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Living

Milli Coffee Roasters founder dies at 34

Nick Leichtentritt, founder of Milli Coffee Roasters and Sicily Rose, died February 17 at the age of 34. Pursuing a passion for food and drink, Leichtentritt left a corporate job in 2012 to open the coffee shop, followed by his cannoli shop, Sicily Rose, in 2018. Both developed loyal followings, and Leichtentritt became a beloved part of the Charlottesville food community. “Nick spent time with so many of the great tastemakers in Charlottesville,” recalls Will Richey of Ten Course Hospitality. “He was one of them after all, and he was open to all types of perspectives and experiences in a way that many are not. So many of us will miss him terribly.”

Despite Leichtentritt’s passing, both Milli Coffee Roasters and Sicily Rose remain in operation. Leichtentritt is survived by his wife, Nicole Kistler Leichtentritt, and a 4-year-old-son, whom the community has rallied to support with a fund for his immediate and long-term needs. To contribute, see the GoFundMe page Jesse’s Bright Future. (As of 11am Friday, March 1, the campaign had raised $19,000 of its $30,000 goal.)

Reservation, please

The dining app Resy, recently launched in Charlottesville, is making it easier to book and manage reservations, area restaurateurs say. Once diners register, they can make and change reservations, receive text reminders, and provide profile information regarding allergies, favorite cocktails, special occasions, and more. “It’s an awesome new platform with great analytics for users on both sides,” says Zocalo owner Ivan Rekosh.

Hardywood lightens up

Anticipating the arrival of spring, Hardywood founders Eric McKay and Patrick Murtaugh are launching a spin-off brand called Suncrush, a fruit-infused sparkling brew. Crisp golden ale with a hint of green tea gets a dose of crushed fruit and natural flavors, like grapefruit, Southern peach, and black cherry. Low in alcohol, calories, and carbohydrates, the drinks target outdoor-sports enthusiasts. “I’m a ginger nut,” McKay says, “and am really looking forward to Ginger Lime Suncrush.”

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Living Uncategorized

Sister Act: Afghan refugee siblings to prepare pop-up dinner at Kitchen

Charlottesville chef Gabe Garcia sits at a table in the dimly lit dining room of Kitchen Catering & Events, which he co-owns and operates with his wife, Morgan, also a chef. It’s early evening, cold and drizzly outside, but the air inside is warm and redolent with the smell of a simmering savory soup.

Garcia, 42, explains that Kitchen will host a pop-up dinner on February 26 for Taste of Home, a non-profit started in early 2018 by then-UVA student Mayan Braude. It will be the organization’s third event showcasing home cooking by refugee chefs, who receive all proceeds. Garcia, who moved to the United States from Mexico about 20 years ago, and his wife kicked in use of their dining room and kitchen for free.

“As an immigrant myself, and in the current political climate, I thought it was the right thing to do,” he says.

As if on cue, Jamileh Amiri, 34, and Khadijah Hemmati, 33—sisters and Afghan refugees—step through the front door.

“Smells good in here,” Amiri says cheerfully.

“Feels good, too,” Hemmati says, shrugging off the cold.

Garcia greets the women with handshakes, and they all take seats at the table.

Though they offer few details of their lives in the Middle East, it is safe to say that Amiri and Hemmati undertook remarkable journeys to arrive where they are today. “We left home because we were in danger,” Amiri says. “Afghanistan is a very dangerous place, especially for women. That is why we decided to leave our country—to find a peaceful place for growing our family.”

Hemmati lives in a townhouse in Albemarle County with her five children, a third sister, and their mother. Amiri shares an apartment with her three children and husband. Those simple facts belie the epic story of Amiri and Hemmati’s 14-year separation and subsequent reunion in Charlottesville.

Hemmati was born in Afghanistan in 1984, after which her parents moved to Iran, where Amiri was born, in 1985. Hemmati married when she was 18 and returned with her husband to Afghanistan, within months of the post-9/11 U.S. invasion there. Amiri and her family made plans to immigrate to the United States. After three years, and by then with three children in tow, she succeeded, arriving in the U.S.—Rochester, New York, to be precise—in the fall of 2013.

