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

Food is the focus at this festival

Ira Wallace, co-founder of the Heritage Harvest Festival, will serve more than 100 varieties of heirloom tomatoes and a few dozen varieties of other vegetables and fruit in the tasting tent from 10am-4pm. Photo by Eze Amos

There’s always something new to learn about food, and for the past 11 years, the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello has been one of the best ways to learn a lot about the history of what we eat in a little bit of time. On Saturday, chefs, farmers, culinary historians, purveyors and foodies from all over the country will convene to revel in their love for food and share it with others. Here’s just a taste of what you’ll find on the mountain this weekend.

Eat your veggies

Seed saver, master gardener and Heritage Harvest Festival co-founder Ira Wallace will serve up more than 100 varieties of heirloom tomatoes and a few dozen varieties of heirloom peppers, melons and collards in the tasting tent from 10am-4pm on Saturday. Most of these varieties have been grown locally, by Wallace and other gardeners at Twin Oaks and Acorn communities in Louisa County.

“One of the surprises for most folks is the great variety of heirloom collards and methods that make for quick cooking at home,” says Wallace of varieties like Alabama blue and tender Carolina cabbage collards. As for tomatoes, Wallace says she “can’t even pick just one.” For those who haven’t tried them, the “bicolor Georgia streak is a delight to see and taste. Compare it with a big German pink like brandywine or mortgage lifter” varieties, she advises.

At the tasting, be sure to ask Wallace about the origins of the varieties you sample: “Taste is good, but when you have a story, a recipe, it takes you back to some time and some place that is really good,” Wallace told C-VILLE back in July. Wallace also wrote The Timber Press Guide to Vegetable Gardening in the Southeast, regarded as the book on year-round gardening in the region. So if you’re itching to start your own garden, or just try your hand at growing your own tomato plants, now is the time and Wallace is the one to talk to (Wallace will also be signing books from 1:15-1:45pm and discussing seed saving and a four season garden). After all, September is the time for sowing spring greens and root vegetables, because the coming frost is a hard deadline.

Drink gingerly

Most people would be surprised to know that ginger beer “was never meant to be a soft drink,” says Georgia Dunn, brewer for Island Ginger Beer and a presenter at this year’s festival.

When the British settled Jamestown, they quickly discovered that the water was not safe to drink, Dunn says. Water supplies, which contained a naturally occurring amount of arsenic, were also contaminated with microorganisms that cause cholera and dysentery. While the settlers didn’t quite understand what was causing their illness, they did know that consuming alcohol—which killed many of the microorganisms—mostly kept the illness away.

“Production of alcohol evolved as the primary means to preserve one’s health,” Dunn says. And beer specifically had long been used to solve problems with contaminated water, she says. Making beer requires just two basic ingredients—water and a form of starch/sugar—so just about anyone could do it, and the low alcohol level of beer allowed people to drink it whenever they needed to stay hydrated, says Dunn.

“Adding ginger provided additional benefits, as it is naturally anti-microbial,” says Dunn. “It’s the one thing that creates a hostile environment for every other living organism but that our stomachs love and that we thrive on with all of its nutritional benefits.” By the mid-1800s, there were about 1,500 ginger beer breweries in the United States (not to mention the homebrewers out there).

All of that changed with Prohibition. No longer able to produce the fermented, traditional ginger beer but still needing to sustain a business, brewers converted their equipment to make a soft drink, Dunn says, and ginger beer—or, ginger ale—“landed next to the Cokes and Pepsis in the grocery store.” But when Prohibition was lifted a generation later, the market was set; ginger beer in its initial form never returned. Most ginger beers on the market today are soft drink variations. “Prohibition beer,” as Dunn calls it.

Chances are you’ll never think of your whiskey ginger or Moscow mule the same way again after hearing Dunn’s noon-1pm talk on “Drinking History: Jefferson and Ginger Beer.”

See all events at heritageharvestfestival.com.

Other don’t-miss sessions

The Early Spices of Appalachia

10:30-11:30am, Monticello historic kitchen

Chef Nathan Brand leads a tasting of early Appalachian spices and discusses the role each plays in defining the flavor and identity of Appalachian cuisine.

Food Waste: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

1:30-2:30pm, Festival tent

Virginia-based chef Joy Crump and senior editor and food columnist for The Atlantic Corby Kummer will talk about how
small changes in food habits can help demolish food waste…something important to consider, because 40 percent of all food produced in the United States is wasted before it even gets to
the table.

