Tag: MarieBette Cafe & Bakery

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Home sweet home: Cottage please!

Jason Becton and Patrick Evans, owners of the MarieBette Café & Bakery, reaffirmed their commitment to one another while moving to their new home with their daughters and two dogs. Photo: Rob Garland

Moving is stressful.

Moving to an old place that needs a gut renovation is more stressful.

Fighting with your spouse every step of the way? That’s a major test.

Jason Becton and Patrick Evans, owners of the beloved MarieBette Café & Bakery, were at odds about their new place. “Jason wanted nothing to do with the project in the beginning and definitely didn’t want to ever live in the house,” Evans says.

It was a rough start to a transition that would take a year to complete. “The house was in bad disrepair when we bought it, and it was hard for Jason to see the potential,” Evans continues. “It wasn’t until it was stripped down to the studs that he was able to start seeing that it could be a nice place—not to mention a home for our family.”

Becton and Evans persevered, taking great care to restore the charming cottage, inside and out. “We like to think we brought back the house’s original aesthetic and flow,” Evans says. “Also, when I first saw the house it had a red roof that had faded from its original color. But it was one of the things that caught my eye and I wanted to keep it. The triple gabled roof is also unique and I thought the color really brought attention to that feature.”

The partners in life and in business moved into the rehabbed place about three years ago, and they are glad to call it home—along with their daughters Marian, 8, and Betty, 6, and their dogs Seeta and Ponyo, rescues from Blue Ridge Greyhound Adoption.

Today, it’s a full house but a happy one, the product of a huge effort and an emotional journey. “It caused a few tense moments in our relationship, but in the end it worked out for the best,” Evans says. “We have learned to trust each others’ instincts and try our best to support each other, even if it’s not a decision we agree on.”

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Living

MarieBetter: Bakery adds downtown location

Petite MarieBette debuts downtown with a new co-owner, Will Darsie, and lovely baked goods. Photo: Corbett Smithson

MarieBette Café & Bakery spin-off Petite MarieBette is now open at 105 E. Water St., offering coffee and baked goods (of course!), as well as breakfast sandwiches and grab-and-go lunch. Longtime MarieBette employee Will Darsie co-owns the new spot, and will manage it. The son of a chef (mom) and a farmer (dad), Darsie moved from his native California to Charlottesville in 2015. He found work at MarieBette, starting as a busboy and rising to general manager. “I never had any intention of working in this industry, but now I can’t see myself doing anything else,” Darsie says.

Music to your mouth

Prime 109 has a new menu available Wednesday nights to accompany weekly live jazz. Guests can enjoy a more casual midweek bite, while the cooks get to create “experimental dishes that don’t necessarily fit the structure of the dining room,” Executive Chef Ian Redshaw says. In keeping with the improvisational theme, the menu changes weekly. Past offerings have included housemade pastrami banh mi and an “octo dog”—octopus poached in olive oil and served on a Parker House-style hot dog bun with shishito peppers, shallots, harissa, and cilantro. Music, from 6-9pm, is courtesy of jazz trio Adam Larrabee, Brian Caputo, and Randall Pharr.

Winning spirit

For the third year in a row, Lovingston’s Virginia Distillery Co. has taken home a top prize at the U.K.-based World Whiskies Awards. The distillery’s Port Cask Finished Virginia-Highland Whisky earned a medal for Best American Blended Malt, the same award it won in 2018. Aged in Virginia port-style wine barrels, the spirit blends American single-malt whiskey distilled on-site with single-malt whiskey from Scotland. In 2017, the distillery’s flagship Virginia-Highland Malt won Best American Single Malt.

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Living

Box’d Kitchen focuses on modern Mediterranean

Box’d Kitchen owner Curtis Woo says combining food styles, such as putting kimchi on pizza, comes naturally. Photo by Eze Amos

By Sam Padgett and Erin O’Hare
eatdrink@c-ville.com

Box’d Kitchen, a restaurant that recently opened at 909 W. Main St. in the same block as Benny Deluca’s and Asian Express, eludes a concise description: Its Yelp page claims it serves Mediterranean food, but the decor looks Asian. And its name is reminiscent of a pizza joint, yet its staple is meat or veggies served on top of basmati rice and salad. Box’d Kitchen chef and owner Curtis Woo originally started the business under the name Over the Rice, but the name seemed to imply that his food was Asian…which it’s not quite.

