Tag: Grit

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Culture Food & Drink Living

Keep funding so they can keep feeding

Meals on Wheels provides meals for seniors in need.

Go with Grace

Cavalier Produce has put a creative twist on feeding those in need. The food distributor announced Grace’s Good Food Box Program as a way to get fresh food into homes that need it through a partnership with Loaves & Fishes, PB&J Fund, Louisa County Resource Council, and Blue Ridge Area Food Bank’s Lynchburg branch. The boxes are filled with fruits, veggies, and other groceries for holiday meals, and delivered at cost. The program is named for the owners’ daughter, who “reminds us every day to pay attention to these little things and to take nothing for granted.” To donate, go to cavalierproduce.com.

Wheels of good fortune

In lieu of its annual Taste This! fundraiser, Meals on Wheels of Charlottesville/Albemarle is hosting a bingo event focused on supporting local restaurants. Unlike regular bingo, this version uses cards with area restaurant logos occupying each square. Players visit a variety of establishments, get their card stamped, and then enter the cards into a raffle—one entry per stamped logo—for multiple prizes. The event runs from December 15-March 1. Participating restaurants include The Alley Light, Orzo, Grit, Tavola, and MarieBette.

The fundraiser will help MOW keep its clients fed through this difficult time. Executive Director Leigh Trippe says Meals on Wheels has been very fortunate so far: “I should not ever be surprised by this community, but I’m amazed at all the help that we’ve gotten,” she says. “It has made us extremely grateful that we live where we live.”—Will Ham

A nod to excellence

When The Ridley opens in The Draftsman hotel in January, it won’t just add to Charlottesville’s upscale dining scene, it will bring an important legacy into focus.

The  seafood-meets-sophisticated -Southern-cooking restaurant is named for Dr. Walter N. Ridley, who was the first African American to receive a doctoral degree from a Southern, traditionally white university. Ridley had to persevere through years and layers of resistance to earn his doctorate in education from the University of Virginia in 1953, and his achievements paved the way for the thousands of Black students who came after him.

The team behind The Ridley, UVA/Darden alum Warren Thompson (Thompson Hospitality) and his friend and business partner, Ron Jordan
(Jordan Hospitality Group), honor Ridley not only in name, but by supporting his foundation through their venture. Thompson’s parents both studied under Ridley, and he considers the project to be deeply personal. “The Ridley is a way for me to publicly recognize his contributions and his commitment to action and equality in a town critically important to both his story and my own,” says Thompson.

The Ridley crew say they’ll provide an elegant yet casual atmosphere that feels like a big city dining experience, plus a tantalizing menu of Southern, coastal offerings. Expect to fill up on soft shell crab, fried lobster tails, branzino, red snapper, and Cajun oysters at 1106 West Main.

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Living

Pumpkin spice everything must mean it’s fall

Milli Coffee Roasters owner Nick Leichtentritt says he likes the idea of offering a seasonal menu, which includes the ubiquitous pumpkin spice latte, to reflect our changing palate. Staff photo

By Sam Padgett

Fourteen years ago, the pumpkin spice latte crashed into our lives when Starbucks introduced it into its seasonal lineup. And this beverage has gone from a niche fall drink to being ubiquitous enough to warrant its own acronym: PSL.

Pumpkin spice fever has become something of an epidemic, and its sheer popularity has inspired a litany of products. Not only is there pumpkin spice vodka, lip balm and soap, but there are even pumpkin spice dog treats.

This drink has firmly cemented itself into our seasonal culinary tradition, like turkey on Thanksgiving or eggnog on Christmas. To fully dissect this trend, I visited the people it affects most: baristas.

September is officially the beginning of PSL season, but requests for iced pumpkin spice lattes aren’t uncommon in the summer—nearly every barista I talked with said she currently receives a couple queries about the drink daily. However, none of the baristas I interviewed was fanatic about the drink themselves. Many of them confessed they had never had one; they weren’t intrigued by the prospect of pumpkins in coffee. Heather Thompson, a barista at Splendora’s Gelato Cafe, says, “I enjoy pumpkin as a food, not a beverage.” All of the baristas I talked with at Milli Coffee Roasters said they’d rather eat a pumpkin pie from The Pie Chest than drink anything pumpkin flavored.

