possible through its own pub and distribute the rest for a lower profit per pint. According to Smith, a pint of beer sold to a thirsty brewpub patron typically provides about five times more profit to the brewer than the same pint sold through a distributor.

“The reason to have a business in Charlottesville is the great retail potential,” says Smith. “So this is solving a problem that doesn’t exist.”

Smith agrees with Harlan that the 25 percent requirement could scare new breweries away from Charlottesville, but he disagrees about the point in a brewery’s development that this would happen. Champion has grown from producing 500 barrels per year when it opened in December 2012 to 10,000 barrels per year in 2016. In fact, they opened the Missile Factory, a 7,000-square-foot facility with a 15,000-barrel capacity, in Woolen Mills in 2014 to keep up with distribution demand. 

“Here we are in year four and [Champion is] opening multiple extra states for wholesale distribution. It’s going to be hard for my 1,500-square-foot taproom to keep up with my multimillion-dollar wholesale business,” Smith says. “The long-term situation is that it could disincentivize someone from locating in Charlottesville in the first place if they are going to be hamstrung down the road.”

While a quality product and good marketing can dramatically expand the distribution of a brewery’s products, the brewpub located at the brewery can’t make more people walk in to have a drink. In fact, it is illegal under state law for them to try.

“It is illegal to advertise specifically alcohol or prices on alcohol because of the ABC [Alcoholic Beverage Control],” says Smith. ABC regulations, some of which date back to the era immediately following Prohibition, prevent businesses that retail alcohol from promoting their prices or doing certain other things that could encourage people to drink beer.

“So if you find yourself in a pinch on that regulation, it is hard to go out and drum up more business,” says Smith. “I can’t just go make more people to drink beer here.”

A local business might actually have to turn down orders for its beer if it is unable to increase on-site sales to 25 percent of the new total in revenue. This is deliberate.

“One of the chief concerns from the Planning Commission was how much truck traffic would these uses generate, especially with some of our commercial zones being close to residential neighborhoods,” says Haluska. “So, in addition to the desire to see retail sales in the microproducers, the 25 percent on-site sales rule would limit the volume of shipments.”

Haluska does not know who initially requested that a 25 percent minimum retail sales requirement be added to the city’s zoning regulations along with the production increase to 30,000 barrels annually. Smith, heavily involved with the Craft Brewers Guild, says he had not been consulted on or made aware of the proposal. The craft brewing industry currently provides about 8,900 jobs in Virginia, according to the guild.

Sneathern thinks there might be some unintended consequences of the 25 percent requirement. “It may be that a real microbrewery might have to extend its hours in order to meet that requirement,” he says. “If they had to stay open later [in order to raise their on-site sales to 25 percent of sales] and they’re in a neighborhood like Belmont where there are residential neighbors, it would probably impact those neighbors. When I practiced law in Belmont I was on Douglas Avenue, and I remember distinctly a number of neighbors being bothered by what was going on after the zoning changes happened in Belmont. Noise issues and people being out intoxicated late at night and everything that goes along with that.”

Harlan wouldn’t want her imagined brewery to stay open late.

“I could foresee doing a tasting room as part of the brewery, but if we got busy we might just want to do contract brewing,” she says. “Our goal is not to get bigger and bigger. We were not looking for the requirement for the hours to be open to the public. Staying open at night is not something we want to do.”

Andrew Sneathern, a local attorney in private practice specializing in alcohol-related law, says the likelihood of a company being a bottling-only facility on city land is small, which city staff says is the main concern behind the code change. Photo by Eze Amos

Breweries that distribute their beer to local restaurants have to walk a fine line by selling beer through a tap room but not appearing to compete with their customers.

“You don’t want to be open till 2am like they are,” Smith says about bars, “trying to steal their alcohol business and competing with them. We are in the tourism and tasting business, not in the bar or restaurant business.”

But Smith is actually planning to make that leap. At the November 5 Top of the Hops beer festival, Smith announced plans to open the first-ever brewery on the Downtown Mall.

“We intend to sell all the beer produced there, right there,” says Smith. “The business model is to sell 100 percent of the beer retail. We’ll be opening the first brewery on the Downtown Mall. It will be a new category for us to get into.”

Smith’s new brewery will offer different varieties of beer that are currently unavailable at Champion and it will be combined with a restaurant, a joint venture with Wilson Richey. Under Charlottesville’s new 25 percent rule for microbreweries, Champion can get to the 25 percent by selling anything retail, including food. But the restaurant/brewery combination is a risk that most brewers aren’t comfortable taking.

“The inherent risk of the restaurant business is higher,” says Smith. “In a restaurant you are being judged on so many other criteria. You’re getting out of your wheelhouse so you can grow the business you are good at. It’s like you would have to get better at hockey so you can play basketball. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Three Notch’d’s Roth isn’t worried about the 25 percent minimum.

“They are focused on providing a healthy combination of retail and interactive space for the city of Charlottesville,” he says, “while also providing the breweries with what they need in terms of barrel limits to succeed. …If you really dive into the numbers, the 25 percent requirement should not prove to be overly daunting.”

Harlan plans to tear down the single-family house currently on her lot and replace it with a new building that she designed herself. Right now she’s considering erecting a duplex on the site, and says parking requirements for a brewery also factored into her decision to table that business venture.

“The rules are pretty clear for anyone looking to open a facility in the city,” says Haluska. “If the sales to distributors start to rise, then those businesses need to consider how to accommodate that expansion in production—if a second site is necessary in a zone that permits a standalone bottling plant or whether to relocate to a zone that permits small breweries.”

What neither Harlan, Sneathern nor Smith understand is exactly why the city would need to limit breweries in a situation where the price of real estate already seems to be doing that. Is there something undesirable about having a brewing industry in Charlottesville?