“I don’t like calling my food ‘fusion,’” Woo says. “I am always combining foods. I don’t think twice when I put kimchi on pizza—it’s just natural.”

Woo prefers to refer to his food as modern. Ultimately, Box’d Kitchen doesn’t fill any particular culinary niche…it’s out of the box, so to speak.

Uber hungry

UberEATS, an on-demand food-delivery app supported by the Uber ride-hailing platform, has arrived in Charlottesville. So far, Christian’s Pizza, Citizen Bowl Shop, The Juice Laundry, Revolutionary Soup, Fig Bistro and a few other local eateries have signed up to participate. How it will ultimately differ from food delivery services already in place, such as GrubHub, remains to be seen, but the UberEATS press release claims the aim is “to get people the food they want, delivered faster.”

Fat Tuesday

Because we all can’t get to New Orleans for Carnival celebrations, a few downtown restaurants are bringing the party to Charlottesville. Though Mardi Gras isn’t officially until February 13, spots like The Bebedero, The Whiskey Jar, Brasserie Saison, Escafé, Citizen Burger Bar, Hamiltons’ at First & Main, Jack Brown’s Beer & Burger Joint, Rapture, Iron Paffles & Coffee and Paradox Pastry, among others, are offering Cajun and Creole food and drink specials through Mardi Gras night when, starting at 6pm, the Elby Brass band will lead a parade through the Downtown Mall.

Sweet everythings

Over at MarieBette Café & Bakery on Rose Hill Drive, February is for hot-chocolate-lovers. Every day of the month, the spot known for its French pastries and artfully-stenciled boule loaves, will serve a different flavor of hot chocolate. That’s 28 different flavors total, among them salted caramel, hazelnut, white chocolate cardamom, pistachio, raspberry, Moroccan spice, peanut butter…and a Love Elixir for Valentine’s Day.

All the feels

Valentine’s Day has come early for all you Blue Moonies out there: Blue Moon Diner will host a pop-up dinner from 5 to 8pm on February 14 at the Snowing in Space Space Lab at 705 W. Main St. The limited menu of $10 dishes includes pork barbecue sliders on a buttermilk biscuit with two sunny-side-up quail eggs and potato salad; andouille and chicken jambalaya with a biscuit; the diner’s classic Hogwaller hash; and a veggie scramble with a biscuit. Honky-tonk hero Jim Waive will play music starting at 6pm. But wait, there’s more: Starting March 3, Snowing in Space will host a Blue Moon pop-up from 9am to 1pm on the first Saturday of every month.

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Living

The Bageladies zero in on expanded market

Although Janet Dob and Cynthia Viejo are expanding their wholesale Bake’mmm bagel business to more than 400 Kroger and Earth Fare stores, you’ll still be able to satisfy your bagelini cravings at the City Market. Staff photo

Not long after Janet Dob moved from Colorado to Free Union, Virginia, she received an unexpected email: “Are you the woman who made the bagels that my mom fed me every day before school?” it read.

Email was still a relatively novel thing in the late 1990s, and Dob was touched that this college student in Idaho was sitting in his dorm room, thinking about the bagels she had indeed made in her Colorado bakery in the 1980s and ’90s and sold all over the state before the business folded and she moved to Virginia. “This was the kicker,” she says. She knew she had to restart her bagel business.

Around that same time, Dob met and fell in love with Cynthia Viejo, and ever since, the two have built Bake’mmm Bagels into a thriving small business. The Bageladies, as they call themselves, have been a Charlottes-ville City Market favorite for more than a decade, and as of this week, they’re expanding their wholesale bagel operation into more than 370 Kroger stores and approximately 40 Earth Fare stores.

Bread has always been in Dob’s soul. At age 5, she started baking yeast breads with her Gram; by 7, she was making hot cross buns on her own (though her brothers used her inaugural batch as baseballs, she says, laughing). As an adult, she opened her own bakery, and while there started making bagels after coming across a formula in her grandma’s recipe box. There were no instructions, though, so Dob had to decipher the correct rising, boiling and baking method.

After a chatty customer kept her away from a pot of boiling bagels for a bit too long, Dob noticed that this particular batch of bagels was different—in a good way. Turns out, the extra boiling time changes the nature of the wheat starch, to where the bagels have 60 percent fewer sugar and zero wheat starch glucose compared with other bagels. Bake’mmms are also devoid of 13 allergens, including dairy, soy, eggs, tree nuts and peanuts.