“It was so cold,” says Amiri, hugging herself as if she could feel the frigid air.

Luckily, she connected through social media with a friend who’d previously immigrated to Charlottesville. “She told me, ‘It’s a small town, it’s nice, and it’s warm,’” Amiri recalls. She moved here immediately, living briefly with her friend before finding subsidized housing. Meanwhile, Hemmati was also trying to escape the conflict-stricken Middle East. For five years in a row beginning in 2011, she applied to immigrate via the U.S. State Department’s Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, commonly called the visa lottery. “Finally, we were winners!” says Hemmati.

In November 2016, the sisters were together once again.

Avid cooks accustomed to preparing food for large family gatherings, Amiri and Hemmati both landed jobs at UVA dining facilities, cooking three meals a day for about 2,000 people. In the spring of 2018, a volunteer with the International Rescue Committee introduced the women to the founders of the Taste of Home program, which had already held its first pop-up at The Southern Crescent, in Belmont.

Taste of Home tapped Amiri and Hemmati for Pop-Up #2, also at Southern Crescent. About 50 diners paid $25 apiece to attend the event, enabling the cooks to pay to study at Piedmont Virginia Community College, among other things. “Jamileh and Khadijah were so lovely to work with that we decided to do another dinner with them,” says Nima Said, 21, a senior studying foreign affairs at UVA and co-director of Taste of Home.

For Pop-Up #3, Garcia says he hopes to fill Kitchen’s 2,500-square-foot dining room, which seats up to 80 people.

“This is something we can definitely handle,” Hemmati says, shooting a glance at her sister and smiling.

Diners can expect chicken kabobs with saffron-infused rice; qabuli pulao, a rice-based dish with carrots and raisins; falafel; dolma, the Afghani version of the Greek dolmades; and for dessert, baklava and fereni, a pudding subtly flavored with honey and rose water.

There’s a lull in the conversation at the table. Hemmati raises her head and sniffs. “The spices smell familiar,” she says.

“Black bean and squash soup for tomorrow’s lunch,” Garcia says.

“Maybe we will come,” Amiri says. “This is a good place.”

Hungry yet?

Taste of Home Pop-Up #3 takes place at 7pm on Tuesday, February 26. Tickets ($20 each) are available through taste-of-home.org.

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Living

Into the cavern: At Luray, there are so many reasons to stay

Tourist trap: It’s such an ugly term. Of course there’s reason to beware of over-hyped destinations. But—especially with kids in tow—there’s also a certain enjoyment in surrendering, now and then, to the spectacle. I don’t know of anyplace in Virginia where that’s a truer statement than at Luray Caverns. The Caverns, as our guide on a recent tour explained, were discovered by three locals who deliberately set out to hunt for a cavern they could develop as a tourist attraction. That was back in 1878, and given that those discoverers didn’t manage to wrest a profit from their find, they’d probably be even more astonished to see what Luray looks like now.

My two girls and I made the drive up Route 340 to Luray with clear eyes. We knew this was not going to be a brush with an unspoiled wonder; the billboards alone (“Mother Nature’s Finest Interior Decorating”) make that obvious. Still, one look at the complex sprawling around the caverns parking lot told me that the good folks at Luray were going to do their best to keep our attention—and keep me spending cash—all the livelong day. Luray includes a garden maze, a ropes course, a collection of museums, and even an on-site gas station. Oh yeah, and a cavern. We rolled with it. After we bought our tickets—it felt a little like booking air travel—the girls, ages 5 and 8, asked to start in the garden maze.

I’d somehow made it this far in life without entering a maze of any kind, and assumed we’d soon become hopelessly lost, thirsty, and panicked. It didn’t happen, though: As I should have realized, the owners of tourist attractions don’t actually want the tourists to have a terrifying time. They’d sprinkled enough clues throughout the tall passageways to ensure that we could make it out—and they sprinkled us too, with cooling mist. We found our way to all four “goals” and then to the exit with only minor, enjoyable confusion.