“You have the idea of some old Guinness building with rats and the spent grain and labor strikes and things like that,” says Smith, invoking the images of American breweries from the gilded age of the late 1800s. “In 2016 it’s an irrelevant concern.”

Categories
Living

Food options aplenty at the new shopping center

You don’t even have to get out of your car to satiate your Panera craving. Photo by Tom McGovern

Loosen your belts, Charlottesville. We’re getting more food, food that we didn’t even know we needed. Here’s a quick roundup of what’s open—or will be open soon—at 5th Street Station.

Wegmans A chain that feels less like a grocery store and more like a marketplace, Wegmans boasts a host of specialty items: organic produce and meats, fresh bakery breads, sushi, a market café with a self-serve bar, made-to-order pizzas, sandwiches, a pub with bacon burgers and fish ’n’ chips, a cheese counter, a large wine and beer selection and more. Open now.

Timberwood Tap House The sister restaurant of Timberwood Grill located across from Hollymead Town Center on the north side of town, Timberwood Tap House has an approachable (and cleverly written) menu full of American classics like wings, calamari, burgers, salads, spare ribs, New York strip, s’mores baked Alaska and more, plus sizable beer and wine lists. The bar side of the restaurant is filled with TVs, but the dining side has nary a screen in sight if you’d rather have a side of conversation with your entrée, says owner Adam Gregory. Open now.

Panera Bread The time has come, Charlottesville. You no longer have to leave the comfort of your vehicle to get your broccoli-cheddar soup and asiago cheese bagel fix, because this Panera has a drive-thru. Wear your pajamas, if you like. We won’t judge. Open now.

Fuzzy’s Taco Shop This is the first Virginia franchise for the Texas-based, fast-casual, Baja-style taco chain that has built a cult following throughout the South. Franchise owner Pranav Shah plans to open the restaurant early in the morning so that third- shift workers can come in for happy hour margaritas after work. Opening in February.

Other food and drink spots slated to open at 5th Street are: Jersey Mike’s Subs, Red Mango frozen yogurt and Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. There will be a Virginia ABC store there, too.

Rock Barn to close

According to an e-mail sent to its restaurant partners on November 1, “The Rock Barn will be wrapping up this chapter of its life at the end of the year.” As of last week, the field-to-fork butcher was in the middle of its final production run and will continue to sell its remaining inventory through December. “I have been lucky to work with so many talented people both at The Rock Barn as well as all of our restaurant partners,” says founder Ben Thompson. “I will always be grateful for the knowledge (the late) Richard (Bean) and Ara Avagyan imparted on myself and the team. Double H, under Ara’s guidance, is still doing a spectacular job and continues to be an inspiration for me as we plan the next steps,” Thompson says. As to what those next steps are, we’ll have to wait and see.

Mea culpa: Dabney oversights

In last week’s Small Bites column, we wrote about two Michelin-rated D.C. restaurants that boast local ties (The Inn at Little Washington and The Dabney). We regrettably neglected to mention that Ben Louquet, formerly of Zocalo and Tavola, and Brad Langdon, former bar manager at Public Fish & Oyster on West Main Street, are current members of the The Dabney bar staff.

Categories
Living

Former Clifton Inn chef at home in meat market

Chef Tucker Yoder focuses on fresh, seasonal ingredients in everything from a vegetarian spin on a Bolognese to a braised pork belly spiked with black garlic. Photo by Amy Jackson

What happens when a meat market hires an acclaimed fine-dining chef? Timbercreek Market is about to find out.

When Timbercreek Farm owners Sara and Zach Miller opened the market in July 2015, their aim was to bring directly to consumers the same produce from their farm that had long been served at top restaurants around town. In addition to their own farm’s produce, the market offers products from other local farms and purveyors, and a cheese counter run by Flora Artisanal Cheese’s Nadjeeb Chouaf, recently named best cheesemonger in America. Now they have landed Tucker Yoder, the former Clifton Inn executive chef once named one of Charlottesville’s rising stars.

Yoder’s arrival coincides with the introduction of the market’s dinner service, launched shortly before former chef Allie Redshaw left to pursue other opportunities. Served Thursday through Saturday at tables in the market, with a full selection of beer and wine, dinner allows Yoder to apply his talent to local, seasonal produce.

There is recent precedent in other cities for a partnership between a butcher and a chef with Yoder’s chops. But, will it work in Charlottesville?

No one should know better than Ben Thompson, who boasts a background in both fine dining and butchery. The ace student of the Culinary Institute of America went on to work at two of the nation’s best fine-dining restaurants before returning to Virginia to open The Rock Barn, a pork butchery that became an instant hit among area chefs. Thompson knows cooking and he knows meat, and he was a perfect dinner guest at Timbercreek.

In a pleasant twist, though, several of our meal’s standouts were meatless. For a vegetarian riff on Bolognese, Yoder replaces meat with local pumpkin, but otherwise follows the traditional method of gradually layering flavors. First, he caramelizes onions, garlic and pumpkin. Next, he adds tomato and caramelizes some more. Finally, he adds pumpkin stock to collect the pan’s flavors, and reduces the liquid. Atop housemade garganelli, the sauce delivers a deep flavor, rich in umami from the patient caramelization and reduction. Sara Miller, a devout carnivore, admits it’s her favorite dish on the menu. Thompson also called it a “highlight,” praising Yoder’s “mastery of simple technique without all the frills.”

With a chef as devoted to technique as Yoder, even the bread course warrants a pause from conversation. The fresh sourdough with housemade cultured butter could be a meal in itself, particularly alongside the grilled local radishes that Yoder delivered to our table.

