Tag: new restaurant

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Knife & Fork Magazines

New shop brings Crozet all things seafood

File photo.

Who says that living among the beautiful mountains means you can’t enjoy all the culinary delights of the sea: fresh shrimp, lobster, halibut, salmon, and tuna? Certainly not Jayson Johnson, and he opened Crozet Seafood Supply to prove it.

As soon as you walk into the store in the Clover Lawn Shopping Center across from Harris Teeter, that clean briny smell lets you know this is the real thing. On your left is the glass case of filets, laid out on ice surrounded by fresh kale. Next to that is the display of raw and cooked shellfish and the freshly prepared seafood salads, with a smiling staffer ready to offer you an Old Bay-infused Ritz cracker and a sample; try a favorite, the lobster pasta salad with sun-dried tomato and dill. And among the shelves of seafood paraphernalia—sauces, spices, rubs, marinades, crackers, pasta, rice—Johnson is strolling, ready with information and advice. 

Johnson moved to Crozet 12 years ago to work as a neonatal respiratory therapist at UVA. After the stressful times going through COVID at the hospital, he says, “I thought about what I’d want to do for the next 15 years—it seemed a good time to make a change.” 

A childhood friend, Joe Skinner, owns Bon Air Seafood in Richmond, and Johnson, a self-described foodie who had owned several small businesses in the past, decided to dive in with Skinner as partner. “I wanted [to start] something local, so I could live and work here, and I wanted to offer the community something sustainable.”

Crozet Seafood Supply was launched in March 2024, and Johnson says the response has been strong. On the Wednesday morning that I visit (“usually a slow time”), traffic is steady. Several customers are clearly regulars. A new customer has stopped by because he’s looking for calamari—“If we don’t have what you’re looking for, let us know—we’ll try to get it for you,” says Johnson. Then a couple comes in, first-timers taking a look. It helps that Johnson is active on social media, promoting the arrival of seasonal delicacies like softshell crabs, as well as the specials on goodies ranging from homemade Andalusian gazpacho to the ever-popular Bon Air cheese balls featuring shrimp or crab. 

Both freshness and environmental impact are key for Johnson. “Our prices are a little higher,” he says, “but that’s because we want to offer the best quality and the most sustainable varieties.” Everything is delivered by refrigerated truck straight from the docks at Hampton or in Maryland; that way, Johnson says, he can offer fresh catch from an area ranging from Iceland to Florida. The fresh Scottish salmon is flown into Hampton—it’s farm-raised, he says, but the “farm” is in a loch open to the ocean, so the fish are eating what they would in the wild. There are also frozen options: the Chilean sea bass, for example, is flash-frozen as soon as it’s caught.

Johnson has also developed local partnerships. The store’s lobster rolls (“it’s our most popular offering, hot or cold”) and other sandwiches are served on bread from Praha Bohemian Bakery & Cafe in Crozet, and the supplemental foods, sauces, and rubs are from small specialty companies like Stonewall Kitchen, Firehook Bakery, and Lynchburg’s Scratch Pasta. And since the store just got its ABC license, Johnson will be offering a range of local beverages as well.

An added asset for the cooking-challenged: Right by the door is a display case of recipe cards for the fish and shellfish on offer, including complete instructions and a list of ingredients, all of which are available right there in the store. Johnson says their market research shows “people like seafood, but they are worried about cooking it properly.” So, one less thing to worry about!

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Knife & Fork Magazines

Sbrocco’s delights MarieBette spinoff offers traditional take on donuts

Photo: Tristan Williams

Donuts have been on a certain trajectory for the last two decades: bigger, more toppings, more creativity—an arms race of candy, cookies, and fried pork.

After several years working with semi-traditionalists Jason Becton and Patrick Evans at MarieBette Café & Bakery, Melissa Sbrocco is going in a different direction. When she opens her namesake donut shop the second week of September (hopefully), dough nuts can expect to find a rotating lineup of classics: glazed, jelly-filled, chocolate iced, plain cake, chocolate iced cake.