On to the ropes course. Employees buckled us into harnesses and showed us how to maneuver them through a system of overhead rails as we tiptoed along narrow beams, rungs, and ropes about a gazillion feet in the air. Well, maybe not that high, but high enough to make me seriously nervous on my first couple of passes, as I gripped the sweaty hand of my wobbly 5-year-old. I admit it was a pretty cool moment when we both grew comfortable enough to let go of each other and she took off on her own. Her older sister, meanwhile, gallivanted fearlessly all over the course. We all felt elated when we finally descended.

After a picnic on the lawn, we got in line for a cavern tour. On a day of jarring juxtapositions, none is stranger than this: You’re inside a building, and then you go down some concrete steps and you’re standing in a cavern. The ceiling soars overhead, dripping with stalactites, and an enormous calcite formation, named for George Washington, stands on the floor before you.

Now, let me say that the tour itself at Luray, a mile and a quarter long, is not super-inspired. Our baby-faced, bored-sounding guide recited his script and little else. And I’m glad I wasn’t expecting a geology lesson for my kids, because they didn’t get one. Have I mentioned that Luray Caverns is geared toward tourists? We trudged along brick and concrete paths, obeyed the command not to touch the cave formations, and absorbed a steady stream of quasi-historical lore, all in a pack of 35 or so people.

But it’s hard to ruin a place like this. Luray is a large and astonishing feature of the earth, festooned with every kind of underground formation you could hope to see: stalactites, stalagmites, delicate drapery formations, still-as-glass pools, columns, and flowstone. Even if you ignore the official information, this is the kind of place that makes an impression: It’s a feast for the eyes and a different visual language than we’re used to above ground. The absorption and wonder of kids in such a setting is a good model for the rest of us.


It’s a feast for the eyes and a different visual language than we’re used to above ground.


After exiting the cavern, as you might guess, we were a bit spent. But still there was more—so much more to see! We made a weary attempt to appreciate the Toy Town Junction Museum, home of model trains and historical toys, skipped the Car and Carriage Caravan Museum, and briefly checked out the Luray Valley Museum, which is all about Shenandoah Valley history. All of it was worthwhile enough, but there’s only so much stimulation a family can take in one day.

We’d spent the day as lemmings, true, and the cynical grownup in me sneered a little at the manufactured hokiness of it all. But my kids saw no reason to turn up their noses. They were two very happy tourists.


If You Go

Luray Caverns is open daily 9am-6pm through October; winter hours are 9am-4pm. Tickets for the cavern and museums are $28 for adults and $15 for kids 6-12. The garden maze costs $9 for adults and $7 for kids 6-12. The ropes course is $11 if you’re 48 inches tall or more, $7 if you’re not. For more information, go to luraycaverns.com.

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Living

Garden of eatin’: Local entrepreneurs develop a new way of growing greens

Soon, you might not need a green thumb to farm continually fresh greens at home. For that matter, you might not need a garden, at least not in the traditional sense.

For that, you can thank Alexander Olesen and Graham Smith, two recent UVA graduates who have developed a series of hydroponic micro-farms that are already in use commercially here in Charlottesville.

Babylon Micro-Farms sprung from a challenge UVA professor Bevin Etienne posed in his social entrepreneurship class, in which students were asked to develop a product to help refugees, something with high impact and a low price tag. Something that people would be able to download an open-source design for and make on their own.

In the research process, Olesen says he got “very hooked” on the idea of hydroponics—a method of growing plants without soil—and how it has the potential to use significantly less water than conventional agriculture and grow crops twice as fast.

Olesen quickly realized that there was nothing available to the average consumer interested in trying this game-changing way of growing food. Hydroponics systems are largely limited to massive consumer operations, and worse still, inaccessible to people in developing countries and communities who could benefit greatly from such a product.

The initial micro-farm prototype—for which Olesen and Smith teamed up with Hack Cville—turned out to be low-tech and the size of a small car, and the entrepreneurs realized that if a community doesn’t have access to food, it’s not likely to have access to pH monitors, nutrients, and everything necessary to make the hydroponics system work, either. “Everything we’ve done since is figure out a way that we can make a platform that allows anyone to engage in hydroponic farming regardless of their background or expertise,” says Will Graham, Babylon Micro-Farms’ director of marketing and sales.