But, this is a meat market after all. And there was plenty of meat. Thompson’s single favorite bite of the night was a cube of mole-spiced headcheese, served on a platter of housemade charcuterie. Yoder brines the meat of the head of a Timbercreek pig and then boils it in stock flavored with spices common to a Mexican mole sauce. Next, he dices it, adds more mole-style seasonings, and molds it in a terrine with stock. “Tender, chunky, porky, balanced,” said Thompson.

Thompson’s favorite entrée, meanwhile, was pork belly braised in broth spiked with black garlic, served with spicy greens and charred tomato pozole. “Perfectly seasoned, tender, rich,” said Thompson.

My favorite dish was the one Yoder himself likes best, too—a tart of chicken liver mousse with a crust of crushed Ritz crackers. Served in a thin sliver with pickled onions and malt vinegar, it had the harmonious combination of flavors that is the mark of a great chef. The dish is so delicious, in fact, that it has even generated a following of sorts on social media.

In addition to a menu of starters and entrées, there is a weekly changing selection of simply prepared butcher’s cuts of beef and pork, each served with a choice of sauce and two sides. While our rib-eye was great, the sides were just as notable, especially the Yorkshire pudding. With British heritage, I have eaten this all of my life, and Yoder’s version rivaled any I have ever had. And it didn’t hurt that I spread on the bone marrow butter that came with our steak.

Yoder’s aim for Timbercreek’s dinner is to create “something that represents the place and the seasons and of course the products raised on the farm,” he says. At Clifton Inn, he used to prepare intricate 10-course tasting menus with wine pairings, at more than $100 per head. Now, he cooks at a market, with a menu that even includes a burger. Some might think it an odd home for a chef with Yoder’s résumé. But our dinner was excellent. And, to Thompson, it makes perfect sense to task Yoder with the challenge of showcasing excellent local ingredients that change at Mother Nature’s whim.

“Tucker’s creativity and ability to be nimble with seasonal offerings,” Thompson said after our meal, “will be a great fit for the market.”

Contact Simon Davidson at eatdrink@c-ville.com.

Categories
Living

Michelin-rated D.C. restaurants boast local ties

Chefs and restaurateurs around the world work their whole lives in hopes of earning even a single Michelin Star for their restaurant; only a select few earn one, even fewer earn two, and only a portion of those few earn three (just 13 restaurants in the U.S. have three stars). Photo by Amy Jackson

Star chefs

In 1900, French tire moguls Ándre and Édouard Michelin found a creative way to get more people to buy their tires: a restaurant and hotel ratings guide that would get people in their cars, on the road and wearing down tire treads going from place to place.

By 1926, the Michelin Guide started awarding a dining star to select spots; by 1931, the guide expanded its star ratings to two and three stars. By 1936, the guide defined its system: one star for “a very good restaurant in its own category,” two stars for “excellent cooking, worth a detour”’ and three stars for “exceptional cuisine, worth the special trip.”

Decades later, chefs and restaurateurs around the world work their whole lives in hopes of earning even a single Michelin Star for their restaurant; only a select few earn one, even fewer earn two, and only a portion of those few earn three (just 13 restaurants in the U.S. have three stars). The acquisition or loss of a star can make or break a restaurant (and a chef’s spirit). On October 13, Michelin released its first Washington, D.C., guide and awarded stars to 12 restaurants in the district.

Charlottesville has connections to two of them.

Chef Jose De Brito left his position as head chef at The Alley Light in May to join the vast kitchen staff at The Inn at Little Washington. When asked about the stars, De Brito says, “I do not have much to say. I am just the lucky witness to chef Patrick O’Connell’s 38 years of work and vision being rewarded by two beautiful stars.”

The Dabney, chef Jeremiah Langhorne’s casual restaurant known for its commitment to crafting heritage American cuisine from ingredients sourced from the Mid-Atlantic region, received one Michelin Star (Langhorne is from Charlottesville—he trained under chef John Haywood at OXO restaurant before moving on to McCrady’s in Charleston, South Carolina). Christian Johnston, who made a name for himself mixing cocktails at The Alley Light before becoming bar manager at Tavola, will join The Dabney staff later this fall as the restaurant expands its bar program. Tyler Hudgens, who worked at Commonwealth Restaurant and Skybar before heading to D.C. and hiring Johnston to The Dabney team, says she is impressed by Johnston’s “leadership, creativity and investment in his community. He won’t be ‘filling anyone’s shoes,’ and will be able to make his own mark on our constantly honed service and drinks.”

Johnston, who will also work at The Bird in D.C., says that after working in just about every restaurant position—bouncer, sous chef, bar manager—here in Charlottesville, moving to D.C. seems like the logical next step for a C’ville native about to turn 30 and seeking to expand his horizons. What’s more, D.C. ABC laws aren’t as strict as Virginia’s, so Johnston is eager to have access to more cocktail components, though he’s proud of many of the drinks he’s created here in town, particularly the Bittersweet Symphony (Tanqueray gin, Yellow Chartreuse, Aperol, fresh lemon and lime juice) and the Dea Marrone (brown butter-washed Bulleit bourbon, Yellow Chartreuse, brown sugar and Averna syrup, apple cider shrub and fresh lemon juice) served at Tavola.

Johnston’s last shifts at Tavola and The Alley Light were on October 29 and 30, respectively. Steve Yang, who’s worked under Johnston, will take over the bar at Tavola.

Christian Johnston, bar manager at Tavola who got his start mixing cocktails at The Alley Light, will depart Charlottesville for The Dabney in D.C.

Contact Erin O’Hare at eatdrink@c-ville.com.

