Mockingbird, Staunton’s newest restaurant and music hall, rebounds from an August fire.
PHOTO BY KEVIN BLACKBURN

First it sang, then it burned, and now it has risen again. Mockingbird, Staunton’s new restaurant and music hall, caught fire before it even opened back in August when two trash cans ignited during the renovation of the historic building on Beverley Street.

At the time, stunned owner Wade Luhn was planning on a September opening, but as he stood on the street watching the blaze he was speechless. While the restaurant side of the building suffered little damage, the music hall side took the brunt of the two-hour fire. A day later, though, Luhn was determined.

“We’re uncertain when we will be able to restore the music hall,” said Luhn.   “but it will happen as soon as possible, and we will work with renewed determination to complete the project.”

The restaurant, believe it or not, opened (more)

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Family pasta night at Milano Café, Thursday, November 5, 5:30pm to 7:30pm. $5 Pasta, $5 Caesar, $5 Wine. Bring the whole family and draw on the tables.

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The owners of the Amtrak parking lot have graded and filled potholes, but have never paved the lot.
FILE PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

Although there have been many big plans for the revitalization of West Main Street, including a streetcar, a multi-story mixed use building, and several ambitious UVA expansion projects, a new business group deplores the current state of West Main— particularly the dust that rises daily from the pot-holed parking lot surrounding the Amtrak station.

Calling the lot a “blight on the Midtown landscape” as well as a “health hazard,” and “an environmental travesty,” the newly formed Midtown Association calls on the private owners of the Amtrak parking lot to pave it.

“The history of this situation between the City and the property owners borders on municipal negligence and professional irresponsibility,” reads an Association statement. “Something has to be done.”

In the 1990s, the City pushed Norfolk Southern Corporation to sell the parcel to Gabe Silverman and Allan Cadgene in hopes of fostering a public-private partnership whose (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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There’s a new Mexican place in the old Amigos space in the Willoughby Square Shopping Center on 5th Street SW named La Joya. They opened about three weeks ago, according to Isael Alvarez, son to owner Eva Alvarez. It’s the first restaurant the family has opened.

“It’s something my Mom has always wanted to do,” says Isael, “So when she got the chance, she took it.”

Basically, it’s food Eva has been cooking in her own kitchen for years. The Dish hasn’t checked it out yet, but Isael says they have a $4.40 lunch combo special that has been mighty popular.

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“This case is about right and wrong,” says RSWA director Tom Frederick in a recent memo, accusing recycler Peter Van der Linde of “defrauding” the RSWA out of more than “a million dollars in tipping fees.”
FILE PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

After nearly two years of silence, the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority has finally responded in detail to public comments and media coverage of its $20 million RICO lawsuit against trash recycler Peter Van der Linde. Authority director Tom Frederick released a memo ahead of the RSWA Board’s October 27 meeting that includes some of the “substantial evidence” that Van der Linde “defrauded the RSWA in excess of a million dollars in tipping fees.”

According to Frederick, after the RSWA’s  “service contribution fee” was implemented in 2005, Authority officials began noticing sharp drops in the amount of area trash that Van der Linde was hauling, as reported to them by BFI, a development that Frederick characterizes as a smoking gun.

“During one twelve-month period from September 2006 through August 2007, Mr. Van der Linde’s companies declared zero tons from Albemarle/Charlottesville,” says Frederick, “a period within which there are multiple photographic records” of Van der Linde’s orange dumpsters in the area.

At the time, Frederick had his recycling manager, Bruce Edmonds, tracking and photographing Van der Linde’s containers. In the county, development director Mark Graham had instructed his building inspectors to keep track of the distinctive orange containers.

“They might think I’m a criminal, but do they think I’m stupid?” responds Van der Linde, who plans to issue his own memo to refute Frederick’s comments, point by point, at the Authority’s Tuesday meeting. “Do they really think (more)

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“This is a monumental waste of time and money,” says Bob Fenwick of the Waste Authority’s lawsuit against Peter Van der Linde, seen here on the trolley Van der Linde uses to give school tours of his recycling facility.
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

Independent City Council candidate Bob Fenwick held a press conference today at Peter Van der Linde’s $11 million Zion Crossroads recycling facility, at which he dropped off some trash of his own (concrete scraps, yard waste, and a broken weed trimmer) and called on Charlottesville City Council to rescind the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority’s $20 million RICO lawsuit against the recycler.

“We have two governments going after Peter Van der Linde using my tax money and my water fees,” said Fenwick. “Their staff attorney has been reported to be charging $515 an hour. This is a monumental waste of time and money.”

