Charlottesville Food (12 page)

C&O's old-fashioned cocktail.
Photo by Kevin Haney
.

Matt Rohdie and his children, Finn, Georgia and Lil, of Carpe Donut.
Photo by Casey Ireland
.

Sauvignon blanc grapes at Barboursville Vineyards.
Courtesy of Luca Paschina
.

A revision of Thomas Jefferson's vineyards at Monticello.
Photo by Tony Fischer for Thomas Jefferson, Horticulturist
.

Harvesting grapes at Trump Winery.
Courtesy of Kerry Woolard
.

A handful of hops at Starr Hill.
Photo by Kevin Haney
.

Empty bottles at Starr Hill Brewery in Crozet.
Photo by Kevin Haney
.

Mark Thompson, owner of Starr Hill, pouring a pint.
Photo by Kevin Haney
.

Bottles of cider waiting to be labeled on-site at Potter's Craft Cider.
Courtesy of Tim Edmond
.

Timbercreek Organics' piglets at eight weeks old.
Photo by Casey Ireland
.

A selection of Olli Salame.
Photo by Kevin Haney
.

Farmers' markets, gourmet grocery stores and CSAs are all wonderful tools for the home cook—assuming that the food-minded individual enjoys or is capable of whipping up meals. Charlottesville's chefs frequent the City Market on Saturday morning, swapping cooking tips and picking up the freshest of ingredients before sleepy college students and hungry toddler-toting parents arrive on the scene. They work through the Local Food Hub for bulk onions and contact foragers in Staunton for ramps and mushrooms. These are even more resourceful and curious than the Charlottesville home cook, eager to transform the top of each season's—if not each week's—produce and the finest of local agricultural products into feasts fit for a president.

Chapter 4

Charlottesville Dining

How Lowbrow Sustenance Becomes Highbrow Meals (or Vice Versa)

D
INING AT THE
F
ARM AND ON THE
F
IELD
: C
URRENT
T
RENDS IN
C
HARLOTTESVILLE
R
ESTAURANTS

As alluring as luscious, deep-purple plums and bundles of wiry scallions appear to the home cook at the City Market, seeing those items transformed on a clean white plate at a local restaurant is an arguably grander experience. Whether self-taught or trained at some of the most well-known culinary institutes in the world, chefs in Charlottesville truly know how to bring out the best in local ingredients. Weekly, if not daily, menu changes; prime seasonal ingredients; and personal relationships with farms and food producers characterize locavore-friendly spots in the area. Housed in old barns, tucked away in warehouse buildings or lofted up above the Downtown Mall, local-food restaurants in Charlottesville appear in all shapes, sizes and price points. Chicken tortilla soup, chock-full of the meaty shreds of birds from Timbercreek Organics, rings in at five dollars for an inexpensive lunch option at Revolutionary Soup; the same bird, dissembled and roasted at the Local, could cost a diner upward of twenty dollars. But the textures, smells and colors of local food as interpreted by a thoughtful chef at either diner or fine dining are worth a customer's consideration and dollars.

An increasingly visible character in pop culture and the culinary arts is the ardent locavore diner, one whose enthusiasm for local foodstuffs borders on the rabid. Viewers of
Portlandia
or
Saturday Night Live
are familiar with the customer so invested in the origin of a meal, he or she travels to the farm in order to see firsthand how the animal has lived and died. The character is an understandable one, as there is something seductive, if not addictive or necessary, about tracking visible connections between the fork and the farm. The humorous characterization of the inquisitive diner stems in part from a very real panic many Americans are beginning to experience: the anxiety of having no knowledge or understanding of the places, stories or even animals behind the meals we eat.