Categories
Living Uncategorized

Vitae Spirits opens for sales and tastings

Ian Glomski makes a foray into the local drink scene with his molasses-based liquors at Vitae Spirits. Photo by Amy Jackson

For Ian Glomski, 2012 was a watershed year. He turned 40 and narrowly escaped a massive wildfire while on a birthday fly-fishing trip in Wyoming. He served as a juror for the George Huguely trial and fought cancer for the first time.

“All of that added up,” he says, and with mortality on the mind, he started thinking about what he wanted to do with his remaining years. He had a good job as a professor of microbiology specializing in infectious disease at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, but knew he’d regret it if he kept doing what he was doing.

But his midlife crisis wasn’t a red Porsche or a young girlfriend, he says with a laugh. It was a distillery.

Glomski left his professor gig to open Vitae Spirits at 715 Henry Ave., next door to Ace Biscuit and Barbecue. Since 2015, he’s been making high-quality rum and gin to better serve the Virginia cocktail community, which has a cornucopia of local beers and wines, but few local liquors.

Glomski says he initially got into alcohol production to skirt the law—when he was 18, he could buy hops and yeast, but not beer, so he started making his own while a student at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Frustrated with the “crappy beer” he was brewing, he took a microbiology course to learn how to isolate and remove the microorganisms that were ruining his brews.

For a scientist interested in alcohol, he says distilling was the next mountain to summit, and he started with rum. In his opinion, there’s “no better spirit to pair with fruit juice than rum, especially white rum.”

Photo by Amy Jackson
Photo by Amy Jackson

Glomski says the production of Vitae rums (and gin) begins by fermenting sugar cane molasses into a molasses beer that’s about 8 percent alcohol (Glomski estimates Vitae uses about 27,000 pounds of Louisiana molasses every three months). They load the molasses beer into the custom-built copper pot still and heat it. Compounds in the beer that boil at low temperatures transition from liquid into vapor, and the vapors rise out of the top of the still. Once outside the still, the vapors are cooled back down to room temperature and turn into a liquid. Glomski says the very first vapors to boil off the molasses beer taste awful, but once they’ve boiled off completely, most of what’s left in the beer is water and ethanol (drinking alcohol). With continued heating, ethanol is next to vaporize, and those are the vapors cooled into a liquid to make rum.

The Alley Light bar manager Micah LeMon uses Vitae’s Platinum Rum in his Rose Hill Ruby cocktail; it’s different from most other white rums (e.g., Bacardi) in that it’s not filtered through charcoal, a process that can strip flavor from rum. “When you taste the molasses and then you taste the rum, you understand why people call liquor ‘spirits’: It is the fortified essence of molasses,” says LeMon.

The Golden Rum, infused with sugarcane grilled on Ace’s hickory next door, “is a great component for a split-spirit-based tiki cocktail” for its strong char, oak and molasses flavors, he says.

Glomski explains that to make gin, the Vitae team loads the still with ethanol drinking alcohol, and adds 17 different botanicals before heating it up. The vaporizing ethanol carries the aromatic oils from the herbs and spices out of the still and into drinking gin, while leaving the bitter flavors of the herbs and spices behind. Vitae’s gin is unusual in its molasses base: Glomski estimates that of the 800 craft distilleries making gin in the U.S., only about half a dozen of them use molasses, instead of corn and wheat, in the alcohol to make gin.

“The molasses is more muted in the gin [than in the rums], but still present, and complimented by lemongrass, lavender and pepper on the palate,” says LeMon.

All three liquors are available at Vitae’s tasting room, which opened October 15. The Platinum Rum hit ABC shelves April 1 of this year, but the Golden Rum and Modern Gin are special order bottles.

Per Virginia ABC laws, Vitae can serve a maximum of 3 ounces of liquor per person per day (that’s about two full-size cocktails), and can only serve alcohol produced on the premises. If Glomski wants to mix and serve a cocktail with a complementary alcohol, he must make it himself.

For those purposes, Glomski has a few other products in the works, including an orange liqueur made with local trifoliate orange zest, a coffee liqueur and an anisette made with fennel and Buddha’s hand zest. But for now, Vitae’s small bar serves up single-alcohol cocktails, such as the Gold ’n’ Stormy (Golden Rum, muddled lime, Reed’s Extra Ginger Brew), the Platinum Daiquiri (Platinum Rum, lime juice, vanilla bean-infused simple syrup) and the Modern Tonic (Modern Gin, muddled lime, Fever Tree Elderflower Tonic).

Vitae will sell about 3,500 cases of spirits per year, and while that’s enough to make it a successful business, Glomski expects the output to evolve as he incorporates more products and distillers reserves (like those liqueurs and some barrel-aged rums) into the repertoire.

He doesn’t plan to match big-distributor output or visibility, but he does plan to invite the community in. He’ll test plenty of products on adventurous tasting room customers and offer tours of the facility. He’s open to hearing tasters’ ideas and even doing custom production runs for those who have the means.

“We can’t beat the big guys on production, on quality control,” says Glomski. “So we have to offer something else—and that’s the direct connection to people who are vested in the product. We can adapt quickly, and we can be creative.”

Contact Erin O’Hare at eatdrink@c-ville.com.

Categories
Living

Meet Blue Ridge Pizza Co.’s new owners

Former Clifton Inn chef Yannick Fayolle and restaurant veteran Nikki Benedikt plan to revamp the Blue Ridge Pizza Co. menu but keep the name. Photo by Rammelkamp Foto

With its portable wood oven hitched to a pickup truck and fired-on-the-spot pizzas generously topped with local ingredients, Blue Ridge Pizza Co. has been dishing out personal-sized pies at Lockn’, the Heritage Harvest Festival and other social gatherings in town and around the county since spring 2013.