Olesen, who graduated this past spring, spent the summer with Darden School of Business’ iLab, refining the product and securing grants from the iLab and UVA Student Council’s Green Initiatives Funding Tomorrow program, as well as $600,000 from angel investors in order to grow the company from its two founding members to an eight-person operation with a Downtown Mall office. To better serve the customers the company has in mind, it has developed the technology to make the mini farms run themselves. “It’s plug-and-play,” says Graham—at least for the consumer.


“The farm grows crops from seed-to-harvest with no need for maintenance, bringing produce closer to…the consumer. Most of what you buy from grocery stores has been picked days ago and is leaching [nutrients], so you’re getting a more nutritious end-product this way.” – Will Graham


Babylon Micro-Farms provides pre-seeded trays to be placed into the farms, which are big, clear cabinets with four levels of shelving. Each shelf holds beds for seed trays, and each bed is lit from above with special bulbs that give crops a continually perfect sunny day. Once the pre-seeded trays are in the cabinet-farm, technology does the rest of the work.

“In this controlled environment, you’re giving [the crops] the concentrated nutrient profile they’d be taking from the ground, but in a solution form, and with optimized lighting” and more, says Graham. The conditions inside the cabinet are all monitored and regulated by the system, which assesses, among other things, the pH (acidity) of the water/nutrient solution, carbon dioxide levels, air temperature, and humidity, and adjusts accordingly, depending on what’s growing—micro-greens, leafy greens, herbs, edible flowers, fruits, or vegetables. The system will even stagger harvests so the crops ripen in waves, ensuring dozens of heads of lettuce won’t ripen at once, but a few at a time, just as they’d be eaten.

“The farm grows crops from seed-to-harvest with no need for maintenance,” says Graham, “bringing produce closer to the end goal, the consumer. Most of what you buy from grocery stores has been picked days ago and is leaching [nutrients], so you’re getting a more nutritious end-product this way.” Currently, there are a few Babylon Micro-Farms apparatuses installed in kitchens around town. There’s one at UVA’s O-Hill dining hall, and another at Three Notch’d brewery, where Executive Chef Patrick Carroll has been impressed with its output. “We love our micro farm from Babylon,” says Carroll of the unit, which is visible from most spots in the restaurant and brewery. “It always excites us to harvest creativity by truly growing local greens. It adds an extra wow factor as guests walk into the restaurant.”

Babylon Micro-Farms is also working on a self-sufficient hydroponic farm at Boar’s Head’s Trout House, one that will provide salad greens, herbs, peppers, and tomatoes, all “exclusive heirloom varieties from the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants” at Monticello, to help provide food for the resort, says Graham. They’ll be installing a micro farm in the new Cava location on Emmet Street in October as well.

All of this condensed growth in three short years is as impressive as the accelerated growth seen in Babylon Micro-Farms’ machines, says Olesen. But the company hasn’t forgotten its roots. Babylon Micro-Farms has teamed with Etienne’s climate resilience lab at UVA, working to develop concepts for low-cost and portable systems, such as a fold-out farm that collapses to the size of a rain barrel and can be sent to areas of food scarcity for disaster relief; places ravaged by increasingly disastrous hurricanes, for instance. They’ll test the system with UVA’s Morven Kitchen Garden as they work on pilot projects on Caribbean islands devastated by last year’s Hurricane Irma. And for the eager at-home farmer here in Charlottesville? Those systems could be available for order as soon as the end of this year, with a spring delivery, for an estimated cost of $3,500.

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Living

Another adios: La Taza closes its doors after 13 years in Belmont

La Taza owner Melissa Easter has recently struggled with a big decision: Should she close her restaurant of the past 13 years or expand? Ultimately she decided it was time for a lifestyle change, and she and her ex-husband, Jeff, sold the restaurant and building to new owners.

“I’ve been thinking about it for a while,” says Easter. “My daughter is having a baby in September and I was just ready.”