As an area businessman for 30 years, Fenwick said that Van der Linde’s struggle with the RSWA “struck a chord,” and like the YMCA plans for McIntire Park, seemed like another case of “government not following the will of the people.” Fenwick said he’s tried to find out the RSWA’s side of the story, but to no avail.

“Why doesn’t someone from the County Board of Supervisors or City Council stand before us and tell us why this lawsuit is a good idea?” Fenwick asked. “They have publicly accused this man of being a criminal, and now they hide from public comment.”

Fenwick also criticized the RSWA’s (more)

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Blue Ridge Country Store employee Brianna Valdez, standing in for camera shy owner Dan Pribus, works the counter with Patty Pribus.
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

In our excitement over the opening of the Market Street Market, the new full-service grocery store on the Downtown Mall, we neglected to mention that a little store on the Mall’s East end has been selling produce, meats, and other grocery items with old-fashioned “country store” hospitality for the last 12 years.

“We opened at the same time the comet Hale-Bopp was flying over the Blue Ridge,” says Dan Pribus, who opened the Blue Ridge Country Store with his wife, Patty, in 1997.

Dan shows us a framed image of the night sky on April 7, 1997, nestled among countless other artifacts and memorabilia attached to the walls, including one of two stuffed deer heads donated by Neighborhood Development chief Jim Tolbert, and sections of an old newspaper found embedded in the store’s front counter, featuring angry editorials criticizing Abraham Lincoln. Indeed, there’s the comet’s bright tail streaking low across the mountains. Hale-Bopp, we can’t help but remember, was the reason members of the Heaven’s Gate cult committed suicide, after their leader told them it was the only way to board an alien spaceship following the comet.

For the Pribus’, however, the comet’s arrival marked a more joyous kind of escape—the day they stopped working for the Man.

“We just hated working for other people,” says Dan.

Cozy rocking chairs to allow folks to sit and chat.
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

Clearly, though, Dan and Patty enjoy serving them. Sitting in one of the rocking chairs on either side of a faux wood stove, Dan greets almost everyone who walks in the store like an old friend.

“Very rarely do we not recognize a face that comes through the door,” he says.

“This is my third time in here today,” says a woman buying a salad for lunch.

“It’s my fourth time today,” says a guy grabbing a cup of coffee. In a world of $4 lattes and skinny mochas, you can get a cup of Greenberry’s or Shenandoah Joe’s coffee at the BRCS for just a dollar.

“Forty-three times today,” jokes another customer on his way to the large and abundant salad bar, which Dan says he salvaged from the old Woolworths restaurant that used to be where Caspari is now.

Clearly, Dan has noticed the absence of a mention in the coverage of his competition, but he’s not holding a grudge. As he admits, his store isn’t the place to do the bulk of your grocery shopping, but if you want a healthy bite to eat or just need to pick up a few items, it’s ideal.

The enormous salad bar has all a veggie lover could want.
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

Indeed, there’s almost nothing you can’t pick up at the store—locally produced meats, cheeses, fruits, homemade soups and baked goods, yogurts, canned goods, candies, ice cream, frozen foods, assorted beverages, condiments, crackers, coffee, etc. As Dan points out, there’s even a selection of DVD rentals and several bins of nails.

“If someone needs a few nails to hang a picture or secure something,” he says, smiling. “And we also have a hammer people can borrow.“

Clearly, the Pribus’ regular customers feel as friendly and generous toward them. Customer donations in a tin pale near the cash register paid for Patty to go on a 10-day church mission trip to Hati in August, and another tin pail on the counter is half-full with donations to build a new school there.

The buck on the wall comes courtesy of city development chief Jim Tolbert.
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

“You can get yourself something healthy and good to eat here, and it doesn’t cost that much, maybe $6 or $7 bucks for a soup and a salad,” he says. “That’s pretty good on the Downtown Mall.”

Indeed, Dish orders a bowl of spicy catfish stew and a fresh roll before we leave, a tasty lunch on a cool day that leaves us feeling pretty good.

Fresh cookies!
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

Customers are free to sample the goods.
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

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FILE PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

Are Monticello guides snorting up lines in the fancy bathrooms of the new Visitor Center? Are the horiculturists secretly growing cannabis in Mr. Jefferson’s gardens? In short, has a major drug problem erupted at the internationally famous UNESCO World Heritage Site?

