Chef Hartman works the smoker.
PHOTO COURTESY BBQ EXCHANGE

Craig Hartman, well-known as the executive chef at Fossett’s, the AAA Four Diamond award-winning restaurant at Keswick Hall, not to mention an early adopter and star of the Hook’s Restaurant Week, opened a new restaurant in Gordonsville with his wife, Donna, on February 16. But don’t worry, he won’t be leaving Fossett’s, as Ms. Hartman is handling the day-to-day operations of the new place on Martinsburg Avenue in the old Rudy’s Hardware space.

While a chef of Hartman’s stature, which began when he became, at age 21, the head chef of the country club at North Carolina’s exclusive Pinehurst Resort, might be expected to open a fancy French-style bistro, or a high-end steak house, Hartman’s choice came as a surprise to Dish: an old school BBQ joint called the The Barbeque Exchange. Yup, it appears the chef has a soft spot for the art of slow-cooked meat.

“You know, it’s actually easier to grill a steak and serve it up with some nice vegetables than it is to serve one good pork BBQ sandwich,” says Hartman, who describes getting the temperature right, injecting the meat, enduring all that smoke, monitoring the cooking— not to mention all the pulling and chopping over the 48-hour process. “A true BBQ restaurant is a labor of love,” he says. (more)

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“I think it’s important to keep it simple,” says Marco & Luca’s Dragana Katalina-Sun.
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

Looks like UVA students are finally discovering Marco & Luca dumplings now that they’ve opened a new shop on Elliewood Avenue where Sublime All-Natural Food & Juice Bar used to be. Indeed, the student writer of a Cav Daily review earlier this month hadn’t managed to make it down to Marco & Luca’s on the Downtown Mall in three years, but now that it’s right across the street, the popular dumplingery is discovered as if for the very first time. So was the use of cash.

“A small sign quickly caught my attention: “only cash and check orders accepted.” Panic engulfed me,” writes Hunter Terry. “Having trusted my debit card during the entirety of my adult life and hardly remembering what cash looks like, I was rightly flustered.”

Fortunately, you don’t need much of it. Three bucks buys you an order of dumplings, three-fifty an order of noodles. Indeed, the appeal of these doughy, pan-fried Downtown delicacies have been as much about the price as the taste.

Of course, its hard to believe that Marco & Luca owners, husband and wife team Dragana Katalina-Sun and Sun Da, hadn’t already opened a (more)

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The Java Depot in Nellyford, which happens to be a restored train depot, opened in June last year.
PHOTO COURTESY JAVA DEPOT

In our yearly round-up of openings and closings, Dish missed one opening on the road to Wintergreen—the Java Depot and Café. As co-owner Nancy Kern, who runs the place with her husband, Richard Boyd, wants to remind folks, the Java Depot opened in June last year.

“Our place is unique with terrific coffee and homemade food,” says Kern.

Boyd, an architect, actually designed the Java Depot in 2007 using the old Arrington railroad depot, which was built in 1870 to replace the old depot which was burned down during the Civil War. Before being dismantled and moved to its current location along Route 151 in Beach Grove, it housed the Arrington Post Office from 1961 to 1982. Originally, the restored building opened as Sparrow’s Cafe a little over a year ago, but that business only lasted about five months. Kern, a lawyer, says she and Boyd, who only live about a mile away, kept driving by the building and were struck with the restaurant bug.

“We decided I could keep my job to put my salary into the Depot and work mornings and weekends,” says Kern. “Richard is in charge of the kitchen, me the barista and coffee. It’s so much fun. It’s not lucrative yet, but there is no better way to spend my salary.”

Kern says Nellysford needed a coffee shop, and that she loves the idea of making people happy with homemade food and coffee.

“I’m a coffee snob,” admits Kern, “so I shopped around and settled on Shenandoah Joe roasters— more expensive but better than others I found.”

The Depot is opened for breakfast and lunch from 6:30am to 2:30pm every day except Tuesdays, and on Friday nights from 6pm to 9pm they feature live music, dessert, and light dinner fare.

As for the food, look for treats like roasted tomato soup, butternut squash and shrimp bisque, smoked turkey and bacon club, homemade applesauce, sweet potato pancakes, and chocolate almond pie.

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The Southern’s Andy Gems and Lauren McRaven hope the music hall will also be known for its cuisine.
FILE PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

Back in 2005, when Lauren McRaven opened The Flat on Water Street, she quipped that she might not have opened the little crêperie if she’d known beforehand how difficult it was going to be. Nearly fours years later, with The Flat having become a Water Street landmark, crepe lovers can be glad that no one warned her. Fans of new music venue The Southern should be glad as well, as McRaven is behind the “Café” in the joint’s tag line “Café and Music Hall.” Initially, McRaven was hired by the owners of Gravity Lounge to head up the kitchen, but when Gravity closed, she took over the space with Andy Gems.

Those early worries about taking on too much seem to have subsided for McRaven, as she says the new gig at The Southern has been a “step up” from The Flat, which she’ll continue to run. “It’s been nice to branch out a little bit,” she says.

McRaven also has ambitions to turn The Southern’s café into a real Downtown restaurant destination, not just a food option during music shows. As she points out, in addition to a late night show menu for concert goers, folks can also eat at the café without buying a ticket to a show. The café is open from 11am to 3pm Tuesday through Sunday, with a brunch on Saturday and Sunday that features live music.

The biggest challenge now, says McRaven, (more)

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Camino opened recently on Market Street, serving up locally-sourced Mediterranean cuisine.
PHOTO COURTESY SEAN THOMAS

Camino, which took over the Il Cani Pazzo space next to the Vinegar Hill Theater on Market Street, has, to borrow from its Spanish meaning, traversed the “long road” from concept to reality, quietly opening last week. While they are still waiting on their ABC license, co-owner Sean Thomas says the Mediterranean-inspired restaurant is now serving locally-sourced dinner cuisine Wednesday through Sunday.

Thomas, an aspiring filmmaker who planned on doing a documentary on the local food movement called Dirt to Dinner, says he decided to bring some of the same ideas for his film to a real live restaurant venture, serving up locally-sourced food inspired by the rustic style of cooking in Southern France, Italy, and Spain. At first, he says, he planned on operating a food cart on the Downtown Mall, but when he tossed the idea around with (more)

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