Nothing was cooking when things started smoking up this morning, say staffers who evacuated the restaurant.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

A mop head stored in a closet beside a hot water heater burns briefly this morning around 9:30am at Revolutionary Soup.

The fire is quickly put out, the damage minimal and the Charlottesville Fire Department ventilates the basement eatery.

The souperie will be open for lunch. And today’s special: blackened tilipia salad, according to owner Will Richey’s blog.

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Okay, hungry reporters are obviously more susceptible to restauranteurs enticing us with free food and wine.

With that disclosure, here’s what the Downtown Mall’s wine and champagne bar’s new chef Robin Wetherhorn is doing at Siips that will lure us back in when the tastings aren’t free: Lamb burgers, tuna with sesame seaweed salad, and stuffed strawberries (photo left) to die for.

More alluring: The Siips Stimulus Lunch for $5.95 starting October 1. Owner George Benford promises eight different items on the menu, including a pasta and a burger, Monday through Thursday.

Siips has more ideas to get us though tough times with good food, as well as drum up a little business during the slower midweek. The wine lover’s dinner October 12 serves up a Virginia-centric three-course meal with three Virginia wines for $24.95 per person. Tuesdays offer buy one entree, get the second one for $2, and Wednesdays a bottle of wine is 30 percent off. Could we have another strawberry?

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Paul Minnerly’s next stop? The Beer Zone.
PHOTO FROM THE BEER ZONE WEBSITE

You’re traveling to another world, a world not only of the senses, but of beer. To Frederick, Maryland, to be exact, on the inaugural run of Beer Zone Tours.

The beer junket was organized by Crozetian Paul Minnerly, who loves beer so much he grows hops in his backyard, and offers a private tour of Flying Dog Brewery in Frederick. The $75 ticket includes souvenirs, pizza, a bus ride with other hops fans and of course, beer tasting.

Minnerly dreams of other brewery tours, and has an August 22 “Brew Ridge” trail tour of Devil’s Backbone lined up,  fall-color tours of local breweries, and a Pennsylvania beer tour that will not include Budweiser, he notes.

The Flying Dog tour is Saturday, July 25, and rolls out at 8:50am from Beer Run and at 9:20am from Barracks Road Shopping Center in front of Greenberry’s. Tickets are available at Beer Run or by calling 434-963-9353.

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Rapture gets ahead of the smoke-free curve.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

Even before the General Assembly banned smoking in restaurants and bars effective December 1, longtime smokers’ paradise Rapture decided to pull the plug on puffing.

“We had made the decision before we heard about the legislation,” says co-owner Mike Rodi.

Last August, the restaurant went smoke-free at lunch. “We were losing business,” says Rodi. “We’d have maybe one smoking table, and people waiting for non-smoking. And we had a lot of smoke drift.”

In January, smoking in the bar and Club R2 was limited to between 11pm and 2am, and on June 15, smoking was fini at Rapture.

The restaurant has a new chef, new items on the menu, and the owners are ready to freshen up the decor, paint and upholstery. It seemed pointless to do that in a smoky environment, says Rodi.

He points out (more)

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Ummmm, pie.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

Coconut cream. French apple. Peanut butter. Chocolate chess. To leaf through Mrs. Rowe’s Little Book of Southern Pies is to salivate. Sating such desires used to require a 30-minute or so jaunt over to Staunton to Mrs. Rowe’s Restaurant and Bakery. The new book by Mollie Cox Bryan lets those so inclined create Mrs. Rowe’s confections at home.

Released June 1, the Little Book of Southern Pies has already made a New York Times list of cookbooks to watch, and on June 8, was reviewed by Publishers Weekly.

Bookworks in Staunton is holding a special event for the release of the book on Saturday, June 27 11am to 1 pm. 101 West Beverley Street , Staunton, Va. 540-887-0007.

Mrs. Rowe’s restaurants make about 60 pies a day, says Waynesboro resident Bryan, who wrote Mrs. Rowe’s Restaurant Cookbook in 2006. In the new book, published by Ten Speed Press, she assembles more than 50 pie recipes from the Pie Lady, the late Mildred Rowe. Detailed directions make pie-making look easy.

But for some of us, the crust is the most intimidating part of the pie process. “If crust is what’s stopping you from making pie,” advises Bryan, “use a frozen one.”

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Gina Wood recently opened the Yum Yum Shop on Dale Avenue.
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

We have The Nook to thank for the Yum Yum Shop, a new commercial bakery operating out of a house on Dale Avenue. Baker Gina Wood had been preparing desserts for the downtown eatery, but the busy kitchen space was beginning to cramp her style.