Taste Heirloom Wheat: Biscuits

1:30-2:30pm, Chef demonstration tent

Scott Peacock, a chef famous for his biscuits (and a close friend of the first lady of Southern cooking, the late Edna Lewis) will use heirloom wheat to prepare a biscuit that, to his knowledge, hasn’t been prepared in centuries. To go along with the biscuit, “canning evangelist” Kevin West will make and serve a complementary preserve.

Michael Twitty

The festival affords four chances to hear acclaimed culinary and cultural historian Michael Twitty, author of The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South. Twitty’s work focuses on the intersection of food, history, politics, economics, genealogy and race.

See all events at heritageharvestfestival.com.

 

Categories
Living

Three Notch’d Brewery shares expansion plans

Scott Roth, chief financial officer of Three Notch’d Brewery, says the 11,000-square-foot space at IX Art Park will be similar to a traditional beer garden with indoor/outdoor areas, as well as a full-service kitchen. Photo by Eze Amos

Sitting at the edge of IX Art Park is the new Three Notch’d Brewery restaurant and production facility, which will top out at 11,000 square feet between the indoor and outdoor spaces. The setup is similar to a traditional beer garden, but bigger, and Three Notch’d says it will be the largest restaurant in Charlottesville.

A mural featuring its new logo brightens up the building, along with giant windows with views of the art park.

“It’ll be very similar to the cool, laid-back vibe that the IX Art Park has done for the other businesses,” says Scott Roth, Three Notch’d’s chief financial officer.

Inside, there’s plenty of seating separated by an island bar and surrounded by an indoor/outdoor wraparound bar. High ceilings give an open, airy vibe, and tall windows look out on Monticello Avenue and IX Art Park. There’s also an event space that has views of the brewers in action.

Three Notch’d will continue to serve collaboration brews from its Harrisonburg, Richmond and Charlottesville locations and will work with UVA’s Darden School of Business, local nonprofits and homebrewers on new ones. The full-service, open-concept kitchen will use as many Virginia-sourced ingredients as possible, such as meat from Timbercreek Farm and microgreens from Fidelis Farm in Crozet, for dishes like beer-braised short ribs with fried cheese curds, hand-cut fries and Jack’s Java gravy, and a French onion soup that uses Three Notch’d’s West Coast IPA.

The restaurant is almost self-serve, says Roth: Walk up to a kiosk or use the smartphone app to place your order, and a waiter will bring it to your table.

But back to the beer. This production facility triples Three Notch’d’s distribution capacity, and the company plans to expand its distribution to other spots in Virginia and surrounding states. This means adding somewhere between 90 and 100 new jobs.

Three Notch’d hosts the Virginia Craft Brewers Festival on Saturday at IX, but the restaurant won’t be open until late August.

Salt in the wound

Salt Artisan Market, the sandwich shop in the old rock store on Thomas Jefferson Parkway, closed for good on Sunday, August 6. In a letter handed out to customers and friends, owners Barrett Hightower and Rani Morris (the brain behind sandwiches like the lamb-fennel bratwurst with harissa-roasted tomatoes, balsamic caramelized onions and arugula) credit their four-plus years in business to dedicated customers, local farmers and small producers.

When Reverend Ann Willms, rector at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Simeon (located across the street from Salt), told her parish the shop would be closing that day, she says the congregation collectively sighed. With Salt, Hightower and Morris “cultivated a lively and authentic neighborhood sensibility. They have been a meeting spot, a place to regroup and refuel, a place to linger with friends over creative local fare,” says Willms. “They will indeed be missed on our corner.”

Categories
Living

Master hot dog purveyor passes down trade secrets

As part of the Folklife Apprenticeship Program, Joey Mirabile (right) taught apprentice Logan Caine most of what he knows about life in the hot dog business. Photo by Pat Jarrett/Virginia Folklife Program

Joey Mirabile has been around hot dogs his entire life. His father, Tony, served them at Bacali’s Hot Dogs in Norfolk during World War II and even fed celebrities like Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. when they were in town to perform. Tony and his wife, Geri, opened Tony’s Hot Dogs in Norfolk in 1962 and later added a second shop in Virginia Beach. Joey Mirabile now has his own shop in Richmond’s West End, where hot dogs can be topped with mustard, onions and chili—no ketchup or chips—just as Tony made ’em, secret family chili recipe and all.

As part of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program that matches master artists with apprentices who want to learn a specific trade or craft, Mirabile, as a master hot dog purveyor, taught apprentice Logan Caine much of what he knows (but probably not that chili recipe).