“The new owner is pretty cool” and seems to be embracing the area, says Easter, adding that the restaurant will likely become a breakfast, lunch, and dinner spot. “I’m still a Belmont neighbor, and the first thing I asked is ‘will there be coffee?’ I don’t think it’s going to change a lot but I think they want to do their own thing. They like that it’s a community seat, and I believe they’ll make it better,” says Easter. She adds that the new restaurant will likely take over the Cabinet Solutions space, next door to La Taza, as well, ultimately expanding the venue.

Gilie Garth, a server for the past two years, says she’ll forever be grateful for how LaTaza and Easter helped her get back on her feet when she was struggling.

“I was pretty devastated to hear it was closing because this place has a great deal of meaning to me. I’m a drug addict in recovery from addiction. I got clean a little over three years ago, and Melissa Easter, my employer and beloved friend, gave me the opportunity to work again as a server at the age of 47. It has enabled me to become financially independent and has been a huge boost to my self-esteem,” says Garth. “The people here, both employees and customers, are family to me. It’s going to be a great loss for the community and a huge personal loss to me.”

Garth plans to return to her nursing career by the end of the year, but employment at La Taza was a great stepping stone for her to get her life back together.

La Taza’s last day will be September 16, and Easter says the new owners plan to re-open October 1.


Let’s do lunch

While The Haven regularly provides meals to community members facing homelessness, they will once again also offer home-cooked meals in a weekly pop-up café every Wednesday from noon until 1:30pm, starting September 12. The three-course meals—there are always vegetarian and carnivore options—include a beverage and are available with a suggested donation of $10, which benefits The Haven.


Eat food, do good

Meals on Wheels of Charlottesville/Albemarle will hold its annual food and beverage tasting event, Taste This!, from 5:30-8:30pm, Tuesday, September 18, at the Boar’s Head Resort pavilion. The event is the primary fundraiser for the organization, which provides homebound neighbors with food and social contact, and will feature food from a cornucopia of local restaurants and food purveyors, including Chimm, Ivy Inn, Little Star, Junction, Oakhart Social, Orzo Kitchen & Wine Bar, Prime 109, Common House, PVCC Culinary School, Travinia Italian Kitchen, Vivace, and, of course, the Boar’s Head. There will also be cheese tastings from Caromont Farm and pastry snacks from Iron Paffles & Coffee and MarieBette Café & Bakery. And to drink? Beverages from Starr Hill Brewery, wine from Market Street Wine, cold brew and hot coffee from Grit Coffee. There will also be a cash bar available.

Jazz group Bob Bennetta & Friends will provide music, and there will be a silent auction as well. Tickets are $75 per person and can be purchased at cvilletastethis.com or by calling 293-4364.

Categories
Living

Raising the steaks: Downtown steakhouse is primed for launch

Prime 109, the much-anticipated local-farm-centered steakhouse located in the former Bank of America building on the Downtown Mall, opens this month after nearly two years of planning and design.

The restaurant is the brainchild of the Lampo Neapolitan Pizzeria team of Ian Redshaw, Loren Mendosa, Andrew Cole, Shelly Robb, and Mitchell Beerens, and it will showcase the cooking of Bill Scatena, formerly of Pippin Hill Farm & Vineyards, as chef de cuisine.


What’s the number?

Prime 109 takes its name from steakhouse slang for prime rib. When a steakhouse orders “prime 109” from a butcher, the butcher knows to send over roast-ready prime rib of beef. Ian Redshaw, executive chef at Prime 109, is especially excited for the restaurant’s namesake item, a Virginia-raised, 109-day dry-aged 109 steak.

Sharing center stage with Prime 109’s locally grown and produced food will be the interior Beaux-Arts décor of its 100-year-old neoclassical building, an architectural gem from a bygone era.


Redshaw, Prime 109’s executive chef, says the intent behind the restaurant is to feature the bounty of central Virginia’s food while operating in the most sustainable way possible.

“Creating a sustainable cooking community is really hard in Charlottesville because a lot of people outsource everything,” says Redshaw. “We’re trying to keep everything local as much as possible, from our beef all the way down the line, so it’s really to walk the walk of a local restaurant. With Virginia being such a great place to [raise] livestock, it fits hand in hand. Through the community we can vertically integrate everything we have. It creates a language everyone understands—we can tell a farmer ‘I need to talk to you about a cow we need 24 months from now’—and they like that!”