Yannick Fayolle, former Clifton Inn executive chef, and Nikki Benedikt, who’s worked in the restaurant industry for years, first as a server and later behind the bar and in management, have recently taken over the company.

Fayolle, a classically trained chef who went to school in Switzerland, owned a restaurant in his native Mauritius and cooked at a few eateries in Dubai before coming to the U.S. and cooking at Farmington Country Club and the Clifton Inn, where he served first as executive sous chef and in October 2015 rose to executive chef.

Fayolle left the Clifton Inn this past August, after he and Benedikt decided to pursue a private, in-home chef and catering business, Fayolle’s Table. Then, the Blue Ridge Pizza Co. opportunity “just fell into our laps, really,” Fayolle says, adding that taking ownership of the pizza company quickly facilitated the move and immediately gave Fayolle a working commercial kitchen for both businesses. The duo plans to keep the Blue Ridge Pizza Co. logo and the wood oven, but that’s about it.

They’ll change up the menu and the look of the truck and trailer. Fayolle says he’s having fun using the wood oven and learning the science of making dough. His pie-of-the-moment? The Fall Foliage, topped with wood-fire-roasted pumpkin, crispy kale, goat cheese and balsamic drizzle. “Very simple, but very fall,” he says.

Roast of the town

In 2012, after years of serving coffee—beginning from a City Market cart in 1993 and later at the flagship café on the Downtown Mall—Mudhouse Coffee founders Lynelle and John Lawrence decided to get into the coffee roasting game for themselves. They wanted to learn the craft and expand their company, so “it was an obvious next step for growth…and way too much fun,” Lynelle says. Their work has paid off: Mudhouse was recently named Micro Roaster of the Year for 2017 in Roast magazine’s 14th annual Roaster of the Year competition. According to Roast’s website, the awards are meant to “help inspire further excellence and success in the roasting industry.”

“This is the tippy top, the third Michelin star. This is the highest preeminent award for all coffee roasters in the U.S. and abroad,” Lynelle says. “We’re standing on the shoulders of giants, of course, and now we sit in the company of the top coffee roasters in the world. It is an incredible honor, and it belongs to the whole crew at Mudhouse.”

Good weird

Yearbook Taco will close its doors by the end of the year. “One gets the sense that the Yearbook Taco concept has almost run its course at this location,” says owner Hamooda Shami. “But rather than be dramatic and somber about it, we’re keeping things light and closing things out the right way…with tacos and booze,” Shami says. Every day from now until Yearbook closes, the restaurant is offering one of its top-shelf tequilas for half price until the bottle is empty. The space won’t be empty for long, though. Shami plans to introduce a new concept that “will be a better fit for the space and the neighborhood. Things are going to get weird (in a good way), and hopefully it’ll capture the imagination of the city.”

Contact Erin O’Hare at eatdrink@c-ville.com.

Categories
Living

Horton Vineyards adds variety to Virginia wine scene

Horton Vineyards has brought a wealth of unique grape varieties to our area. Winemaker Michael Heny points to norton, pinotage, petit manseng, viognier, touriga nacional and tannat as some of his favorite grapes to grow. Photo by Rammelkamp Foto

At Horton Vineyards, you’ll find some of the most important vines in Virginia. On my first visit to see them —back in January 2015—a wind ripped through the dormant vines and stung my cheeks. I wrapped my scarf tighter and scribbled notes with numb fingers, trying not to miss a single detail. I was on a pilgrimage to visit the oldest viognier vineyard in Virginia.

Horton winemaker Michael Heny led me on a tour through several of the vineyard blocks. Had you been there, you might have wondered about my growing glee as we approached the viognier vines, because it wasn’t much to see this time of year. There was no sprawling vista, no awe-inspiring sunset and no lush vineyard bursting with green tendrils. Like a leafless forest in winter, dormant vines look like dead brown twigs. But special twigs, they were. As I glimpsed the wooden sign labeled “viognier,” my heart beat faster and I may have even jumped in the air. Then, like a true wine nerd, I asked Heny to take my picture with the viognier vines.

To me, they were more than dormant twigs. If you survey the Virginia wine world as a whole, you’ll find a powerful viognier momentum and a multitude of viognier bottlings that have come to define a large portion of the local white wine scene. It all started somewhere, and now I stood at the epicenter.

But how did it all begin?

After experimenting with some home vineyards in the 1980s, Dennis Horton prepared to launch Horton Vineyards. “It was always his dream to have grapes,” says Sharon Horton, Dennis’ wife and Horton Vineyards’ vineyard manager.

He visited France’s Rhône Valley and the viognier grape variety piqued his interest. He read up on Jancis Robinson’s wine books, then took the plunge. In 1990, he planted vidal, cabernet franc and own-rooted norton—21 acres in total. “The viognier went in in ’91,” Dennis says. Soon after, a great vintage garnered global attention. “Nineteen ninety-three was one of the great years. The ’93 Viognier put Horton and Virginia wine on the map. People still talk about it.” After 1993, viognier became more popular throughout the state and took on a life of its own. Dennis chuckles as he remembers winery visitors commenting on his genesis viognier bottling, “‘Oh, you’ve got viognier here, too,’ they’d say.”

When Dennis established Horton Vineyards, he was in the company of a little more than 40 active wineries in Virginia (today there are more than 250). His goal was to plant many grape varieties, and through trial and error find which varieties were best suited to the local soil and climate. Over the years, there have been hits and misses—a necessary process in any emerging wine region. Those first gambles on norton, vidal, cabernet franc and viognier were certainly hits, “and they work,” Dennis says.