Here are three things Mirabile has learned from life in the hot dog biz:

1. He’s in the people business—the delicious hot dogs are just a bonus.

2. A Chicago doctor once wrote about Joey’s Hot Dogs in a health article. “As I recall, he said tasting something he remembers from his childhood woke up memory sensors from long ago. In an older person, that can have a health effect of making one feel young again,” Mirabile says.

3. Nobody makes a better hot dog. “Our slogan is, ‘They Don’t Make ’Em Any Better,” Mirabile says. “One bite and we will make a believer out of you.”

See if Mirabile and Caine can make a believer out of you—and try some Brunswick stew, Liberian cuisine, fried apple pies and Virginia oysters while you’re at it—at the Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship showcase May 7 at James Monroe’s Highland.

Flaming Wok extinguished

Chinese food, sushi and hibachi spot Flaming Wok & Teppan Yaki on Seminole Trail will close its doors on May 31. An employee confirmed the closing over the phone and said the restaurant will not relocate.

Juicy location

Two weeks ago, we reported that the Juice Laundry would open a location on the Corner this summer, and now we know where, exactly, thirsty coeds will get their juice fix: 1411 University Ave., the former location of the Natty Beau clothing store, between Qdoba and The White Spot. The new location will function as a grab-n-go juice and nuts milk bar and express smoothie location, says owner and founder Mike Keenan. The full Juice Laundry menu will be available on the Corner, but all juicing will be done at the Preston Avenue location.

Minus nine

Eleven Months, the spot for restaurant-bar pop-ups that replaced Yearbook Taco on the Downtown Mall earlier this year, has closed. The restaurant wrapped its first theme—“Sorry It’s Over”—after just two months. In the coming weeks, owner Hamooda Shami will focus on opening Eleven Months’ Richmond location (featuring a “Best Friends Forever” theme).

Categories
Living

Jake Busching’s new label raises the stakes for Virginia wine

Bottling under his new label, Jake Busching Wines, gives the local winemaker an opportunity to use his vast experience in Virginia’s vineyards. Photo courtesy subject

It was while working at Jefferson Vineyards that Jake Busching had his aha wine moment. His epiphany, the Jefferson Vineyards 1998 cabernet franc made by Michael Shaps, remains a true bellwether for Virginia wine—“That’s the one that hooked me,” Busching says. Once he made the connection in his mind between place and flavor, a soil-based winemaking philosophy blossomed, and now the well-known local vintner has a new label: Jake Busching Wines, for which he makes wine from some of his favorite vineyard sites around the state.

Having grown up on his family’s Minnesota subsistence farm, Busching is naturally drawn to working with plants. His father worked at a local paper mill and, at home, they raised beef cows. “When you farm in Minnesota,” Busching says, “you have four months of the year to get everything together to survive for the next eight months. That’s where I learned the importance of the dirt.”

He hunted and fished for many of his meals on the farm, and though life wasn’t always easy, the food was good. Busching sums it up: “I ate like a king, but I wore my cousin’s clothes.”

Eventually, he left Minnesota to work in music, and toured with a band. Asked about the circumstances of his move to Virginia, Busching describes 1993: “We [the band] were sick of being cold and poor, so we moved where we could be warm and poor. We ended up in Virginia.”

By 1996, he returned to farm life and landed at Jefferson Vineyards, a winery near Monticello that grows vines planted on the original site where Thomas Jefferson and Philip Mazzei attempted to grow wine grapes in the late 1700s. “What a great way to come into the business,” says Busching. “This is where it all started. Here.”

Wine bottles. Photography in high resolution.Similar photographs from my portfolio:
Jake Busching has also rethought the conduit of wine from winery to consumer. Rather than open a tasting room or sell to restaurants and retail outlets through a distributor, he sells his wine through his website.

As Jefferson Vineyards’ farm manager, he worked with two important founders of the current Virginia wine scene, vineyard manager and consultant Chris Hill, and winemaker Michael Shaps. Hill has had a hand in planting many of Virginia’s vines, and Shaps now has his own Virginia winery, and produces wines in both Virginia and Burgundy, France.

During a brief stint at Horton Vineyards in 2001, Busching worked with a special site he still admires today: Gordonsville’s Honah Lee Vineyard. Planted in the mid-1990s, the site sits on a mountain that rises up in the middle of flat land. “Up top there’s nothing between you and Richmond,” Busching says. Sloped sites, such as Honah Lee, are good for grapes because the angles generate air movement, which helps prevent frost. The vineyards start around 650′ and at about 1,000′ the top of the mountain wears a crown of old-vine viognier.

