Tag: Jose De Brito

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Culture Food & Drink Living

Students grab healthier options, and the Downtown Mall faces French paradox

Smoke in our eyes

A new Q joint started smoking last Friday. Vision Barbecue is pioneered by co-owners Mike Blevins and Gabi Barghachie, who came up with their “vision” for the restaurant while working together at Maya. These barbecue boys are on a mission to add their own take on authentic smoked meats and sides to the downtown restaurant scene. “We are using local wood and a match,” Barghachie says. “No chemical starters, no gas, no electric. Everything done the way it’s supposed to be done.” The menu offers meats by the pound, traditional sides with a spicy variation on pimento cheese, and Little Pig- and Big Hen-sized sandwiches for all appetites. Be sure to grab the wet naps when you pick up VB’s signature sammie, The Hot Mess, loaded with 10 ounces of brisket, pork, and chicken, and topped with pickled onions and jalapeño plus housemade cheese and pepper sauces. Vision Barbecue is located next to The Shebeen at 249 Ridge McIntire Rd., and is open Thursday through Monday.

Crammin’ the good stuff

While we can’t imagine students completely ditching Gusburgers, donuts, and Chinese food delivery, it’s exciting to see UVA’s commitment to healthy, sustainable eating through a new partner­ship with Harvest Table. A subsidiary of Aramark, Harvest Table specializes in bringing locally sourced, high-quality food to institutional dining. Throughout the fall semester, the company tested its “immersive culinary movement” with pop-ups inside Runk dining hall, before fully integrating to bring Hoos a fresh, eco-friendly alternative.

All Runk food now comes from within a 150-mile radius of Charlottesville and is prepared entirely in-house—no premade hamburger patties, no packaged desserts. Through the initiative, students can choose non-GMO, antibiotic-free, and grass-fed as well as plant-based proteins, and there are options for those with food allergies and sensitivities.

Peter Bizon, executive chef for Harvest Table at Runk, says that university dining halls provide an excellent opportunity to bring local businesses together. He’s teamed up with Shenandoah Joe’s for coffee and Blue Ridge Bucha for on-tap kombucha.

“Some farms have the necessary licensing to do business with us and some don’t,” says Bizon. “We specialize in connecting the ones who don’t with the ones who do in order to foster cooperation among local producers. It means a lot when you can work with local farmers. You can get others involved and create a strong community.”

Harvest Table is also partnering with Babylon Micro-Farms, an organization founded by UVA alumni that helps restaurants grow produce in-house with systems that are remotely climate controlled and can support a wide
variety of plants, from lettuces to herbs, and even some edible flowers.

The university hopes to extend Harvest Table’s services to its other two dining halls in the future.

Frites on hold

While many local restos have pivoted creatively to stay open safely, using igloos, outdoor heaters, blankets, and stepped-up takeout offerings, Brasserie Saison has opted to close temporarily for the winter. The official statement from the popular Euro-pub says, “The health and safety of our restaurant family and community come first and we feel that the risk is too great for indoor dining during these winter months.” Owners say they plan to reopen in the spring, after the majority of the restaurant staff is able to receive vaccines. Then we can finally get back to enjoying the moules frites.

Frites on the go

Meanwhile, just up the mall, there’s another new restaurant from Ten Course Hospitality (the group behind Brasserie Saison, Revolutionary Soup, The Alley Light, The Pie Chest, The Bebedero, and most recently The Milkman’s Bar at Dairy Market): Café Frank, with an original menu from Chef Jose De Brito, whose resume includes Fleurie, The Alley Light, and The Inn at Little Washington. The new café is located in the former home of Splendora’s Gelato (we miss you!), and promises casual, French dining on the Downtown Mall (plus a robust daily to-go menu). The café’s bar program is by Mike Stewart, and Will Richey will curate the bistro-style wine list. We are excited to try the Royal Paella-for-Two with lobster, mussels, shrimp, and chorizo, but the hidden gem of this new foodie magnet might be the 4pm aperitif hour, when De Brito creates unique bites to pair with a prosecco bar-style sparkling wine list and cocktails. Café Frank is accepting takeout orders, and will be open for in-house dining Monday through Saturday beginning in March. —Will Ham

Categories
Living

Sammy love in the new year: Guest sandwiches are back at Keevil & Keevil

The first “guest chef” sandwich to debut at Keevil & Keevil this year is a bologna wonder from Mason Hereford, of New Orleans’ Turkey and the Wolf. Photo courtesy Keevil & Keevil

After a consulting gig at Commonwealth Restaurant & Sky Bar, Harrison Keevil is back full-time at Keevil & Keevil, with some new ideas for the store he co-owns with his wife Jennifer.

“We’re bringing back the guest sandwiches —where I ask friends what their dream sandwich is and try to make it come to life with local ingredients,” Keevil says. He’ll start with a take on Charlottesville native/UVA grad Mason Hereford’s famed bologna sandwich.