“The Nook is slammed all the time,” says Wood, “so I didn’t have much time or room to do my baking.”

Wood, who ran a restaurant at Rodes Farm Inn for many years, finally decided she needed her own space to better serve The Nook. Since she and her husband, Charles, a vet who owns the Old Dominion Animal Hospital on Preston Avenue, already owned a rental property on Dale Avenue, the location was a no-brainer. (more)

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Bosnian-born Nemanja Cetic and his family opened the Balkan Bakery Café on Water Street.
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

Refugees from the Balkans appear to love café culture, as evidenced by the gatherings Dish has often seen outside at Greenberry’s, where long discussions in the guttural mother tongue are held over cups of coffee and cigarettes. So it’s no surprise that we finally have a Balkan café, named appropriately enough the Balkan Bakery Café. The small space on West Water Street, beside Sidetracks Music, opened just two weeks ago, but visitors to the Charlottesville City Market have been familiar with the Cetic family’s pastries, pies, and breads for the last three years.

“Everyone knows us at the Market,” says Nemanja Cetic, 23, whose mother and father moved he and his sister here 10 years ago with the help of the local International Rescue Committee.

“We’re from Bosnia, but we lived in Croatia, Serbia, all over when the war started,” says Cetic, referring to the brutal conflict known as the Bosnian War (1992-1995), which claimed over 100,000 lives and created over a million refugees like the Cetics.

“I think we were like the third family that the IRC helped to re-locate here,” he said.

Most of what they serve are traditional Balkan creations, says Cetic, such as their Meat Pie (Burek) and Cevapcici, a kind of grilled minced meat sandwich, the recipes for which are hundreds of years old, he says. Their traditional baklava is also a favorite.

Another special treat is their traditional Bosnian coffee, prepared by boiling finely ground coffee (along with sugar if you like) in a small, pear-shaped pot, at the bottom of which the coffee dregs settle before it is poured unfiltered into small cups. It’s a simple method Dish has always thought of as Turkish coffee, but apparently the Bosnian method has variations that make it unique. Regardless, both methods yield a cup of coffee that is definitely not for the faint-hearted.

As Dish says good-bye and heads out the door, the fresh Burek warm in the brown paper bag between our fingers, we can’t help but imagine what the Cetics had been through, and marvel at how far they’d come to this little spot on Water Street.

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Last Call Dogs hopes to satisfy your post-partying cravings…well, at least some of them..
PHOTO FROM LAST CALL DOGS WEBSITE

Starting next weekend, expect to see a giant yellow truck going back and forth between the Corner and Downtown after 10pm, serving up hot-dogs, nachos, pretzels, Big Jim’s BBQ, and Slawski’s Sweet Sausage on the cheap to folks with the late munchies. The owners of said yellow hot-dog truck appear to enjoy anonymity, as their website has no contact information. All it says is: Thursday-Saturday, 10pm-2am. Downtown/Corner district, every Fridays After Five.

Apparently, the owners of Last Call Dogs are also aiming to be Charlottesville’s first Twitter and Facebook-centric business.

Indeed, Last Call Dogs Twitter page was the only place where Dish could find out anything about the big yellow truck with a hot-dog on the side. Apparently, they had a little trouble getting started–literally–as they went through three starters in the truck in one month. They also have 39 followers already, including 106.1 The Corner’s Brad Savage, and call themselves the “best mobile late-night food in Cville.” (more)

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When the new Harris Teeter in Crozet opens May 6, not only will Crozetites have a fancy new grocery store, they’ll have one of the greenest ones in the country. The national chain, which has 180 stores, decided to locate its first LEED certified store in Crozet. Over 30 percent of the construction materials were made within 500 miles of Crozet, 82 percent of the construction waste was recycled, and 50 percent of the wood used on the project came from sustainable forests. In addition to recycling centers in the lobby, the 42,000-square-foot store be lit with skylights, have environmentally friendly fridge and freezer systems, and be 25 percent more energy efficient than your average grocery store.

Photo by Jim Duncan

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Under new management: Andy Gems and Lauren McRaven take over the space formerly known as Gravity Lounge.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

The popular Gravity Lounge is gone, but the acoustic/indie-friendly space remains and will continue as a musical venue under the management of a duo who met working at Gravity last year. When they heard the space might be available, Andy Gems and Lauren McRaven jumped on it.