Busching subsequently worked at Keswick Vineyards, Pollak Vineyards, Grace Estate Winery and Michael Shaps Wineworks, learning along the way about a wide variety of farming methods and grape varieties from around the state.

In 2015, he made a wine from the special Honah Lee viognier grapes he remembered from his early career, and the recently released bottles are his inaugural offering under the Jake Busching Wines label. He’s also released a 2015 cabernet franc made with grapes from Nelson County.

And keep your eyes peeled in May for Busching’s release of F8, a blend of tannat and petit verdot from the upper section of the Honah Lee vineyard. F8, affectionately referred to by its phonetic nickname Fate, is a special bottling because Busching believes there is a larger place for petit verdot-tannat blends in Virginia winemaking. Throughout his career, Busching has championed tannat, and this has impacted the larger wine landscape. Tannat, typically from France’s Madiran region, is a powerful, full-bodied and usually tannic wine that, to Busching, benefits from blending in some deep-fruited petit verdot. He usually finds a sweet spot at around 60 percent tannat with 40 percent petit verdot. Could his signature blend be a way forward for Virginia reds? If it grows in popularity, we might look back and point to F8 as the catalyst.

Busching has also rethought the conduit of wine from winery to consumer. Rather than open a tasting room or sell to restaurants and retail outlets through a distributor, he sells his wine through his website (JakeBuschingWines.com). This is an effective way to directly interface with consumers on their own time, and it’s becoming increasingly popular with winemakers like Busching, who make incredibly small quantities of special wine. (There are just three barrels of F8.)

As a large second wave of Virginia wine producers establish themselves, Busching’s wines stand out because the mentorship of the late 20th-century wine pioneers shines through. Busching’s new label turns the page to a fresh chapter in Virginia winemaking—one that is built on the sturdy ground of past experience, and maybe a little fate.

Categories
Living

Cookie-focused company settles into new home

Found. Market Co., which doubles as a remade furniture workshop and bakehouse, specializes in cookies as well as farmhouse-style baked goods such as muffins and tea cakes. Photo by Tom McGovern

Calling all cookie monsters: Found. Market Co. at 221 Carlton Rd. (the former Kathy’s Produce spot) is here for all of your cookie needs. In addition to functioning as a gathering space and remade furniture workshop, Found. is a bakehouse specializing in cookies—pick up some salted rosemary shortbread, a batch of classic cookies or frozen cookie dough to scoop and bake at home whenever a cookie craving strikes—as well as farmhouse-style baked goods such as muffins and tea cakes, plus comfort foods like Bavarian pretzels, chicken salad and pub cheese.

If that salted rosemary shortbread sounds familiar, it should—Found. started as a wholesale bakery under the name The Bees Knees Kitchen, and it’s been selling shortbread-style cookies at Feast! and Blenheim Vineyards for a few years. The Bees Knees Kitchen eventually grew out of its certified home kitchen and into this larger, industrial-sized space and new name, says co-owner Kelsey Gillian.

Having managed an organic farm for the last 16 years, the Found. team’s “nature is to cook and bake from the field, gather for family dinners and share good food with friends,” says Gillian, adding that it’s all about creating homegrown, handmade “tasty food, imperfections and all.”

New food pairing

Charlottesville has plenty of cuisine options—Mexican, Italian, French, Indian, American—but even in our chock-full-o-restaurants city, it’s rare to find two very different cuisines under a single roof.

Vu Noodles and Pearl Island Catering have teamed up to serve lunch at the Jefferson School City Center café at 233 Fourth St. NW from 11am to 2pm Monday through Friday. (Don’t worry—Vu Noodles will still be served at The Spot/Greenie’s, and Pearl Island isn’t abandoning its catering.)

The menu is a relief for those who can’t decide on just one type of cuisine for their midday meal (or is that just us?). Vu Noodles’ spring rolls, the banh mi sandwich, tofu caramelized onions and various noodle dishes are on the menu alongside Pearl Island dishes such as the Caribbean-seasoned, slow-roasted pulled pork, Haitian-inspired sweet and spicy chicken with gravy, Creole beans and fried plantains.

One more Reason to love beer

In a town where breweries rival Starbucks in numbers, yet another place to imbibe in new brews will open in June.

Childhood friends and Charlottesville natives Patrick Adair, Mark Fulton and Jeff Raileanu are teaming up to open Reason Beer in a warehouse space next to Costco. Adair, director of sales, says the more breweries the better.