But to truly understand the pumpkin spice phenomenon, I went straight to the source, and talked with Bri Boyd, a barista at a Starbucks located on UVA’s Grounds. According to her, most pumpkin spice latte-ordering customers are repeat customers: “Some people will order one every day,” she says. She estimates that roughly three out of every 10 customers in the autumn order pumpkin spice lattes, a vastly different figure than other local coffee shops like Grit Coffee and Java Java, which report they only sell a few daily.

Essentially, Starbucks created a product that is mostly desirable due to its limited availability. Our positive associations with the season create an innate sense of nostalgia, and nostalgia is an incredible marketing tool. Sure, there are undoubtedly many people who sincerely love PSLs, in all of their cinnamon-and-clove goodness, but there is also a whole continent full of people who like Vegemite; food tastes are just as subjective as tastes in art or music. 

Nick Leichtentritt, owner of Milli Coffee Roasters, views the whole phenomenon with a dash of optimism. “I like the idea of doing things seasonally,” he says. “Our palates change with the season, and if people like pumpkin spice lattes, then we’ll make them well.”

Categories
Living

Grit opens fourth location; Snowing in Space coming to West Main

Grit Coffee opened its fourth location last week at The Shops at Stonefield. Photo by Eze Amos

Snowing in Space Coffee Co., a local nitro coffee business that’s been serving up thick, creamy, Guinness-like (but not alcoholic) nitro coffee on tap at several locations around town, will soon take over the old C’Ville-ian Brewing Co. space at 705 W. Main St.

Snowing in Space co-owner Paul Dierkes says he signed the lease only recently, and plans to open a coffee concept on West Main—where there isn’t really another shop dedicated to just coffee—in early 2017.

Currently, Snowing in Space coffee—in flavors such as the nutty Gimme-Dat, the blueberry Lil Blue and the peppermint, green tea and coffee blend Ninjabrain—can be found at Paradox Pastry, Keevil & Keevil and The Local, and in some hip local offices like WillowTree Apps.

Dierkes is particularly excited about the collaboration opportunities the new location affords. Snowing in Space has worked on special brews with Trager Brothers Coffee and Lamplighter Coffee Roasters in Richmond, and they’ve also collaborated with Virginia Distillery Co.

Another jolt

Grit Coffee Bar and Café opened its fourth location last week at The Shops at Stonefield. Baristas at the newest Grit will sling the same locally roasted coffee and espresso drinks as the other three locations, but they’ll have a few special-to-Stonefield options, such as nitro cold-brew coffee and, by early 2017, beer, wine and cocktails. Grit co-founder Brandon Wooten says the Stonefield Grit has a “10-tap draft system that will include a rotating selection of harder-to-find craft beers, ciders and wines.” The cocktail menu isn’t finalized yet, but Wooten says it will be focused on “unique drinks perfect for enjoying before or after dinner.” Customers can expect a few classic cocktails, but most of the drinks will be “built around bitter notes meant to give a subtle nod to coffee” and pair well with a new rotating dessert menu. Some cocktails will have an espresso or cold-brew coffee base, and others will utilize liqueurs and potable bitters.

But it’s not all drinks and dessert: Grit will offer build-your-own breakfast sandwiches, Cuban sandwiches, empanadas, savory small plates and grab-and-go options as well.

The Alley Light welcomes new chef

Brian Jones, who’s perhaps best known around Charlottesville as Petit Pois’ opening chef, has left his most recent post at Fifth Street Station’s Timberwood Tap House for a new gig: He’ll be cooking at The Alley Light.

At The Alley Light, Jones will help co-owner and executive chef Robin McDaniel cook the extensive Alley Light menu and contribute dishes to the specials board.

McDaniel and her husband, Alley Light co-owner and general manager Chris Dunbar, previously worked with Jones at both Petit Pois and Fleurie, and the three are glad to be working together again. Jones is “a great presence [in the kitchen],” Dunbar says. “He’s very organized, very detail-oriented, creative.”

The decision to leave Timberwood wasn’t an easy one for Jones—he says he enjoyed getting to know the owners and the kitchen staff during his six months with the restaurant, and it was a joy to watch Timberwood open in October. But, ultimately, Jones says, kitchen management wasn’t his thing. He missed cooking. “I was ready for the challenge of managing, but my heart still wanted to be behind the range with a towel in one hand and a spoon in the other, cooking great food, using the highest quality ingredients thoughtfully prepared and executed with great technique,” he says.