Gems also has worked at another defunct music venue, the Satellite Ballrooom, and McRaven is the proprietress of downtown creperie The Flat who last year planned a menu for Gravity.

“It just didn’t work out,” says McRaven, declining to reveal what cuisine will be offered at the space that was long run by Bill Baldwin. “It’s what can be done in a minimal kitchen.”

The new establishment will not be called Gravity Lounge. “That belongs to Bill,” explains Gems, and the partners say they are still working on a new name.

The other biggest difference: “Having a cafe and bar that’s open regular hours regardless of what’s going on in the venue,” says Gems. The space is actually two separate buildings and addresses. “We plan to use that more,” explains Gems. “We’ll close the space off so we can have a bar scene going on.”

While Gravity has always seemed like a spacious venue, its nooks and crannies held an abundance of odds and ends that were left when landlord Ludwig Kuttner changed the locks following two years of alleged nonpayment of rent capped by fire marshal safety violations.

Boxes now cram the space waiting for dispersal. Gems predicts a late June, early July opening.

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As Dish noticed recently, some serious renovations are underway on The Corner outside the old O’Neill’s Irish Pub space, which has been vacant for more than a year now. New owner Ryan Rooney says he’s not quite ready to reveal his new concept for the space, but the workers on the site we spoke to said they’re building a balcony on the front of the building. Rooney promises to spill the beans in “week or two” so stay tuned.

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Horse and Buggy Produce, the local food cooperative (CSA), kicked off it’s 2009 season today. So, if you want to get a hold of some local fruits, veggies, eggs, trout, chicken, beef, bison, pork or lamb, go ahead and register at www.horseandbuggyproduce.com or call 434-760-3652.

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“Everybody is upset that it’s gone,” says Scottsville resident Rhonda Snow. “It’s sad to people…when the Dew Drop Inn went away, Scottsville died.”

Snow, who has lived in Scottsville for the last 22 years, says that many folks in town are upset that the Dew Drop, made famous by The Walton’s TV show, has never been revived. Indeed, Dish has always wondered why someone hasn’t re-opened the Dew Drop Inn, given the name recognition. Instead, the owners of the building (who own other spaces on the main drag as well) have tried to open new places, including 330 Valley, which sports the old Dew Drop Inn sign on its wall.

A Scottsville fixture for more than 60 years, and a regularly mentioned locale on the 1970’s television show The Waltons (Jason had his first job playing piano at the Dew Drop), the Dew Drop went up for sale in 2005 but finally closed for good in August 2007. According to one previous owner, tourists visited the old bar from as far away as Europe, where– as they do here on the Hallmark Channel– episodes of The Waltons still air.

“It would bring the town back to life,” says Snow, who used to work at the old Dew Drop and now works at Donna’s Place. “There’s still stuff in that building that was there when the Walton’s went there.”

Right now the old Dew Drop Inn building is for sale for just $195,000. Any takers?

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Get ready Pantops. Karen Laetare’s Brix Terrace Café is bringing you some fine dining.
FILE PHOTO BY WILL WALKER

Considering how many people now live around the Pantops area, Dish has always found it surprising how little fine dining there is east of Free Bridge. While there’s plenty of fast food, other chains like Appleby’s and Topeka Steak House, and better-than-average standouts like Tip Top, Guadalajara, andSticks, the really aren’t any upscale dining experiences to be had.

Karen Laetare hopes to change that.

Two years ago, Laetare opened the Brix Terrace Café next to theHallmark store in the Pantops Shopping Plaza, where she began serving her Mediterranean/California-style food (bruschetta, paninis, antipasti platters), as well as her homemade Italian pastries, with remarkable success.

For eight years before that, she ran the Brix Market near Ashlawn, and was tagged last year by the folks at Monticello to run the café in their new $55 million, 42,000-sq.-ft. visitor’s center. But the ventures all have one thing in common:

“We’ve never done dinner before,” says Laetare, announcing her plans to start serving it at Brix Terrace Café from Wednesday to Saturday, complete with white linens and candles.

Laetare says she had hoped there would be more fine dining options around Pantops by now, considering all the development nearby, but it appears she got tired of waiting. (more)

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On Friday night last week, the doorman at the X Lounge, the chic bar/restaurant in the Glass Building just off the Downtown Mall, made a questionable call concerning a turban wearing Sikh student from UVA.