“Charlottesville is getting a reputation as a beer town, and that’s awesome,” he says. “We are fortunate enough to be at a time when craft beer seems to sell itself these days.”

To understand the brewery is to understand head brewer Fulton’s background as former head brewer at the venerable Maine Beer Company. In the early days of craft beer there was a focus on making IPAs as bitter as possible but breweries like Maine Beer Company were pioneers in producing beers with balanced hop and malt profiles. Fulton will bring this perspective to Reason, where they will focus on low-alcohol, fresh, hoppy beers.

The brewery is installing a 30-barrel (that’s 930 gallons) brewhouse and will also put in a bottling line that will package 16.9-ounce bottles, a format Adair says is just the right size for drinking by yourself, but also big enough to share.

“I think our focus on balance, approachability, innovation and food pairing will be what distinguishes Reason Beer,” says Adair.—Derek Young

The toast of Tom Tom

Six of Charlottesville’s top chefs went head-to-head in the Iron Chef City Market competition for which each had to create a 100 percent locally sourced dish with a budget of $50, 20 minutes to shop and 30 minutes to cook. Chef Chris Jack of Wild Wolf Brewing Company took the title with a dish of pan-seared duck heart, spicy chocolate granola-crusted duck liver and sautéed oyster mushrooms with purple scallions, wilted arugula and spicy strawberry rhubarb jam.

In the craft cocktail competition at the Tom Tom Founders Festival, Patrick McClure of Lost Saint won over the judges with his Lil’ Rhuby Fizzle, made from sweet strawberry juice from Agriberry Farm, tart rhubarb juice from Radical Roots Farm, Boar Creek Appalachian whiskey and Homestead Creamery cream and egg white. The Flora, a Baker’s gin, strawberry shrub, mint and basil syrup, lemon, cava and cracked pepper cocktail concocted by Oakhart Social’s Brendan Cartin, was the crowd favorite.

Categories
Living

The Juice Laundry expands, The birth of Mama Meals and more

Juice Laundry founder Mike Keenan says he’ll have more specifics on the Corner location soon. Photo by Elli Williams

Fed and pampered

Whoa, baby—there’s a new meal service in town. Inspired by requests from local moms who read Heng Ou’s The First Forty Days, a book about Ou’s experience being cared for post-birth by an herbalist aunt, the Charlottesville Cooking School is now offering Mama Meals, a program of Ou’s menus intended to increase postpartum health and vitality. Owner Martha Stafford and chef Tom Whitehead prepare all of the deliveries, offering items like organic chicken bone broth, congee, crustless quiche, nikujaga (a Japanese beef stew) with snow peas and potatoes and date and almond butter bites. New parents can choose a two-week plan for $510 or a six-week plan for $1,500.

The Juice Laundry expands to UVA Corner

Come June, you’ll be able to get Juice Laundry cold-pressed juices, nut milks, smoothies and smoothie bowls on the UVA Corner. The new location will be the organic, all-vegan juice producer’s fourth—JL already operates two shops, one in the Coca-Cola building on Preston Avenue and another at The Yards in Washington, D.C., plus a satellite location at Purvelo spinning studio on West Main Street. Juice Laundry founder Mike Keenan says he’ll have more specifics on the Corner location soon.

Tropical pairing

If you’re a fan of the Cuban sandwich, keep an eye out for the El Guero food truck, run by local winemaker Derek Young. Food blogger C. Simon Davidson reports that Young will serve sandwiches that are a blend of the Tampa- and Miami-style Cuban sandwiches, featuring roast pork, ham, salami, Swiss cheese, dill pickles and mustard pressed between soft bread (a Miami Cuban staple), served with a side of plantain chips.

Categories
Living

Timberlake’s customers are like family

Timberlake’s Drug Store and Soda Fountain is so fond of its regulars that framed photos of them are displayed on one wall. Photo by Emily Sacco

It’s quarter after noon on a Wednesday and Debbie Kirby stands behind the lunch counter at Timberlake’s Drug Store and Soda Fountain. She adjusts the side ties on her red cotton smock before filling a tall red plastic cup with cola and hustling it over to one of the three men sitting at a small, laminate-topped table nearby.

A mother sits at the counter, reading lunch options off a menu to her two small children who cautiously swivel back and forth on red-cushioned stools, their eyes fixed on the cherry pie and vanilla-frosted chocolate cake sitting expectantly in domed stands on the counter.

