Plans for a new Creole restaurant in Belmont were quashed last week when the City Planning Commission denied Andrew Ewell and Hannah Pittard’s request to rezone their property at 814 Hinton Ave. from residential to commercial. The 4-2 vote came though the property is next door to Belmont Bar-B-Que and mere yards away from the other restaurants on Hinton Avenue, and it came though Ewell and Pittard offered three proffers: a buffer, a no-music venue stipulation, and a restaurant-only use permit. Many Belmont residents attended the meeting to complain about the noise, traffic and parking issues another commercial property might contribute, and Commissioner Genevieve Keller, who voted No, said that Belmont’s commercial area “has reached capacity.”

This is all very unfortunate for us as we’ve been lamenting the lack of good gumbo since ZydeCo closed on the Corner, so we truly hope Ewell and Pittard bring their restaurant idea to fruition somewhere. (By the way, A and H, there are quite a few houses that have been sitting for sale in Restaurantarama’s neighborhood for months and months just sucking the value out of our own house with each passing day—we’d be glad to help broker a deal.) Also, we sincerely hope that if Ewell tries to sell his property, he finds a residential buyer who really likes the smell of smoked meat in the morning.

On another losing end of dealings with the city is Escafé. While we all celebrate the successful completion of the rebricking project, Escafé owner Todd Howard listens to the continued jackhammering outside his establishment and stews about when he’ll finally be able to reopen for lunch and seat people in his patio area. See, the rebricking project is not quite done after all. When we spoke to Howard two weeks ago, he thought he’d be open for the midday meal by the end of May, but now it looks more like June. After purchasing the restaurant in October with some silent partners, Howard says he’s really eager to get lunch going “to become a community commodity again.”

Restaurantarama for one is really eager to see what Escafé’s new head chef and 2008 Le Cordon Bleu graduate Michael Tsai will do with E’s familiar lunch and dinner staples such as meatloaf and fried chicken. “I may smoke it and add house-made pear mustard or something,” says Tsai, who’s bringing haute French training derived from both his Cordon Bleu class work and a post-graduate stage at Paris’s Maison Blanche to bear on Escafé’s quirky kitchen.

Tsai, who graduated from UVA with dual degrees in Foreign Affairs and East Asian Studies in 2005, worked for Charlottesville’s International Rescue Committee through the Americorps VISTA program before deciding that the world of cooking was calling. It was at the IRC that Tsai first met Howard. The two later worked together catering and cooking for Bill Curtis at Tastings and the Court Square Tavern, and they eventually fell in love over the hot stoves. Tsai says the relationship contributed to the kind of synchronization that only the best kitchen teams seem to have: “We always knew each other’s next move.”

That kind of harmony will likely serve the two well now that they’re reunited at Escafé, though only professionally. Incidentally, Howard also once dated Escafé’s general manager, David Sullivan. As for whether working with an ex-boyfriend is awkward, Tsai says, no, but he jokes: “People tell us we should rename the place “Ex-café.”