Tag: Graduate Charlottesville

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Living

Egging ’em on: Junction’s now serving a bruncheon

Chicken and waffles with a habanero-maple syrup are on the brunch menu at Junction, which will serve brunch from 10:30am to 2:30pm Saturdays and Sundays. Photo by Morgan Salyer

Belmont’s Junction is delving into the weekend world of bracing bloodies and merciful mimosas with the launch of a brunch service. Executive chef Melissa Close-Hart says the demand was there for it, and the timing right.

“We thought about doing brunch from the beginning,” she says. “We tried it out on holidays, like Easter and Mother’s Day, and we had big success, so decided that it was time to try it on a regular basis.”

She says they wanted to keep the menu simple by blending brunch classics with the Southwest flair the restaurant specializes in.

Entrées will include chicken and waffles with a habanero-maple syrup; huevos Benedictos (eggs Benedict with an ancho hollandaise sauce); smoked chicken chilaquiles; a grilled shrimp and corn enchilada; and cinnamon-and-orange brioche French toast.

Also on offer: a simpler kids breakfast for $6. Brunch will be served 10:30am-2:30pm on Saturdays and Sundays.

RX for good eats

The FARMacy food truck is open for business and ready to make house calls to cure what ails your rumbling stomach. Owner Jessica Hogan, who began the business as a superfood smoothie delivery service, was looking to expand after training at the Community Investment Collaborative. Last year, she bought a food truck that she and her boyfriend/chef/business partner Lino Gonzalez remodeled.

Hogan, whose motto is “urban living with farm roots,” has found the perfect partner in Gonzalez, a native of Mexico. Their Mexican fusion food menu focuses on local and organic ingredients and added “superfoods.”

“He was raised in a small town where they ate from the land, so organic is natural to him,” she says. “I went to a holistic nutrition school and was raised pretty much vegetarian and homeopathic, so I know the value of eating clean food, organic. Together we help bring healthy and delicious food to Charlottesville to satisfy peoples’ cravings and nourish their bodies at the same time.”

Menu offerings include a super naan taco with beef and al pastor pork; the tres hongos (three mushroom) quesadilla; a vegan black bean burrito; and a salad bowl of lettuce, kale, tomato, onion, black beans, avocado, roasted peppers, corn, and tortilla chips. Look for the couple’s bright green FARMacy truck around town.

The s’more the merrier

No more fruitless searches on Netflix for Bill Murray’s iconic classic Meatballs to evoke fond summer camp memories. Instead you can just divert to the Graduate Charlottesville for a campy experience.

The hotel has overhauled its rooftop bar and restaurant, previously a farm-to-table joint called Heirloom, with a camping theme, renaming the venue Camp Ten Four (a nod to the size of the city, 10.4 square miles). The design is intended to evoke the fun of summers past in a venue overlooking Charlottesville, with beautiful views and sunsets, says Graduate general manager Dee Richardson.

“Much like sitting around a campfire with friends or new acquaintances, we hope Camp Ten Four’s warm service and neighborhood atmosphere inspires camaraderie, story-telling, and memory-making as visitors gather year-round for delicious food and drinks.”

From barbecue favorites such as cheeseburgers and hot dogs on chef Robert Allen’s menu, to campily named adult drinks like Bug Juice and Wahoo Water, the Graduate hopes to inspire the same sense of relaxation you might have enjoyed at summer camp.

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Living

Kebabish sizzles with fusion dishes

Kebabish Sizzling and Fire Grille offers authentic, fast dishes, including gyros (both meat and veggie), dumplings, curries, fried noodles and, of course, kebabs. BELOW:  Did you know: Hardywood Park Craft Brewery’s Gingerbread Stout is the first commercially brewed gingerbread stout? Photo by Paul Whicheloe

By Erin O’Hare and Sam Padgett

Kebabish Sizzling and Fire Grille, a new restaurant that fuses Turkish, Indian, Nepali and Mediterranean cuisines, is now open at 111 W. Water St. downtown, in the space most recently occupied by Downtown Thai.

The restaurant, owned by Uzzwal Khadka (who also owns Taste of India located at 310 E. Main St. on the Downtown Mall), promises fast, fresh, authentic food. Kebabish offers a wide range of dishes, including chicken, lamb and vegetable gyros (a gyro is a dish made from meat cooked on a vertical rotisserie and sliced and wrapped in pita with tomato, onion and tzatziki sauce); mo-mo, a spiced chicken dumpling that’s a popular street food in Tibet and Nepal; and shawarma, curry dishes, churrascaria kebabs and filets, fried noodles, fried rices and more. There’s also the “lovely meat ball” appetizer, a dish of chicken or lamb that, according to a member of our art department, is “kind of like a falafel, but with meat in it.”

All of Kebabish’s food, from the naan breads to the sauces, are made in-house. Additionally, Khadka says the restaurant has bought a lot of its fruit and vegetables from the City Market in an effort to ensure freshness while simultaneously supporting other local businesses.