Dob and Viejo regularly sell out of their bagelini sandwiches—especially the bacon, egg and cheese—at City Market, where they also sell five-bagel bags of most of their flavors (like the plain Big City Original, onion, cinnamon raisin and cranberry apple) that customers can take home and toast themselves. They know most of their customers by name and welcome new ones with big smiles and warm greetings. Dob works the griddle while Viejo takes orders and payments, handing out $1 coins as change (printing paper money isn’t economical, she’ll tell you) and sending people out into the market with a warm bagelini and a recitation of her mantra: “Enjoy this day! Peace and love.”

The Bageladies Cafe and Bake’mmm bagels is the realization of Dob’s dedication to her dream, Viejo says, adding that this business focused on bread is about love, community and support. And though they’re expanding wholesale into grocery stores all over the East Coast, Dob and Viejo promise more bagelinis for Charlottesville in the future, and not just at the City Market, which wraps up its season this month: There’s a Bageladies food truck in the works.

Order up

Now that Halloween is behind us, talk has already turned to the next sweets-laden holiday: Thanksgiving. We called local bakeries to see what they’re cooking up this year and, most importantly, when the last call will be.

Family Ties and Pies: Family Ties and Pies is offering both pumpkin and apple pies, as well as a special brown sugar pie this season. Thanksgiving orders should be placed by November 20, and pick-up is available at City Market each Saturday. Call 981-6989.

MarieBette Café and Bakery: If you’re after something beyond the traditional offerings, then MarieBette might have what you’re looking for. This Thanksgiving both a poached pear tarte and a sticky toffee pudding are on the menu. Orders should be placed 48 hours in advance. Call 529-6118.

Paradox Pastry: While custom orders should be placed by November 20, Paradox Pastry will offer an assortment of pecan, pumpkin and buttermilk pies till Thanksgiving at its downtown shop. Call 245-2253.

The Pie Chest: Inside The Pie Chest this holiday season will be a brown butter pumpkin pie, bourbon pecan pie, cinnamon apple crumble and more. Thanksgiving orders have already begun to pour in, and they will be taken by email (thepiechest@gmail.com) in the order they are received. Email at least 48 hours in advance.—Sam Padgett

Categories
Living

MarieBette expands its operations

MarieBette Café and Bakery’s new oven allows head baker Hilary Salmon and her staff to bake three times as many baguettes an hour. Photo courtesy of Natalie Jacobson.

MarieBette Café & Bakery has expanded its baking operations into a new building about a block away from the French café at 700 Rose Hill Dr. The satellite space has brand-new equipment, such as a gigantic four-deck oven that’s double the size of the one in the original bakery.

The bakery upgraded almost all its machinery to keep up with the oven, so the new space is home to gadgets galore.

“So basically, it triples our baking capacity,” says owner Patrick Evans of the expansion. The bakery upgraded almost all its machinery to keep up with the oven, so the new space is home to gadgets galore. There’s a bigger walk-in refrigerator, a larger mixer, a machine that specifically cuts and shapes rolls and a retarder/proofer that starts cold and heats up overnight, allowing pastries to go in the oven first thing in the morning. But the oven is the star of the show; instead of only being able to bake about 50 baguettes an hour, it can bake three times that many.

Evans says MarieBette will expand its offerings to include goodies for events such as weddings, plus different-sized breads and more rolls for restaurants. He also has more room to test new recipes, because the original bakery will continue regular operations.

“Everything there stays the same, and this has enabled us to explore new recipes and expand our wholesale; that was the main goal,” Evans says.

Cardamom closing

After a tumultuous ride since opening at the beginning of the year, Cardamom will close its doors in York Place June 30.

Owner Lu-Mei Chang says a new eatery will take over the space in July. Her Vietnamese restaurant has endured ups and downs, including offers to buy the space, and social media backlash for a pho pop-up menu, and Chang says this is the right time to hand the keys over. The new buyers had been eyeing the space since she opened, Chang says.

“It’s too big for me to operate,” she adds. “The timing was perfect.”

Even though the restaurant was not an official vegetarian or vegan restaurant, Chang received critical comments on social media for her decision to add meat to the menu after opening.

“This is no fun for me,” she says. “It’s time to go.”

