Joe Wolfson – C-VILLE Weekly

But baby it’s cold outside: Wine and beer delivered to your door

In case you need one more excuse to avoid going out in the frigid weather, Wegmans is now offering beer and wine delivery through Instacart.

“We know our customers are busy, and the holidays are no exception,” says Erica Tickle, Wegmans e-commerce group manager. “We wanted to help our customers spend less time prepping and more time celebrating.”

You can place your order on Instacart online or through the app, and orders will be delivered between 9am and 10pm.

It turns out wine delivery isn’t altogether new in the area, as several local wine shops have long provided delivery service.

Market Street Wine has been delivering for 30 years, say new owners Thadd McQuade and Siân Richards.

“This was established by [previous owner] Robert Harllee and we have carried it proudly on,” McQuade says. “We’ll deliver anywhere downtown—up to a case or two for free. We have a number of long-term clients who order a case from us every few weeks. We do everything from single gift bottles to large parties and weddings, and have delivered as far as 100 miles away.”

Foods of All Nations has also long been on board with this courtesy.

“We deliver whatever customers want, wherever they want, whenever they want, and we have for many, many years—as long as you’re 21 or older,” says Tom Walters, the store’s wine consultant. “We have some older clientele and regulars we deliver to on a regular basis and we deliver for special events, catering and things like that as needed too.”

Erin Scala, owner of Keswick’s In Vino Veritas, says she provides free neighborhood deliveries on certain days of the week—Glenmore and nearby get free Thursday delivery and Pen Park and downtown customers have free Friday deliveries. She adds that any order of $200 is eligible for free local delivery.

And Doug Hotz, manager/owner of Rio Hill Wine & Beer, says he also delivers within a 10-mile radius of the store, although there’s usually a fee. He adds that most people simply call ahead or email their order and pick it up at the shop. “It’s ready when they get here and they pull up and we load it up and they go.”

Anything to stay warm and dry.

Beer for a cause

Local breweries Devils Backbone, Champion, and Starr Hill have joined Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.’s effort to raise funds for California wildfire victims—with a collaborative beer.

Sierra Nevada, which originated in Chico, California, released its Resilience Butte County Proud IPA in a campaign to aid those who lost homes and property in the devastating Camp Fire in Northern California. They’ve enlisted brewers nationwide to also brew Resilience and donate 100 percent of beer sales to the Camp Fire Relief Fund.

A Blue Moon by spring?

Blue Moon Diner owner Laura Galgano is counting the minutes till she can open the doors to diner regulars.

“Our hopes were that we’d be back in business by January 1, but it’s looking more like March at this point,” she says. “We should be back in the space by January, but we won’t finish with our portion of the renovations until late February or early March.”

The beloved diner closed in May, 2017, in preparation for construction of Six Hundred West Main, the six-story apartment building (featuring a private art gallery as well as retail space) going up behind the restaurant. The complex didn’t end up breaking ground until almost a year after the diner closed, and is now set to open in fall 2019.

“We are very anxious to return to our wonderful, wonky diner space, and our wonderful, wonky diners!” says Galgano.

Tavern & Grocery hires a “Top New Chef”

Tavern & Grocery has hired Joe Wolfson, named one of the Top 100 New Chefs in America by Food & Wine magazine, to be its executive chef.

“He brings an exciting new menu to Tavern & Grocery, with dishes including sweetbreads, duck, and osso buco,” says restaurant owner Ashley Sieg, adding that in January the West Main eatery will introduce a Sunday Suppers feature, served family style.

Wolfson was the executive chef at the Old Stone Farmhouse on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Ms. Rose’s Fine Foods in Charleston, South Carolina.

Renewal’s chef Joe Wolfson keeps it simple

By Sam Padgett and Erin O’Hare

Chef Joe Wolfson found renewal in Charlottesville—literally. Renewal, which opened two weeks ago on West Main Street on the ground floor of the Draftsman Hotel, serves as both a culmination of Wolfson’s culinary career and an opportunity to focus his food on simplicity.

Besides an impressive collection of accolades, which includes an appearance on the Food Network’s “Beat Bobby Flay” and being nominated as one of America’s best new chefs by Food & Wine magazine, Wolfson has cooked in fine-dining restaurants across the country.

While it is hard to mention any modern Southern restaurant without mentioning the farm-to-table movement, Wolfson embraces and values locally sourced ingredients from a flavor viewpoint. “Simple food can be the most complex,” he says. “You have nothing to hide behind. If you have great ingredients, all you have to do is let them shine.”

Wolfson was particularly “choosy” in deciding where to begin his next project, and his selection of Charlottesville was purposeful. For his previous restaurant, Ham and High, located in Montgomery, Alabama, Wolfson picked up his vegetables from nearby farms on the back of his four-wheeler. Even though he has only been in town for a month now, Wolfson’s already begun to incorporate regional ingredients into Renewal’s menu.

The heat is on

Although Renewal chef Joe Wolfson appeared on the Food Network’s “Beat Bobby Flay,” alas, Wolfson did not, in fact, beat the Flaymeister. Wolfson went head-to-head with chef Lee Frank for the honor of throwing down with the renowned chef, but he didn’t advance to the final round. Still, Wolfson says he had a wonderful time on the show.

What you see is what you get, he says. The action happens just as it’s presented—the timer is real and the dishes are composed on the spot.

“I felt like I was a middle-schooler performing a play. They really wanted you to perform, and I did just that,” he says, jokingly mentioning the 400 green Skittles he demanded in his rider.

Tasty tidbits

The North Garden Farmers Market (formerly the Red Hill Farmers Market) will have its grand opening from 3 to 7pm on Thursday, June 14, at Albemarle CiderWorks, 2545 Rural Ridge Ln. Manager of the weekly market Kathy Zentgraf (formerly of beloved vegan eatery Greenie’s at The Spot) promises booths of local produce and crafts, some food vendors, a children’s corner “and hello, the cider!”

IX Art Park is getting another tippling tenant with North American Sake Brewery, which is going into the building right underneath Three Notch’d Brewery. For the uninitiated, sake (pronounced sah-kay) is a Japanese rice wine made by fermenting rice that has been polished to remove the bran (the hard, outer layer of the rice grain, under the chaff). No word yet on when the brewery will open—it’s still in the construction phase—but the owners have built a special cedar-lined room to cultivate good koji (the fungus behind Japanese culinary staples such as sake, soy sauce and miso).

Last Friday, Albemarle Baking Company announced via its Instagram account that going forward, all of its breads would be 100 percent organic; in the past, only some of the breads were organic. “We don’t want to eat bread made from wheat that’s been treated with pesticides and you shouldn’t have to either,” the post said.