Stout’s honor

When Hardywood Park Craft Brewery’s Gingerbread Stout beer burst onto the scene in November 2011, it received a rare perfect 100 score from BeerAdvocate magazine, which in 2012 declared the spiced stout “freagin’ Christmas in a bottle.” The brew also received bronze in the 2012 World Beer Cup herb and spice category. And earlier this month, six years after its initial release, The Beer Connoisseur named GBS the No. 1 Christmas and Holiday Beer. Made with baby ginger from Casselmonte Farm and wildflower honey from Bearer Farms, Hardywood Gingerbread Stout is the first commercially brewed gingerbread stout. Hardywood has brewed eight different GBS variants for the 2017 holiday season—the original GBS, bourbon barrel, Christmas Morning and Kentucky Christmas Morning, plus four found only at Hardywood breweries: rum barrel, apple brandy barrel, rye whiskey barrel and double barrel.

Eater’s digest

Every Wednesday from 4pm to midnight at Graduate Charlottesville’s Heirloom Rooftop and Bar, chef Frank Paris dishes out ramen specials. Paris is the former chef and owner of Miso Sweet Ramen + Donut Shop, which closed its doors on the Downtown Mall earlier this year. “I definitely miss Miso Sweet and it was tough to close,” says Paris. “We made a lot of friends and fans in the short two years [Miso Sweet was open], and as we were closing, we were constantly asked if we were going to do ramen at our new location. When we were brainstorming ideas for Heirloom, ramen was a no-brainer. It’s the perfect weather for it, and it gives me a chance to reconnect with fans of Miso Sweet and hopefully make some new fans here at Heirloom.”

CAVA, a fast-casual Mediterranean chain restaurant, will open a Charlottesville location in summer 2018. It’s one of two restaurants planned for Emmet Street Station. Located at 1200 Emmet Street N. (across from the Barracks Road Shopping Center, in the empty lot that once held an Exxon station), Emmet Street Station is currently under construction.

Downtown Mall denizens may have noticed that the popular Catch the Chef food cart took a recent hiatus from the Third Street SE/Downtown Mall junction (it was back on Monday), and that’s because Catch the Chef has grown into full-fledged food truck zipping to a different location daily. Check the truck’s Facebook page for more info.

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Living

Blue Moon pop-ups feed the community

Laura Galgano, owner of Blue Moon Diner, hopes to have brunch pop-ups in the Snowing in Space Lab on West Main Street about every other month. Photo by Eze Amos

Although Blue Moon Diner is closed during construction of 600 West Main, the six-story mixed-use building going up behind the restaurant, that hasn’t stopped owner Laura Galgano from serving her customers.

“I am a social being, and quite simply, [I] want to know what folks are up to, how their lives are and what new and fun things they’ve gotten to try,” Galgano says. It’s a reason why, in August and September, she and a few other Blue Moon staffers hosted Blue Moon pop-up brunches in Snowing In Space Coffee’s Space Lab at 705 W. Main St., serving a limited menu of biscuits and sausage gravy, pancakes and a variation on a grits bowl.

At the first pop-up on August 19, just a week after the deadly August 12 white supremacist rally, Galgano realized how much she missed her regulars. That day, there was “lots of hugging, and ‘Where were you?,’ ‘So glad you’re safe,’ etc.,” says Galgano. “Blue Moon has always been more than just a diner, and using the pop-ups as a way to check in with each other, and keep that notion of community at the fore, is very important to us.”

During one of the September pop-ups, Galgano saw four orders of pancakes for two people, and she stuck her head out of the kitchen to make sure there hadn’t been a mistake. But when she did, she saw two Charlottesville Derby Dames, Blue Moon regulars who’d come in to load up on the beloved diner staple after a training workout. “One of the skaters was housesitting for two other skaters, and planned to leave them each their own serving of pancakes to enjoy on their return,” says Galgano.

It’s been a treat for the Snowing In Space folks, too. “We are huge fans of Blue Moon Diner ourselves,” says the coffee spot’s manager Julia Minnerly, “and being able to offer such a community favorite was a big hit.”

Galgano says that more Blue Moon pop-up brunches will happen soon; the details haven’t been hammered out quite yet, but she hopes to have one every other month or so.

“I like that we’re just down the street, in the same neighborhood, and partnering with a newer business,” Galgano says. “These kinds of collaborations help to continue the sense of community that Blue Moon so values: We all succeed together.”

Lunch spot haven

On Wednesday, September 20, The Haven hosted its first weekly home-cooked lunch for members of the Charlottesville community, serving a meal that included a cheese plate or spinach salad, meatloaf or vegetarian lentil loaf, roasted herb potatoes, broccoli with lemon-butter sauce, homemade peach cobbler and vanilla ice cream.