Chang has no plans to open another restaurant in the near future, especially because the market is so competitive: “I might, but I don’t know. I don’t want to think about that now.” —Alexa Nash

Eater’s digest

Keep your eyes peeled for the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema opening at 5th Street Station in late July. It’s said to be 33,000 square feet of in-theater dining, drinks and upgraded seating, with one of the first Alamo Drafthouse Cinema premium large-format screens in the country.

On June 20, the Board of Architectural Review approved the building of a rooftop bar at Oakhart Social, located at 511 W. Main St. Owner Ben Clore says they plan to add a rooftop dining area, bar and additional kitchen. —Erin O’Hare

Categories
Living

Bakeries share their holiday treats

The buche de noels at Pearl’s Bake Shoppe depart from tradition with unique designs and customizable fillings. Photo by Tom McGovern

’Tis the season to gather around a table piled high with foods galore. And, thankfully, Charlottesville artisans are preparing plenty of specialty items for the holidays. Here is a sampling of seasonal treats you can find around town.

Albemarle Baking Company

Panettone, the much more popular Italian cousin of fruitcake, is available at Albemarle Baking Company from November through January. ABC makes a traditional panettone with raisins and candied oranges, and uses naturally fermented dough, farm fresh eggs and butter with no preservatives, which give it a rich texture. For many, holiday baking can bring back memories of simpler times, and for Gerry and Millie Newman, owners of Albemarle Baking Company, the panettone does just that. “We like to bake holiday favorites from around the world (including panettone from Italy and stollen from Germany) and share the histories and folklore behind those treats with our customers,” Gerry says.

For the Newmans, one of the best parts of holiday baking is hearing how customers have made panettone part of their own traditions: Some make French toast out of it or hollow it out and fill it with ice cream for a decadent treat.

MarieBette Café & Bakery

Stollen is a type of fruit bread made with candied and/or dried fruits that originated in Germany. At MarieBette, this holiday treat is a departure from tradition with a buttery and dense fruit bread rather than a dry and preserved loaf. They use brioche dough and dried fruit soaked in golden rum then sprinkle the loaf with powdered sugar.

Head baker Hilary Salmon adds a unique rich twist by filling the stollen with crystallized ginger, apricots, raisins, almonds and pockets of housemade marzipan. The hints of crystallized ginger and orange zest come through upon first bite and complement the creamy texture of the marzipan. “I love that it’s a childhood memory [Salmon’s mother is German],” Salmon says. “The spiciness of the crystallized ginger and the sweetness of the bread make for a sweet and spicy combination.”

Pearl’s Bake Shoppe

Buche de noels (also known as yule logs) are a holiday tradition for many, usually made from sponge cake and layered with icing. At Pearl’s Bake Shoppe, they create custom buche de noels for the holiday season. You can choose from a vanilla or chocolate base (the chocolate base is naturally gluten-free, but the vanilla can be made gluten-free as well), and from unique designs that include a birch tree or a vertical log. “We love making them because not only is it a great dessert, but it can also serve as a centerpiece for your holiday celebration,” says Laurie Blakely, co-owner and operator of Pearl’s. With the holidays around the corner, demand is high for this seasonal specialty, she says.

Arley Cakes

In celebration of her first year in business, Arley Arrington, owner of Arley Cakes, is making unique pies for the holiday season. Her spiked eggnog is a custard pie filled with holiday spices and booze—what could be better? Arrington also prides herself on adding unique visual elements to her pies. “This one has a decorative edge made of little pie-crust ‘gingerbread’ people. Spicy, cute and boozy,” she says. Her inspiration for the pie comes from her limitless childhood desire for eggnog. “Each year when I was a kid, once the temperatures dropped and the days got shorter, I’d always start searching for it in the grocery store—it was never too early for eggnog season,” she says.

The Pie Chest

The Pie Chest is known for its seasonal flavors, and this time of year is no exception. The peppermint crunch pie is a play on a truffle, with Callebaut dark chocolate, natural peppermint oil and crushed-up candy canes for layers of crunch. The filling is placed in a chocolate cookie crust and topped with a mint-infused whipped cream. “Nothing says winter quite like this pie,” says Rachel Pennington, owner of The Pie Chest. “The contrast of colors (white, red and black) and textures (fluffy, crunchy and smooth) make for the perfect slice of holiday pie.”