According to a story that first appeared in the Cavalier Daily, at around 1:30am, the Sikh student tried to join fellow members of UVA’s Indian Student Association at the restaurant for a nightcap, but was told by the doorman that he couldn’t go in “with that thing on.”

Apparently, the ISA’s president tried to reason with the X Lounge’s manager, explaining that it was a requirement of the student’s faith, but the manager stuck to the restaurant’s no head wear policy, a decision that X Lounge owner J.F. Legault now regrets.

Legault declined to make any comments for the record, preferring instead to address the issue in a prepared statement.

“Our most sincere apologies go out the individual, his companions and the entire community,” reads the statement. “The X Lounge has a “no head covering” policy and at times this policy has created difficult situations. In this case, there was a lack of common sense on our part and respect to one’s religion did not prevail.” (more)

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Keswick Vineyards owners Cindy and Al Schornberg hoist the 2009 Governor’s Cup for their 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon.

PHOTO FROM KW WEBSITE

At the Virginia Governor’s Cup wine competition this year, our own Keswick Vineyards took home top honors for its 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon, which was selected as Virginia’s best wine from a list of 250 entries. It was the second Governor’s Cup for Keswick winemaker, Stephen Barnard.

Keswick’s 2006 Heritage Estate Reserve also took home a gold medal, as did Barboursville Winery’s 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve, Jefferson Vineyards’ 2007 Petit Verdot, Veritas Vineyards’ 2008 Sauvignon Blanc Reserve, and Virginia Wineworks’ 2007 Cabernet Franc.

Barnard says he was “elated” to see red wines do so well in the competition, as Virginia has been known more as a white wine producing State, he says.

“The 2007 season was about as perfect a growing season as we could want and the fruit quality was fantastic, so all credit to our vineyard team,” says Barnard. “My job is easy then, just reflect in a bottle what the fruit naturally gave me. The exciting thing is that the wine is still so young and probably will get better with two or three years additional bottle aging.”

Governor’s Cup judge and local wine expert Richard Leahy appears to agree.

“It’s frankly too young now, will be worth trying at the beginning of winter in nine months, and should reach peak in three to five years,” he writes on his blog. “Excellent balance, very stylish and shows the potential for this grape in long, dry growing seasons in Virginia.” (more)

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After years spent recruiting chefs for Coran Capshaw’s restaurant group, Michael Keaveny (left) is finally returning to his roots and recruiting himself for his own restaurant, Tavola, which is scheduled to open in May in Downtown Belmont.
FILE PHOTO BY CHRISTINA BALL

As Dish reported last week, Crush wineshop owner Paul Coleman has sold his Belmont wine store to former manager of Coran Capshaw’s restaurant group, Michael Keaveny, who now says he has a name and a concept for a new restaurant in the space across from Bel Rio.

To be named Tavola, which mean “table” in Italian, the restaurant, Keaveny says, will be a place where Charlottesville residents can eat like an Italian, sharing local, seasonal cuisine and relishing in “one of life’s most basic needs around a table with family and friends.”

“I am creating a home away from home for myself and my family and hope to make it feel like that for our diners’ as well,” says Keaveny, who happens to be a Culinary Institute of America graduate with more than 27 years of cooking experience.

Keaveny says he sees Belmont as the perfect place for a family-friendly, neighborhood restaurant like Tavola, and hopes to become a fixture in Downtown Belmont along with the likes of Bel Rio, Mas, The Local, and La Taza.

Tavola will also maintain a wine store component with a wine list that will feature small batch, artisanal producers from all over the grape-growing map, with an emphasis on organic, biodynamic selections. The majority of the list will be priced between $20 and $50 with a discount on bottles patrons would like to bring home. Wine classes and pairing events will also be held on Monday nights.

Tavola anticipates a May opening, with Keaveny himself manning the burners of the small, yet efficient open kitchen serving “five-star cuisine with two-star prices.” No menu items over $19, he says.

Menu highlights include the spiedino di gamberi (pancetta-wrapped shrimp on a skewer over arugula, fresh mozzarella and tomato-basil vinaigrette); the insalata di finocchio (shaved fennel, blood oranges, oil-cured olives and ricotta salata); the pappardelle (handmade pasta with red wine and pork ragu, basil and pecorino romano); and pesce spada (swordfish over white bean puree with cippoline “agrodolce” and fried rosemary).

Keaveny also says that “passion and hospitality” will drive his search for his staff, who he will expect to treat everyone who visits like a VIP.

“We will remember your face, your birthday, and your favorite wine,” he says.

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