About 26 people showed up for the inaugural meal, says Diana Boeke, The Haven’s director of community engagement, who notes they can accommodate up to 40 people for each lunch. Home cooks and regular shelter guests, who prepared and served the meals to customers, “were very excited and making sure they made everyone feel at home,” Boeke says, noting that for many attendees, it was their first time in the day shelter. “The big round tables that seat up to eight mean that you’ll meet new people, so even people that came alone became part of the community there.”

The menu will change each week (the September 27 lunch included salad, chili, cornbread and a strawberries and cream dessert), and Boeke says The Haven hopes to find a few other home cooks—perhaps people from other countries who could share specialty dishes—to help with the public lunches. The kitchen managers already plan and prepare breakfasts for more than 60 people, 365 days a year.

The home-cooked lunches are served from noon to 1:30pm every Wednesday and give members of the Charlottesville community, including guests of the day shelter (who are not asked to pay the $10 donation for the meal), the chance to get to know one another.

Do the Cheffle

Frank Paris III, who closed his downtown ramen and donut shop Miso Sweet in August, is now executive chef at Heirloom, the rooftop restaurant and bar at the Graduate Charlottesville hotel at 1309 W. Main St. on the UVA Corner. He’s currently working on a new menu.

C-VILLE’s At the Table columnist C. Simon Davidson reports on his Charlottesville 29 blog that after a yearlong stint cooking at the Michelin-starred Inn at Little Washington, chef Jose de Brito is back in town as chef de cuisine of Fleurie, located at 108 Third St. NE, and consultant to the Downtown Mall’s Petit Pois. The former Alley Light head chef and former chef-owner of Ciboulette, which inhabited a space in the Main Street Market building years ago, told Davidson he’s ready to cook French food again, which he says is his specialty.

Categories
Living

Sheepdog Café offers breakfast, lunch and dinner

The Sheepdog Cafe now takes up 2,000 square feet on the ground floor of the Graduate Charlottesville hotel. Courtesy of Graduate Charlottesville

The café located on the ground floor of the Graduate Charlottesville hotel on West Main Street has a new name, a new look and a new menu. Formerly Sheepdog Coffee, the 2,000- square-foot indoor/outdoor space is now Sheepdog Café and can seat up to 66 people for breakfast, lunch and dinner service, plus a full bar. Sheepdog’s chef Allen Flint—a former U.S. Army chef and member of the highly competitive Fort Carson Culinary team who’s worked as an executive chef for various major hotel brands—created the new menu with students and travelers in mind. “We wanted to offer dishes that were easy to carry out or eat in,” says Flint. Menu items include salads, pressed sandwiches, mini donuts and, Flint’s favorite, biscuits made fresh daily and paired with eggs and cheese. The café is open every day from 6am to midnight.

Wish granted

In an effort to increase community access to healthy food, the Local Food Hub applied for—and received—a $10,000 grant from The Conservation Fund and CSX Transportation. With the money, the nonprofit organization will purchase an additional cold storage unit for its 3,000-square-foot warehouse off of Morgantown Road in Ivy.

The warehouse currently features a loading dock and a staging area for preparing pick-ups and deliveries, plus two cool-temperature-zone rooms. One of those cool rooms contains a freezer for meat and a walk-in cooler for leafy greens and other vegetables.

The walk-in spaces are great, but they’re narrow, and it’s difficult to get a pallet in and out, says Local Food Hub Chief of Staff Laura Brown. Having more space for pallets means increased efficiency and organization and a greater ability to serve more customers. The organization provides food to more than 250 customers in Virginia and the Maryland/Washington, D.C., area.

Brown says they plan to use the new cold storage unit to store fresh, non-frozen meat and other foods for various Local Food Hub initiatives. “People don’t often think about people in Charlottesville needing access to healthy food,” says Brown, but the reality is that not everyone in town can afford to buy farm-fresh produce, meats and other goods.

Winning whiskey

When people think of whiskey, they don’t necessarily think of Virginia…but maybe they should. The Lovingston-based Virginia Distillery Co.’s Virginia Highland Malt Whisky won Best American Single Malt Whisky at the World Whiskies Awards presented by Whisky magazine.

This is the first time Virginia Distillery Co. has entered the competition, and it beat out three-time Best American Single Malt Whisky champ Balcones Distilling’s Balcones “1” Texas Single Malt, which won the title in 2013, 2014 and 2016.

The Virginia Highland Malt Whisky arrives at the distillery as a malt whiskey from the Scottish Highlands and is finished for nine to 18 months in port-style wine casks from local wineries such as King Family Vineyards and Veritas Vineyards.

“There are a lot of interesting things about being in Virginia that apply to making whiskey here,” says Ian Thomas, Virginia Distillery’s director. The unique climate of hot, hot summers and cold winters “affects that maturation of the whiskey in a really great way,” he says. The casks are kept in a warehouse, and, as temperatures rise, the cask and the whiskey inside expand and are influenced by the wood; as temperatures fall, the spirit and the cask come together more closely.