Lee Graves is not a foodie—he says so himself on the fourth page of his recently released book Virginia Beer: A Guide from Colonial Days to Craft’s Golden Age. But he is uniquely qualified to tell the rich story of Virginia craft beer. Graves was a staff writer at the Richmond Times-Dispatch in the mid-’90s […]
Pastry chef Earl Vallery is new to Charlottesville, and there are a few things you should know about him. 1) He loves bread. “I think it’s the most amazing food. I could eat it every day of my life,” says Vallery, who went to culinary school for bread-baking before turning to pastry (he helped launch […]
Bottoms up, y’all. It’s Virginia Spirits Month here in the commonwealth, sponsored by the Virginia Distillers Association and meant to spotlight Virginia-made spirits. Many local bartenders do so all year ’round, but there are a few special cocktails this month that are worth sidling up to the bar for. Junction’s Alec Spidalieri is shaking things […]
It’s the time of year C-VILLE editorial staffers dread most: landing on the final names for our Power Issue, followed by the inevitable complaints that the list contains a bunch of white men. Sure, there are powerful women and people of color in Charlottesville. But when it comes down to it, [...]
If you’ve made the trip down I-64 recently to check out an REI garage sale or pop in at the General Assembly, you may have noticed a familiar sign or two in the area. Restaurants and breweries that are native to Charlottesville continue to appear all around our eastward neighboring city—and [...]
We’re halfway through June, which means fruit harvest season has begun, and that means now is the time to do our best impression of the very hungry caterpillar. You know the story: A tiny caterpillar eats through fruit after fruit (and a piece of cake, an ice cream cone, a pickle, etc.) on his [...]
Lu-Mei Chang can’t stay away from the kitchen, and we’re all better off for it. Chang, who grew up in Taipei, Taiwan, started cooking when she came to Charlottesville 28 years ago. She worked at Eastern Standard, one of Charlottesville’s first Asian restaurants (located where The Whiskey Jar is [...]
Breweries have been popping up around Charlottesville like mushrooms after a rain. About a dozen beer producers are now located within an easy drive from town. But curiously, only four breweries are actually located within the city’s limits: Champion, South Street, Three Notch’d and—the newest [...]
For more than 20 years, every time Barbie Brannock cooked California-style Mexican food for her friends, they’d ask, “When are you going to open a restaurant?” They weren’t so much asking as they were insisting, says Brannock, who learned to cook in her mother’s Southern California kitchen, and [...]