“Jason is from New Jersey, and I grew up going to the Jersey Shore,” Sbrocco says. “We’re used to strip mall donut shops where you grab and go, kind of similar to a Dunkin’. That’s the concept.”

Sbrocco’s relationship with Becton and Evans began in 2020, when her temporary move to Charlottesville stretched long-term. A real estate agent before the move, Sbrocco’s plan was to stay until the pandemic ended, then go back to her life. But she and her husband fell in love with the town, and she found her way into baking, a passion project she’d always wanted to cultivate, via a job at MarieBette.

After four years together, Sbrocco, Becton, and Evans will partner up for Sbrocco’s Donuts & Espresso. Sbrocco will lean on her former bosses for consulting, she says, as well as for the brioche recipe they’ve developed at MarieBette. “We sometimes take the basic brioche dough scraps and fry them up,” Sbrocco says. “You can call any fried dough in a circle a donut.”

As the three partners prepare the new Sbrocco’s space on Maury Avenue in the former Anna’s Pizza spot, they’re also heavily involved in recipe development. Sbrocco’s favorite so far? Another traditional offering, the apple fritter. For that crispy hunk of nooks and crannies, Sbrocco uses a sturdier dough than the standard brioche base—kind of like a milk bread, she says.

A baker at heart, Sbrocco typically favors cake over yeast donuts; she says her 1,500-square-foot, eight- to 10-seat breakfast counter will always have two non-leavened crullers on hand. She and her partners have also experimented with a potato donut, a nod to Charlottesville’s spuddy pastry past.

As for coffee, Sbrocco hopes folks enjoy it the way she does. “We’ll have full espresso drinks,” she says. “But the classic is you have a donut and you have your drip.”

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Living

Shining bright: A first look at Little Star, the new darling of Charlottesville’s restaurant scene

The comfy booths, long banquette, and open wood-fired hearth transform a former auto-service garage into a warm, inviting dining room. Photo: John Robinson

A rosy glow shone through windows high on the façade of the former service station. As my dining companion and I approached the building, the oaky smoke aroma grew stronger. We turned the corner onto West Main Street and the source of both the light and the smoke revealed itself through tall walls of glass—big sliding doors that once enclosed car-service bays.

Little Star—the Charlottesville restaurant that people were buzzing about even before it opened nine weeks ago—creates atmosphere even from a distance. And after the frosted-glass front door swung open, a sense of warmth and comfort greeted us like a hug from an old friend.

So it began, my first dining experience in Charlottesville meant to produce a review. Although I relocated to the area less than two years ago, I’m familiar with the city’s restaurant scene, having visited for more than 20 years to spend time with my sister, a UVA professor. I’m also experienced at writing about food, which has been a passion of mine since I was a kid, planting and tending the family vegetable garden in suburban New Jersey. As a teenager and throughout my college years, I worked in restaurants and catering.

When I became a writer, I covered food for daily and weekly newspapers, including the late, great Boston Phoenix, and magazines, including Food & Wine and the industry publication Plate. Now, I edit the Living section here at C-VILLE Weekly, along with magazines like Knife & Fork, and reviews feel like a natural fit. I believe a restaurant critic can and should be an important part of the local food culture. His or her role is to explore, explain, and ultimately elevate the art and craft of cooking and serving food.

That’s exactly what Little Star is doing for Charlottesville. Executive chef Ryan Collins arrived at the restaurant by way of Madison’s Early Mountain Vineyards, where he landed in 2016 and created a menu of small plates and sandwiches made with local ingredients. For Collins, Early Mountain was a waypoint between Charlottesville and Washington, D.C., where for eight years he was protégé of José Andrés, a Spanish-American and one of the more influential and acclaimed chefs in the world. Collins spent three of those eight years in the kitchen at Oyamel, where he learned to love Mexican cuisine. In Charlottesville, Collins teamed up with Oakhart Social’s Ben Clore and Tristan Wraight, whom Collins had met while at Early Mountain, to open Little Star. It is here that Collins expresses chef Andrés’ influences, blending Spanish and Mexican flavors.