The norton vines at Horton are also in the realm of heritage vines. The norton grape, one of the few grapes native to Virginia, was popular in Virginia before Prohibition, but disappeared as quickly as the wineries after the Volstead Act. Some pockets of norton growing in Missouri—Dennis’ home state—caught his interest, and he thought, “It should be brought back here.”

Not all of the unique grape varieties have caught on in the state, though some have become iconic specialties at Horton Vineyards. Take, for instance, rkatsiteli, a white grape with flavorful skin tannins from the country of Georgia. After extreme cold temperatures killed off some of Horton’s vines in 1996, Dennis reached out to Dr. Konstantin Frank Wine Cellars, a cool-climate New York Finger Lakes winery, and sourced some cold-hearty rkatsiteli vines that would be unlikely to give up the ghost in a freezing winter.

Today, Heny operates the winery production, and he and Sharon point to norton, pinotage, petit manseng, viognier and touriga nacional as some of their favorite grapes to grow. Heny has also grown particularly fond of tannat: “Year in, year out, tannat is our most consistent red,” he says, “and oftentimes our most exciting.”

I’m particularly fond of their work with petit manseng. Each year, they make a dry to slightly off-dry wine, depending on how the fruit comes in. Earlier this year, Heny opened up some library vintages of Horton Petit Manseng and poured them side-by-side in a special tasting for many local winemakers. Their ageability and beauty will certainly turn some palates to a deeper appreciation of petit manseng, just as Horton’s work with viognier and norton have influenced the Virginia wine landscape.

The experimental spirit at Horton Vineyards, and a willingness to confront the unknown, have brought a wealth of unique grape varieties to our tables. The vineyard has had an incredible influence behind the scenes, shaping and guiding the current inventory of grape varieties that define today’s Virginia wine. Horton continues to make a plethora of wines: now-popular wines like viognier, and lesser-known wines such as rkatsiteli. As we spoke about the broad focus on many grape varieties, and the many different wines in production at Horton, a passing thought from Sharon rang true: “Everyone has to have different tastes, or it would be a dull world, wouldn’t it?”

Erin Scala is the sommelier at Fleurie and Petit Pois. She holds the Diploma of Wines & Spirits, is a Certified Sake Specialist and writes about beverages on her blog, thinking-drinking.com

Categories
Living Uncategorized

Local bakers put their pies to the test

Twenty-three home cooks and chefs entered this year’s Cville Pie Fest competition. Photo by Rammelkamp Foto

“I love the way an empty pie crust shell looks like an opportunity,” says local food writer and amateur baker Jenée Libby. “Are you going to make a sweet pie? A savory one?”

Libby recently made a sweet pie—a sweet potato speculoos pie with a gingersnap crust, to be exact—to nab top honors at this year’s Cville Pie Fest, held on October 9 at Crozet Mudhouse. She was one of 23 home cooks and chefs who submitted two pies apiece—one to be judged on overall flavor, crust, presentation and originality/traditionality; the other to be eaten by less-discerning pie fanatics.

The Cville Pie Fest’s humble beginnings stem from a 2008 “pie down” between Brian Geiger and Marijean Oldham. Each baked two pies and presented them to a panel of three judges. “I get…a tiny bit competitive, so after I won that competition, I decided it would be best to avoid temptation and just judge from then on,” says Geiger, who helped found the official contest in 2009, and notes that getting to taste all of the pies is the best part of being a judge.

But the hardest part is tasting all those pies, he says. “If you’re not careful with portions, those last 10 or so pies can be very dangerous.” 

Libby’s pie, adapted from both Patti LaBelle’s Washington Post sweet potato pie recipe and Emily Hilliard’s Nothing in the House sweet potato speculoos pie, was “a well-balanced pie that tasted fantastic,” Geiger says. Turns out speculoos—spiced shortcrust biscuit—spread blends nicely with sweet potato. Kai and Quinn Fusco took home second place for their local wineberry with blackberries pie, and Priscilla Benjamin’s Banana Treat Pie was named the contest’s best gluten-free offering.

As for Libby, she’s already thinking about next year’s contest. She wants to enter the Lonely Chicago Pie from the movie Waitress (cinnamon, spices, sugar, melted chocolate and smashed berries), or maybe Mollie Cox Bryan’s Lovey-Dovey Red Velvet Pie. She also has an idea for an Arnold Palmer Pie, but hasn’t quite worked out the logistics yet. “That’s the thing with pie,” Libby says. “The only limit is your imagination.”

RECIPE

Sweet Potato Speculoos Pie

2016 Cville Pie Fest Winner

Start to finish: About 3 hours (1 ½ hours active)

Makes one 10-inch pie

Baker’s note: I used organic butter, local sweet potatoes, organic heavy cream, and pasture-raised eggs, and spices from The Spice Diva.

Ingredients

For crust:

2 cups gingersnap crumbs

5 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon sugar

Pinch of kosher salt

 

For filling:

3-5 large orange-fleshed sweet potatoes, scrubbed (enough for 3 full cups of purée)

Pinch of kosher salt

7 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs, beaten

1/4 cup heavy cream

1 teaspoon ground Vietnamese cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2-3/4 cup of speculoos (cookie butter)

 

Preparation

Crust:

Set oven rack to the middle position and preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Pour gingersnap crumbs in a bowl and add melted butter, sugar and salt, stirring until well mixed.

Pat the buttery crumbs into a 10-inch pie pan, pressing mixture into the bottom and sides to form a pie crust.

Place in the oven and bake until crust is lightly browned, about 10-12 minutes.

Place on a cooling rack and let cool to room temperature before adding filling.

 

Filing:

Bring a large pot of water to a boil over high heat.