Kirby and a green-smocked counter lady flit back and forth across the green-and-white checkerboard floor, pouring fountain drinks, fetching silverware and fixing lunches—tuna salad platters, hot dogs with mustard and relish, BLTs.

Lined up on the counter, and on the center of every table, is a neat cluster of salt and pepper shakers, a container of yellow Splenda packets and a laminated menu propped up between a napkin holder and a sugar jar.

Photographs in slim plastic frames crowd the ledge on one of the dining room’s walls. “These are our regulars,” Kirby tells me before pointing to the men sitting at the table she delivered a soda to moments before. “You might recognize some of them.”

One of the men, a lawyer named Dayton, says he and the other men at his table come to the Downtown Mall eatery for lunch “frequently, maybe three or four days a week.” The lunch is pretty good, he says over the wire rims of his glasses, but he’s mostly here “for the service and for the company.” He can’t remember how long he’s been coming to Timberlake’s for lunch, but it’s been a while. Dayton won’t tell me his last name—“just Dayton, like Prince or something,” he laughs.

Tom McQueeney remembers, though—he says he’s been having lunch here for the past 10 or 15 years at least. McQueeney is mostly retired but currently works at Daedalus Bookshop for an hour and a half on Monday mornings, helping owner Sandy McAdams, who uses a wheelchair to get around, turn on the lights and carry books from floor to floor in the shop. McQueeney jokes about how stressed he gets on Sunday nights, knowing he has to go to work in the morning. “An hour and a half shift, that’s a long one,” I say.

“It sure is!” McQueeney replies before digging into a bag of potato chips and laughing with his lunch companions. The regulars don’t necessarily plan to meet here for lunch, but they often eat together. Once they’ve filled up one table, they’ll take over others and talk over the narrow aisles.

McQueeney asks me why I’m not a Timberlake’s regular. It’s a good question. I try to save money by bringing my lunch to work, I tell him, but I do come to lunch here every now and then. “What do you get when you come here?” he asks.

“The BLT,” I reply.

“Ah, see, that’s because [these are] the best ‘tomatas’ in town,” he says, tugging on a button on his windowpane-checkered shirt.

A man dressed in a charcoal-gray suit carries his brown bagged to-go order over to the table and asks, “What’s going on over here?”

I explain that I’m working on a story about neighborhood restaurant regulars for C-VILLE Weekly, and he teasingly asks why I’d want to talk to “these fools.”

“Can you believe it? A story in the paper,” says a fifth man, who takes a seat at a table next to the wall, right under his framed photo on the ledge, and starts paging through our paper. Today, he’s wearing the same suit jacket he wore in the photo—his shirt and bow tie are different, but they’re in the same pink-khaki-gray palette.

When Kirby brings the check, the regulars joke about who will cover it. “Give it to him!” “No, give it to that guy over there! I got it yesterday.”

From behind the register, which sits atop a dessert case full of cake slices on white paper plates with scalloped edges, each covered with a taut layer of plastic wrap, Kirby agrees to answer a couple of questions, as long as it doesn’t take too long—she’s busy.

“You get to know regulars really well over the years,” says Kirby, who has worked at Timberlake’s for 17 years. “They become your friends,” she says they’ll tell her about their problems and she’ll listen, sympathize and maybe even share a few of her own. They become like family.

“They give me a hard time, and I give it right back to them,” Kirby says, smiling.

“It’s a real family place,” she tells me, encouraging me to bring my family in with me sometime. “They live far away, up north in Boston,” I tell her.

“That’s okay. You can talk to us. And we have the best milkshakes in town,” she says with a wink.

Categories
Living

Introducing paffles to Charlottesville

The turkey BLT paffle is just one of the savory options (sweet varieties are offered as well) at Iron Paffles and Coffee. Staff photo

Kathryn Matthews has been obsessed with American breakfast since she was a child, growing up in Grimsby, a small fishing town on the northeast coast of England. Her grandparents would sometimes take her on vacation to Florida, where they’d eat waffles and fluffy American pancakes, which are quite different from the unleavened, more crêpe-like English pancakes. Sometimes, they’d pour batter onto a griddle or into a waffle iron and make the treats themselves.

Matthews has brought her love of sweet American breakfast to 214 W. Water St. with the opening of Iron Paffles and Coffee. She started working as a chef at 16 before studying hospitality and beverage management at university, and has been making paffles—puff pastry baked on a waffle iron—on her own for a while now, though she can’t exactly take credit for inventing the paffle (a quick Google search a few years back showed her as much).