Hereford’s New Orleans sandwich shop, Turkey and the Wolf, was voted Bon Appetit’s best restaurant in America in 2017, and was also a James Beard finalist for best new restaurant that year. He’s famed for turning your average sandwich into a work of wonder.

“Mason asked us to make an all-Virginia version of his fried bologna sandwich,” Keevil says. Hereford shared a family recipe for mustard, which will be mixed with Duke’s mayonnaise. The bologna is made from local grass-fed beef, the bread comes from Albemarle Baking Company, and it’s all topped off with Route 11 Potato Chips.

Other chefs with guest sandwich offerings in the months to come will include Jason Alley, owner of Pasture and Comfort in Richmond, and Trigg Brown, formerly of Ten and Blue Light, and now co-owner of Win Son, a Taiwanese-American restaurant in Brooklyn.

The chef whose sandwiches sell the most during this multi-month smackdown will make a $500 donation to the charity of his choice, and Keevil & Keevil will then match the donation for Therapeutic Adventures, in honor of a friend of Harrison’s who passed away last summer and had lived a very full life with only one leg.

Keevil says they’ve got some other new things brewing at the shop, including seasonally focused sandwiches and pick up/takeaway dinners.

“We’ll do some beef bourguignon, lasagna, and some more heartier stuff during the winter, keeping an eye on the weather,” he says. “If it’s going to warm up, we’ll do some lighter stuff, and if it’s colder, we’ll do more braising. We’ll have delicious stuff people can grab and take home to feed their family. Now that I’m back in the kitchen full-time, I have a lot of ideas and energy and a lot of new time to dedicate to creating delicious food here.”

So long, farewell to Jose De Brito

After a year at the helm of Fleurie’s kitchen, esteemed local chef Jose De Brito is leaving to return home to Washington, Virginia, where he and his wife settled when he worked at the Inn at Little Washington.

De Brito, who at times could be as professionally elusive as Peter Chang once was, rose to prominence when he headed the kitchen at The Alley Light, earning praise in the food world with his French cuisine.

Fleurie owner Brian Helleberg says he hates to lose a gifted chef but understood his need to return home.

“Chef Jose had been keeping an apartment in Charlottesville for the work week and was missing his wife and home in Little Washington,” he says. “It was certainly a privilege to have him as the chef and although I’ll miss his presence, I’ll look forward to continuing our friendship.”

Helleberg says Fleurie is in good hands with Joe Walker, the new chef de cuisine.

“Walker is going to surprise some people when they see just how good he is,” he says. “Chef Joe has been immersed in great kitchen culture and Michelin star food his whole career, and I think Jose would be the first to agree that his ceiling isn’t even visible from here.”

No sweet ending for Sweethaus

Sweethaus, the sole remaining cupcakery in Charlottesville, unceremoniously closed its doors days before Christmas with no explanation. The store’s other two locations, in Ivy and Brooklyn, appear to have closed as well.

A little nookie

The Nook is under new management, sort of, after owner Stu Rifkin sold his share of the business to longtime co-owner Gina Wood.

More downtown pastries on the way

Looks like MarieBette’s satellite shop on Water Street should be opened by the end of the month. Co-owner Jason Becton said they fell behind due to some contractor issues, but are hoping for a late-January launch.

Categories
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

Jose De Brito joins kitchen staff at The Inn at Little Washington

Jose De Brito, formerly chef at The Alley Light, will join the kitchen staff at The Inn at Little Washington. Photo by Rammelkamp Foto

James Beard semi-finalist Jose De Brito quietly left his post as executive chef at The Alley Light last week, and rumors have been flying about what his next move is. Well, the cat’s out of the bag.

“The Inn at Little Washington is pleased to welcome Charlottesville’s Jose De Brito to its kitchen brigade,” says The Inn at Little Washington PR Director Rachel Hayden. “He will join Chef Patrick O’Connell and his team of 36 chefs in The Inn’s five-star kitchen this spring. We are all looking forward to working together and to having Jose on our team.”

O’Connell and his restaurant at The Inn at Little Washington—which opened in a former garage in 1978—have received international accolades for years, including restaurant of the year from the James Beard Foundation in 1993.

As for The Alley Light, founder and co-owner Will Richey says he isn’t worried about the transition. Former sous chef Robin McDaniel has taken over the kitchen as chef/co-owner, and Richey is confident she will uphold the reputation that De Brito built.

“She will continue in the method of classical French cuisine that Jose began, staying true to the aesthetics that have rounded out the experience of The Alley Light,” he says. “Robin was already leading the kitchen at The Alley Light two nights a week and for many months during the last few years when Jose would travel, and she is eager to lead our kitchen with her own personal touch.”