Tag: The Nook

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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.

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Living

Getting the scoop on a new ice cream trend

J-Petal dishes out rolled ice cream in familiar flavors such as vanilla and chocolate, plus more adventurous options including green tea and Thai tea. Photos by Tom McGovern

By Sam Padgett

A new restaurant—J-Petal—has rolled into Barracks Road Shopping Center. And although the eatery offers both savory and sweet Japanese rice flour crêpes, and even serves drinks such as green tea and mojitos in a light bulb, its flashiest menu item is surely the Thai rolled ice cream.

Rolled ice cream is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: Liquid ice cream is poured onto a frozen platter and then scraped into cylindrical rolls. Think of a mix between Cold Stone Creamery and Benihana.

For anyone who watches elaborate dessert-making sessions online, J-Petal will feel like a dream come true, because it’s just as fun to watch your dessert being made as it is to eat it. Besides some of their adventurous flavors like lychee-infused Thai tea and green tea, most of J-Petal’s ice cream flavors can be found in many other shops (albeit in scoop form). After choosing your ice cream base you can select one of eight premade creations such as Monkey Business with bananas and Nutella, or add your own toppings.

Manager James Hardwick takes pride in the visual qualities of the food.

“When we see people taking photos of their ice cream, completely untouched, we know we’ve made something good,” he says.

We’re Tibetan on this one

In the location of the short-lived Breakfast House on Fontaine Avenue, a new “house” has opened up: The Druknya House. Owned by Gyaltsen Druknya (who also owns Salon Druknya on the Downtown Mall), the restaurant serves authentic Tibetan food such as momo, a traditional dumpling. “Whatever my mom cooks, we will serve the same way,” Gyaltsen says. He opened the restaurant to meet what he says is a demand for Tibetan food, and, so far, customers have proved he was right in doing so: The grand opening “was crazy” he says, smiling and shaking his head.

Parting ways

Tomas Rahal, longtime chef of the Belmont tapas eatery Mas, is no longer with the restaurant, according to several sources. Stay tuned for more details.

The Nook is back

After closing down for a few kitchen renovations (and worrying Downtown Mall brunch-lovers with its papered windows), The Nook has reopened. Though some new appliances and a few new menu options have been added, the restaurant’s ambience remains untouched.

Cornering the market

Armando’s has become a new late-night hub on the Corner. Located on 14th Street across from Revolutionary Soup, the restaurant serves Mexican food and drinks until 2am, and Armando Placencia is excited to be open. “I have been driving down the Corner for a while now looking for a space,” he says. “I really like the Corner. I love the energy, and I wanted to give everyone a nice place to relax and enjoy good food.”

More to love

There’s a new member in the Marco & Luca dynasty: Beijing Station offers the same great dumplings alongside an extended menu of Chinese food for visitors to the Corner, and the small storefront on 14th Street evokes the feeling of a hole-in-the-wall restaurant nestled deep in a big city.

Wine win

Ankida Ridge Vineyards’ pinot noir has been selected by Wine Business Monthly as one of the top 10 hot brands of 2017. Ankida Ridge is the only East Coast winery that made the list, and Christine Vrooman, Ankida’s co-owner and vineyard manager, says she is “excited to show the world that Virginia is indeed capable of producing world-class wines.”

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Living

Old Mill Room gets modern makeover

The wooden beams and hardwood floors will remain, but the rest of the Old Mill Room will undergo a redesign complete with new seating and a glass-backed bar between the restaurant and bistro spaces. Rendering courtesy Boar's Head Inn

By Erin O’Hare and Sam Padgett

After a special dinner service on Wednesday, January 31, the Old Mill Room at the Boar’s Head Inn will close for a major renovation, the first since the restaurant opened in 1965.

The old wooden beams and hardwood floors will remain, says Boar’s Head Resort marketing and communications manager Joe Hanning, but the rest of the space will undergo a redesign, complete with new seating and a modern atmosphere inspired by the existing Old Mill Room, says Hanning. New design elements will include a glass-backed bar between the current restaurant and bistro spaces.

Renovations will begin February 1 and should wrap up in September of this year, says Hanning, but guests at the inn won’t be without an on-site restaurant: There are two other recently renovated places to eat, Racquet’s Restaurant inside the fitness club, and the Birdwood Grill near the golf course. And while the new restaurant will look a bit different, the revised menu “won’t be too far-fetched from what it is now,” Hanning says—it’ll still be fine dining.

Executive chef Dale Ford, who has been with the Boar’s Head Inn since December 2016, has planned a special farewell dinner, Feast of Five Forks, for January 31 (tickets are $95 and can be purchased online). The Old Mill Room has been “the grand dame of dining rooms in Charlottesville” for decades, says Ford, and with this prix-fixe dinner, he wanted to pay homage to the restaurant’s history. Ford and other resort staff gathered old Old Mill Room menus, including the very first menu from 1965, and researched how various dishes would have been served at the time. Ford, who grew up on the Florida/Georgia coast, says he’s especially excited about cooking a stuffed prawn dish that was a menu staple for almost a decade.

Big changes at Bang!

Travis Burgess is the new head chef at Bang!, but he’s no stranger to the Asian tapas restaurant: He started working there 10 years ago, when he was 14, washing dishes.

And if his last name sounds familiar, that’s because Travis is the son of Bang! co-owner Tim Burgess.

Travis Burgess. Photo by Eze Amos

Travis took over the kitchen at Bang! earlier this month, and he’s changed about half the menu, which is still Asian tapas, still priced between $4 and $14 per small plate, and still heavy on the veggies. He’s kept longtime Bang! favorites like the kale tortellini and the goat cheese dumplings, and replaced some less-ordered dishes with new ones, including carrots cooked in a cast-iron pan and topped with cashew cream sauce and nori seasoning and an egg noodle and charred eggplant plate. There’s also a dish that Tim thought up: a vegan pastrami-style sandwich made with beets and turmeric sauerkraut.

Travis, who cooked at Trummer’s On Main in Clifton before moving to Charleston, South Carolina, to cook at upscale bistro-style Southern food restaurant Fig, most recently worked as a bread baker at Butcher & Bee in Charleston. And in his quest to incorporate bread into an Asian menu, he’s introduced three kinds of steam buns to Bang!: fried chicken, beef shoulder and king oyster mushroom with broccoli kimchi.

Eater’s digest

Tilman’s, the wine-and-cheese specialty shop on the Downtown Mall, will begin a series of weekly tasting events that will run through March. The first in the series, a wine-and-cheese pairing, costs $30 (paid in advance), and will take place at the shop at 6:30pm on Wednesday, January 24. Tilman’s co-owner Derek Mansfield says future tastings will include a wine-and-chocolate and cider-and-cheese pairing, among others.

According to a note posted on the door of The Nook, the diner is closed until February. And windows are brown-papered up, so we can’t see what’s going on in there.

On Tuesday, January 30, wine journalist, critic and teacher Steven Spurrier, who helped legitimize the California wine scene in the 1970s, will host a five-course wine dinner at Veritas Vineyard & Winery in Afton. Each course will be paired with a Spurrier-selected wine, and he plans to share plenty of stories from his 50 years in the industry. Tickets for the dinner are $165, and can be purchased at the Virginia Wine Academy’s website.