Once Kathyrn Matthews, who grew up in England, got a taste of American-style breakfast, she set out to capture those flavors by creating a puff pastry-waffle hybrid known as the paffle. Photo by Tom McGovern
Once Kathyrn Matthews, who grew up in England, got a taste of American-style breakfast, she set out to capture those flavors by creating a puff pastry-waffle hybrid known as the paffle. Photo by Tom McGovern

Savory breakfast nuts might want to try the Iron Glory, a paffle topped with local bacon, sausage and cheese omelet topped with sriracha mayonnaise, and those with a sweet tooth might go for the Rise ’N’ Iron, a blueberry paffle covered with cream and local hickory syrup.

For lunch (or perhaps dinner) Matthews and executive chef Dan Giovanetti will cook up paffles such as the Iron Master (southern-fried local organic chicken breast, mac ’n’ cheese and local spring mix) and the Iron Bean (black bean, sweet potato and quinoa patty and finished with smoked salsa). Craving something sweet? Try the Hail Iron—orange cheesecake paffle topped with local strawberry sauce and flaked almonds—or the Peanut BAE, a gluten-free paffle with vegan chocolate ganache and peanut butter whip. The paffles can be made with a special vegan and gluten-free batter for an extra $1.50. Even with the extra charge, nothing costs more than $9, and can be devoured on-site or made to go in a special cardboard paffle carrier that allows for maximum nommage and minimal mess.

Iron will be open Monday through Thursday from 8am to 4pm, Friday from 8am to 8pm and Saturday from 10am to 8pm; breakfast will be served until 11 each day, but the Cini-Bacon paffle, made with maple cinnamon cream, candied pecans and bacon, will be on the menu all day.

Tom Tom nom-noms

It’s Tom Tom time, and you know what that means, food fans: nearly a whole week of food trucks, beer tents, cocktail competitions and celebrations of Charlottesville’s farm-to-table culture.

Throughout the week, restaurants such as The Bebedero, Citizen Burger Bar, Heirloom, Rapture, Oakhart Social, Tavern & Grocery and others will appeal to locavore palates with pre-fixe menus that emphasize local ingredients and artisan food producers.

A dozen mixologists will vie for Tom Tom’s top mixologist title with custom festival cocktails made from locally sourced ingredients and served all week at participating restaurants. A panel of judges will consider the creativity, presentation, originality and taste of the submitted cocktails and name their favorite. But don’t worry, the voice of the people will be considered as well—a popular vote will be held to determine the crowd’s favorite boozy beverage (vote online at tomtomfest.com/craftcocktail). Here’s just a taste of what’s to come: Alley Light’s Micah LeMon will make a Sunday Sermon, made with John J. Bowman Virginia Bourbon, housemade vermouth (local sassafras, wormwood and King Family Chardonnay), Amer Picon and Kubler Absinthe.

At the City Market Iron Chef Competition at 10am on Saturday, chefs will have 30 minutes to tour the market, purchase ingredients and cook a 100 percent locally sourced brunch dish in the hopes of wowing the three judges.

Who will be named this year’s Iron Chef Competition champion at the Tom Tom Founders Festival? Photo by Tom McGovern
Who will be named this year’s Iron Chef Competition champion at the Tom Tom Founders Festival? Photo by Tom McGovern

Find out who’ll be named Charlottesville’s top red hot chili prepper during the Downtown Chili Showdown at the Main Street Arena on Saturday from 11:30am to 3pm. Restaurants, community groups and individuals will compete for people’s choice and judges awards.

And last but not least, local food trucks will rally around Lee Park for the Friday, Saturday and Sunday block parties. Get your fill of good eats from Bavarian Chef, Got Dumplings, Blue Ridge Pizza Co., Mouth Wide Open, Wonderment, Carpe Donut, DanJo’s KettleKorn and others.

Categories
Living

Salt practices low-waste food philosophy

Barrett Hightower and Rani Morris opened Salt, an artisanal sandwich shop that focuses on local ingredients, to be a gathering place for the community. Photo by Tom McGovern

It’s a warm, sunny afternoon in early spring, and Barrett Hightower and Rani Morris have taken a moment to sit in the shade at one of the small tables outside of Salt Artisan Market, their sandwich shop in the historic Colle Station at 1330 Thomas Jefferson Pkwy., just around the bend from Monticello and a stone’s throw from Jefferson Vineyards.

It’s the golden hour, and soft light hits the edges of the wooden OPEN sign. A light breeze sends the sign swinging back and forth, and softly rustles the ivy growing on one of the shop’s two stone columns.