Redshaw adds that we here in Charlottesville are fortunate to have such amazing food grown and sold right in our proverbial (and sometimes literal) backyards.

“We’re trying to feature the bounty of the Shenandoah Valley. It’s such a big bread basket that people forget about it—but it’s some of the best vegetables and livestock around.”

Redshaw reassures Lampo fans currently fretting about the team redirecting its focus to this much larger venture: “Because of our management structure, it’ll just run as Lampo has run; you’ll see the familiar faces, Mitch and Loren will be there. A lot of the partners are pulling double duty to make sure it’s the same experience for our customers.” Cole will be Prime 109’s wine director and Beerens its pastry chef.

Prime 109’s options run the gamut from, well, steak, naturally, to a meatless Bolognese that Redshaw says is particularly delicious.

And, of course, there’s the steak so exciting, they named the entire restaurant after it, the prime 109, which Redshaw says is local pastured beef meticulously dry-aged and cooked to the customer’s liking.

He says they have a dry-aging facility at Seven Hills Food Co. in Lynchburg, a wholesaler of premium pastured Virginia family-farm-raised beef, whose mission is to connect local meat producers with local meat consumers.

“We have a lot of stuff going on in-house, but they do the majority of the processing there [at Seven Hills]—we’re bringing the beef in to them, and we teamed up with them as the livestock producer to help us out in this way.”

Sharing center stage with the locally grown and produced food will be the interior Beaux-Arts décor of the 100-year-old neoclassical building, an architectural gem from a bygone era. Two rows of Corinthian columns, which repeat the design and grandeur of the columns that front the building’s façade, grace the cavernous open space inside of the building, and support gilded coffered ceilings that invite your gaze. Banquettes flanking either side of the restaurant—decorated by local design company Jaid—are showcased by burnished maple floors reclaimed from a mid-19th-century building.

Just past the main dining area on the left is a butchering area and the main production part of the kitchen, where diners can sit at the chef’s table in front of the custom-built, wood-fired grill created by Corry Blanc of Blanc Creatives. Directly across from this is the bar, which will be headed up by Abraham Hawkins, formerly of the C&O.

The polished Carrara white tile flooring leads to a marble staircase that ascends to the mezzanine-level private dining space, which seats 40, overlooks the restaurant below, and lends an up-close look at the space’s gorgeous architectural flourishes.

Redshaw is thrilled to see the Prime 109 team’s dream of a truly local restaurant come to fruition.

“It’s been a huge undertaking with local artisans to bring everything in—from beef producers to blacksmiths to all of our plates are handmade in North Carolina. This collaboration with all local and regional artisans lets us show off what Virginia and the region has to offer.”

Categories
Living

LIVING Picks: Week of May 16-22

FAMILY
Family Bike Fest
Sunday, May 20

The whole family can enjoy a strider course, bicycle decorating station and bike-handling skill courses for riders of all ages. Blue Wheel Bicycles will provide free helmet and bike safety checks for participants. Free, 10am-2pm. IX Art Park, 522 Second St. 977-1870.

NONPROFIT
Wine and Roses
Saturday, May 19

This isn’t your garden-variety event, with the opportunity to sip local wines while the smell of Thomas Jefferson’s antique roses swirls through the air. Free, 10am-2pm. Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants, 1293 Tufton Farm. 984-9800.

HEALTH & WELLNESS
Superhero Fun Run
Friday, May 18

Costumes are encouraged at this family-friendly 2.5K run or walk. $20 per person with discounts for multiple family members, 6:30-8:30pm. Pen Park, 1400 Pen Park Rd. 970-3572.

FOOD & DRINK
Fried Chicken Festival
Saturday, May 19

Don’t be a chicken: Enter your best recipe in the fried chicken and pie contests for a chance to win a cash prize. If cooking isn’t your thing, you can hang in the wine garden or browse the wares from craft vendors. Free, 11am-5pm. Gordonsville Fire Company Fairgrounds, 301 E. Baker St., Gordonsville. (540) 832-1735.