After my dining companion and I objected to being seated at a table near the foyer and bar, the host graciously led us through the dining room to the long row of tall tables and a banquette along the east wall. The high perch provided a view, to the right, of the chefs preparing food in front of the blazing wood-fired oven, and to the left, of West Main Street through the big glass doors. On a Tuesday night, the room was packed and humming with conversation; old-school hip-hop provided a faint backdrop.

We started with cocktails. I thought I had heard incorrectly when the bar manager said the margarita ($16) would be served with the glass’ rim dusted with salt, red pepper, and smoked, ground gusano, a grub found in the roots of agave. It sounded gross, but tasted rich and earthy, playing off the brightness of the lime juice and the smokiness of the mescal. A second cocktail, the Star on Main ($14), was a twist on an old fashioned, with bourbon, Calvados, orange bitters, and a sweet touch of Lillet Blanc. Both drinks introduced complex, unexpected flavors, which apparently is Little Star’s mission.

The wait staff circulated throughout the room, stopping to attend to diners when necessary and then moving on. They knew when to be present and when to disappear, creating a relaxing rhythm to the evening. While our server said that most of the menu consisted of small plates, the portions turned out to be right-sized for the prices, from $8-24. (The outliers are a pork short rib and ribeye steak, at $70 and $100, respectively.) The price of a meal can escalate quickly, but two plates per person ended up being plenty of food.

Little Star encourages not only a leisurely pace (we spent two hours over dinner), but also the sharing of dishes. The bitterness of the charred endive ($10) was mellowed by a buttermilk-based dressing, and the dish gained complexity with a topping of poppy seeds, slivered scallions, chili, and bottarga, a salted, air-dried fish roe. Mojo sunchokes ($12) were served as a salad, with shaved apple, caramelized onion, and frisée. This was the only off note of the evening. The sunchokes—a sunflower tuber—were cooked to the point of mushiness, and traces of sand or soil in the dish brought an unwelcome grittiness.

Looking over the wine list, I was disappointed not to see more bottles in the $30-50 range. Out of 40 offerings, 31 were priced between $52 and $520.  We ordered by the glass and, on the general manager’s recommendation, went with a Spanish white, Gramona Gessami ($12 glass)—a blend of sauvignon blanc, muscat, and gewürztraminer that had the body and ample fruit to stand up to our next two dishes, beef tartare ($14) and pork loin ($18).

Little Star pushes the tartare definition, with grilled cactus, tartar sauce, radish, whole-grain mustard, and a heap of freshly grated parmesan on top. Is it a salad or a meat dish? It’s sort of both, and it’s outstanding and inventive. Sourced from Autumn Olive Farms, near Waynesboro, the pork loin was a generous cut, more than an inch thick, presented with crispy sweet potato and mole manchamanteles, a reduction of pork and chicken stock infused with a paste of dried and fresh fruits (raisins, plantains, charred pineapple), toasted nuts, herbs, and chilis. It was a resounding note to finish the meal.

But wait—dessert! A traditional end to a very untraditional meal (at least for Charlottesville) seemed like a good idea, so we went for the apple pie ($8). It was actually more of a strudel or galette, served with little apple spheres poached with cinnamon, apple caramel sauce, and ice cream richly flavored with vanilla bean.

All in all, Little Star is a significant addition to the local restaurant scene and, hopefully, will provide a strong culinary anchor on West Main as it becomes a dense commercial and residential corridor.

Vitals

Monday-Thursday 5-10pm, Friday-Saturday, 5-11pm. 420 W. Main St. 434-252-2502. littlestarrestaurant.com