Add a generous pinch of salt, then add the sweet potatoes. Reduce heat to medium and cook until the sweet potatoes are tender when pierced with a knife, about 30 to 45 minutes.

Drain the sweet potatoes, letting them fall into a colander, then run the sweet potatoes under cold water until cool enough to handle. Discard the skins and transfer the cooked sweet potatoes to a mixing bowl.

Use a hand-held electric mixer to blend until creamy and smooth. You’ll need 3 cups for filling; if there’s any excess, scoop it out to reserve for another use. Add the 7 tablespoons of melted butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar, eggs, heavy cream, and spices, and beat on medium speed until well incorporated. Pour the mixture into the crumb crust, smoothing the surface.

Warm the speculoos in a spouted measuring cup in the microwave for 20 seconds—no more! It should have the consistency of thick pancake batter, enough to pour easily, but not runny. If it’s too runny, stick the cup in the freezer for 3-5 minutes to firm it.

Now starting from the outside of the pie, pour the cookie butter in a spiral, working inward to the center. Probably two spirals total for a 10-inch pie. Then take a chopstick and drag it through the pie from the outside to the center like you’re making a marbleized cheesecake or brownies. Don’t be afraid, the surface of this pie should turn out rough like the soft rolling mountains we live in.

Bake in the middle rack until a knife inserted in the center of the filling comes out clean yet the filling still jiggles a bit, 1 to 1-1/2 hours. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely, then cover loosely with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Recipe provided by 2016 Cville Pie Fest winner Jenée Libby, who adapted it from Patti Labelle’s Sweet Potato Pie (Washington Post) and Emily Hilliard’s Sweet Potato Speculoos Pie (Nothing in the House blog).

Eat your viddles

Look up “viddles” in the Urban Dictionary and you’ll find this definition: “Southern slang for vegetables or any other food that gives vital nutrients.” It’s precisely what siblings Shannon and Rob Campbell are offering at Croby’s Urban Viddles, newly opened in the Southside Shopping Center, next to Food Lion. Chef Shannon and manager Rob say they always wanted to have a restaurant together, one inspired by a shared love of family dinners. Croby’s serves up rotisserie chicken and pork plus Southern-inspired entrées and sides with a healthy twist: Think baked then flash-fried chicken tenders and cauliflower mash in lieu of deep-fried chicken tenders and mashed potatoes. Everything is made in-house. Entrées cost around $10 each, and kids’ meals, served with a side and a cookie, are $5. Croby’s also offers set daily specials, such as guava barbecue baby back ribs on Wednesdays and chicken pot pie on Thursdays.

Contact Erin O’Hare at eatdrink@c-ville.com.

Categories
Living

Greenberry’s Coffee Co. goes to Japan

“Getting to know your customers beyond their transaction is the part of Greenberry’s that [we] hope to embody most,” Brandon Bishop says about opening a Greenberry’s Coffee Co. in Japan. Photo by Brandon Bishop

Roughly translated, the Japanese word “kodawari” means a relentless devotion to practicing an art or a craft, where one is sensitive to even the smallest details. It’s the thing that has most surprised Brandon Bishop, Greenberry’s Coffee Co.’s director of franchise operations, about the employees at the local coffee roaster’s new location in Japan.

Greenberry’s café in Takarazuka City in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, is set to open October 13 just down the street from the Takarazuka Revue, a popular Japanese all-female musical theater troupe—“think Broadway,” Bishop says. Greenberry’s Japan will carry the shop’s core menu (coffees and espresso drinks) but “with certain flavor adjustments made for Japanese customers’ palates.”

Bishop points out that vending machine coffee has reigned supreme in Japan for many years, but the country is moving towards “kodawari” for the art of brewing a delicious cup of joe. American specialty coffee franchises like Blue Bottle Coffee and Verve Coffee Roasters are popping up all over Tokyo, says Bishop. Greenberry’s Japanese franchise partners “are hoping to bring the new wave of coffee shop experience to Japan, creating an environment of customer education in specialty coffee and the home-away-from-home feeling that Greenberry’s has honed over its 25 years.”

Virginia Distillery Co.’s Commonwealth Collection

Looking for a whiskey to sip by the fire through the colder months? The Virginia Distillery Co.’s got you covered with its new Commonwealth Collection. According to the company’s website, each Commonwealth Collection release will feature a different finish by a local Virginia winery, cidery or brewery. The first release, a cider barrel-matured Virginia Highland Malt Whisky, will be available later this month. It features Virginia Highland Malt Whisky cask-finished in Potter’s Craft Cider barrels, promising notes of vanilla, apple and pear. Enthusiasts can get an early dram at a the distillery on October 21 (tickets are required); beginning October 22, the whisky will be for sale at the visitor’s center in Lovingston, and at “very select stores throughout Virginia and D.C.” by late October.

Bold addition

Bold Rock Hard Cider’s fall/winter seasonal flavor is on its way to a refrigerator case near you. On November 1, the cidery will release Bold Rock Blood Orange, its first unfiltered cider, says brand development manager Traci Mierzwa. It’s made from a blend of blood orange juice and locally harvested Blue Ridge apples “featuring the light and refreshing apple cider finish that Bold Rock devotees have come to expect, coupled with the crisp tartness and tangy citrus brightness of blood orange,” according to a press release.

They got our hopes up…

Last week, an article surfaced on breakfast and brunch website Extra Crispy with the headline “The Best Bagels in the World Are in Charlottesville, Virginia.” We agree. But the article got people talking once again about that onetime April Fool’s joke claiming that Bodo’s plans to turn one of its locations into a 24-hour operation. Bodo’s co-owner John Kokola confirms that Bodo’s is not—we repeat, Bodo’s is NOT—planning a 24-hour operation at any of its locations. (We’re bummed about it, too.)