It’s also rush hour. A Ford truck whizzes around the corner and honks its horn. “Hey!” Hightower calls, exuberantly returning the driver’s wave.

Moments later, a silver Subaru whips by. “See you tomorrow!” the driver yells.

“Yeah!” Hightower replies, waving again. “Sometimes people will lean out the window and tell us that lunch was delicious, or thank us for the coffee. It’s very funny out here,” Hightower says, leaning back in her chair. “I’m like the mayor.”

Morris nods her head in agreement.

Hightower’s objective in opening Salt in spring 2013 was “to join the ecosystem.” She envisioned the shop as a place where “all kinds of people run into each other.”

Morris, who runs the Salt kitchen, grew up in Asia, eating spicy goat curry and making “really lopsided chapati” [flatbread] with her downstairs neighbor in Pakistan. As a teen, she spent Tuesday afternoons in the cafeteria kitchen of her Thailand boarding school, learning Thai—the language and the food—from the cooks.

Hightower, who typically runs the register (among other business elements), grew up in the D.C. area, eating peanut butter-and-bacon sandwiches that her grandmother would pack for family waterskiing excursions to Smith Mountain Lake. She worked in supply chain compliance for years before opening Salt.

“Basically, Rani cooks and I do her dishes,” Hightower jokes.

Free Union chorizo with roasted garlic aioli and slaw sandwich. Photo by Tom McGovern
Free Union chorizo with roasted garlic aioli and slaw sandwich. Photo by Tom McGovern

Morris’ sandwiches—such as the Free Union chorizo with roasted garlic aioli and slaw and the Kite’s Ham with hot peach chutney, brie and arugula—are inspired by what’s in season and what’s available locally. “One of my focuses, especially when spring and summer get going with the produce, is starting with what the farmer has, as opposed to what I want,” she says. “If we can start with what they’re growing, with what’s good for their land and what’s good for them, it will eventually be a more sustainable [system]. Not just demanding tomatoes because you want them, you know?”

Salt sources more than 35 percent of its products directly from the growers and producers at places such as Meadow’s Pride Farm in Highland County, Manakintowne Special Growers and Free Union Grass Farm, and from individual farmers. They also work with distributors like the Local Food Hub.

Local agriculture isn’t sustainable unless people “are invested in buying what grows in our environment,” Hightower says. “We can’t take our preconceptions of what we want, what we’re typically able to buy in the grocery store because it grows well in Iowa, and ask our farmers to grow that. The movement will only work if we make these regional adaptations. And, it’s much more fun that way.”

Salt has a low-waste philosophy, too: It offers compostable serving ware and recycles all beverage containers. And they train their employees to adopt a reuse-recycle-repurpose-retain habit.

For a while, Salt’s vegetable waste went to the worms at Castle Hill Cider’s orchard. Now that Salt has grown (more sandwiches means more product, which inevitably means more waste), the shop works with Black Bear Composting to minimize landfill-bound waste.

Hightower suspects a lot of people look at Salt and think she and Morris “must have a trust fund” to do what they do.

“Sometimes people will stop in and ask if we’re doing okay, if we’re still making sandwiches,” says Hightower. They’re making sandwiches all right—tons of sandwiches with a small staff, in a tiny restaurant, with ingredients likely grown in the soil Salt customers pass on their commutes. It’s not easy—Morris and Hightower are often in the kitchen until midnight on a Friday prepping for a busy Saturday. “When they ask me that, I tell them we’re slinging sandwiches! We’re not millionaires, but we’re doing it, and doing it on our own,” and with community support, Hightower says.

She smiles widely and waves at a red Volvo cruising by. “That’s the village I’m talking about,” she says, pointing at the car.

Categories
Knife & Fork Magazines

K&F: Let’s do brunch: Sweet or savory, we’re on board for both

Fossett's B&B waffle is just one way to satisfy a carnivorous mid-morning craving. Photo: Eze Amos

Breakfast, they say, is the most important meal of the day. But we’d wager that whoever said that had never had brunch. If they had, they’d know there are few things finer than waking up on Saturday morning only to meet friends at table in the cool spring air and hunker down for an hour or so of truly indulgent eating—syrup drizzling over French toast, butter spread over fresh-baked bread, yellow yolk dripping over the edge of an English muffin. In this issue, we’ve pinpointed more than 25 ways to immerse yourself in one of the weekend’s greatest traditions. And don’t you dare forget the mimosa.

By Nathan Alderman, Shea Gibbs, Laura Ingles, Whitney Kenerly and Caite White