The last last call

After two and a half years brewing and serving beer on West Main Street, C’Ville-ian brewery has closed. This past Saturday, October 8, bartenders hollered the final last call at the nanobrewery that owner Stephen Gibbs had hoped would be, among other things, a gathering place for local military veterans. While operating the brewery has been a “wonderful experience, it’s time for me to move on to other opportunities,” Gibbs says. “I want to say thank you to everyone for their support; it’s been a pleasure serving you.”

E-mail food and drink news to Erin O’Hare at eatdrink@c-ville.com.

Categories
Living

Serve-yourself bar offers unique experience

Chris Kyle says that Draft, with about 60 different beers (30 of which are from Virginia), has the largest collection of local taps in the state. Photo by Tom Daly

The Downtown Mall’s newest bar doesn’t have a bartender. Technically, it doesn’t even have a bar. At Draft, there is no barrier between the customer and 60 taps of beer.

“It is pour-your-own, with no bartender,” says Chris Kyle, Draft’s technology manager.

On arrival, customers stop in at the front desk, where their IDs are checked and a credit card is swiped or cash is taken to activate an electronic pass card. Above each of the beer taps (plus four wines) is a touchscreen that displays the name, alcohol content, bitterness and other information about the beer, with a slot in which to place the pass card. Beer-lovers are only charged for the exact amount of beer they choose to dispense into their glass.

The magic is enabled by a wide range of technological innovations. Kegs of beer are transported into the basement on a special miniature elevator into a cold storage room. Beneath each keg (some of which are only five to 15 gallons to ensure that less-popular beers do not become stale) is a precise electronic scale that measures exactly how much beer is poured. Unlike most bars that only chill the kegs, Draft also refrigerates the beer lines all the way up to the tap.

Running a bar this way is a first for central Virginia. One Petersburg wine and beer retailer, The Bucket Trade, has a similar automated system with 16 taps that was installed months before Draft opened. Unlike Draft, The Bucket Trade also offers growlers for off-premises consumption.

“The card system that we have is in use in other parts of the state but not on this scale,” says Kyle. “We believe that in the Mid-Atlantic there is nothing like this.”

One of the first concerns about a bar without a bartender is how to stay on the right side of the regulations enforced by the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

“That’s something we went after in the beginning,” says Rich Baker, general manager of Draft. “…We went directly to the ABC and explained how the concept worked and made sure that it met their requirements. It’s called a ‘virtual pitcher,’ which says that a customer can have a certain amount of beer but then they have to have an interaction with staff.”

When Draft’s computer logs that someone has poured 32 ounces, he is cut off until he speaks with a staff member to have another 32 ounces approved. No big deal—just a friendly chat with one of the hosts that demonstrates you aren’t sloppy drunk.

“I have to say, I was really impressed with not just the efficiency of how they operate but how they want to make sure that everyone is doing the right thing and following the law,” says Baker about ABC. “Even before we applied for a license they were courteous and helpful. Then going through the licensing process they kept us informed at every step of the way. …So maybe there’s a new ABC? Working with ABC was a great experience. They do care. They want to be business-friendly…our whole impression of them changed through this process.”

At a recent test run for friends and family, dozens of guests swiped their cards and filled glasses. But a funny thing happened: Almost nobody was holding a full-sized pint glass. Miniature tasting glasses were the most popular.

“It caused a little bit of surprise,” says Kyle. “We found that people were much less likely to pour a full pint of beer. People wanted to [sample] smaller pours and go back and try a few ounces at a time. I believe it is the largest collection of local taps in the state at 30 taps, plus 30 or so of national and international taps.”

“If you went to a [normal] bar and told a bartender, ‘I want to try all these different beers,’ they hate your guts!” says Baker.

Even the glassware (in three different sizes) is high tech.

“It’s called etched, laser-cut,” says Eric Lane, one of Draft’s hosts. “At the bottom of the glass they cut into it, where it is going to allow bubbles to form around where the cut is, where it is a little rougher than the rest of the glass. It will cause the carbonation to rise up and make any beer you are tasting a little more aromatic.”

Draft, which opened last weekend and operates as a sister restaurant to Commonwealth Restaurant & Skybar across the Downtown Mall, also offers food, with a focus on light, quick fare, such as sandwiches, pretzel bites and a Greek-inspired take on nachos. In addition, a seafood steamer cranks out mussels, clams and shrimp, and a few heavier entrées are available for dinner. Draft is also open for lunch, but the focus is on beer and sports.

Twenty televisions ring the walls of the bar, four displaying the menu and 16 showing different live sporting events. But unlike many sports bars, patrons aren’t bombarded by the sound of roaring crowds, whistles and announcers. Like Draft’s beer offerings, you only get exactly as much as you want. The sets are all muted, and patrons are encouraged to use a free smartphone app called Tunity.

“If you point your phone at a TV that is playing a live event, the audio from that event will be streamed to your phone and you can listen with headphones,” says Kyle. Inexpensive headphones will be offered at the front desk.

No tipping is expected, but if you insist, the money is donated to charity—staff are all paid a living wage.

Some visitors may miss the presence of a bartender, but Draft’s managers believe that being freed from hustling out drinks and keeping track of tabs will free up staff to interact with customers and talk about beer. And there will never be another long wait for a bartender who is buried in orders—just fill up your glass yourself.

“At Draft you’ll never have to wait to get a drink,” Kyle says, “and you get to go home with your bartender every night!”

Contact Jackson Landers at eatdrink@c-ville.com.

This article was updated at 9:30am October 20 to reflect the bar system is the first of its kind in central Virginia.