In a word, no, at least not as far as the Hook could discover, and a guffaw is the typical response when such questions are posed to current and past employees. Yet, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns and operates Monticello, has begun implementing a “drug-free workplace policy” that randomly drug tests all (more)

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On Wednesday, November 4th the Pita Pit on the Corner holds its annual free pita day, 11am-9pm. There’s no obligation to buy anything, but the event does serve the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank, and there will be folks on hand to collect food and cash donations.

(more)

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Orzo Kitchen and Wine Bar in the Main Street Market.
PHOTO BY NED OLDHAM

An elephant is like a tree—at least that’s what the blind monk who felt its leg deduced; his five fabled brethren felt differently. If Orzo Kitchen and Wine Bar in the Main Street Market can be likened to an elephant, it might have to be one of those that famously traversed the Mediterranean areas working for Greeks, Romans, and North Africans because here owners-chefs Ken Wooten and Charles Roumeliotes have created a polished paean to Mediterranean cuisine via the Market space’s top-shelf position in Charlottesville’s foodie-fantasy, at the intersection of Local and Fine Taste.

I am not a blind monk; I am The Eater. It’s the variety of the layout that got me thinking of the elephant parable as we stopped first under sleek, dangling, swirled orange-and-blue glass lights over wooden stools and bar with coat hooks underneath. Here, a few over-40, country-club types were (more)

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The Wayside Chicken (does anyone really call it Wayside Takeout?) thief came in through the roof and absconded with the safe.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

What do Wayside Takeout, Guadalajara, and Hardee’s have in common? Besides fried specialties, all three were broken into after closing on Monday night, October 12; and police believe it could be the work of the same person or persons.

“They all have the same M.O.,” says Charlottesville Police Sergeant Marc Brake. “We’re pretty confident it’s the same, but we’re in the early stage of investigation.”

A photograph of a suspect (more)

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This scam IQ test on Facebook asks unwitting test-takers for a mobile phone number and hides the part that says they’re going to get charged $9.99 a month for text message services.

No longer do scam artists need a credit card number. Now, they just need your name, phone number, and a mouse click.

Until he got a notice saying his phone was about to be cut off, Jim Cudahy didn’t know he was being charged an extra $14.95 each month on his Embarq bill, which he was automatically paying through a bank draft.

When he called to ask about the charge, Embarq said it was from a third-party provider for an additional voicemail account. The problem was: Neither he nor his wife remembered ordering anything of the sort.

After racking their brains to figure out what triggered the charge that had been on their bill for 10 months, his wife recalled signing up last December for an online grocery coupon.

And that’s when they learned about “cramming,” the practice of slipping unauthorized charges on telephone bills. (more)

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Rise Pizzaworks General Manager Justin Billcheck and owners Andrew Vaughan and John Spagnolo.
PHOTO BY COURTENEY STUART

Over the last month or so, Dish heard whispers about Rise Pizzaworks in Barracks Road, with several pizza lovers wondering if it was a chain kind of like Chipotle. Nope. The newest addition to Charlottesville’s gourmet pizza scene, which opened Sunday, September 27 in the former Glassner Jewelers space in Barracks Road Shopping Center, is a one-of-a-kind, locally owned and operated.

But it may not be one of a kind for long.

“This is a proving ground,” says co-owner John Spagnolo, who along with partner Andrew Vaughan– a longtime fixture on the Charlottesville restaurant scene– hopes to open (more)

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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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Milano Café on South Street is serving up Boddingtons (English Cream Ale) and Bratwurst this Thursday, October 1 at 5:30pm. $4 Bratwurst/Potato Salad and $4 Boddingtons. And on Friday, October 2 at 7:30pm it’s a comedy event featuring the Bent Theater. Contact Milano Café to let them know you’re coming! 434.220.4302.

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Sweet treats over at the Boar’s Head, home of the Old Mill Room, could be getting even sweeter, as the resort announced recently that it has hired new pastry chef, Cornelius Thuys.

In addition to graduating from the St. Nicholas Pastry School in Amsterdam, Holland, Thuys has 25 years experience crafting bakery treats, beginning in Switzerland and the Netherlands, then in America as the Executive pastry chef at the Hotel Dupont in Wilmington, Delaware, and later at the The DuPont Country Club. In 1999, he became the head pastry maker at the Sagamore Resort on New York, and then moved to Arizona where he led the The Wigwam Resort and Golf Club’s pastry efforts.

Thuys, the Boar’s Head reports, has a reputation for innovative, stylish, wedding cakes, chocolate creations, and seasonal desserts. Yum!

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Back in April, the Kluge Estate Farm Shop out on Blenheim Road announced that it was nixing its weekend brunch, closing the kitchen, and scaling back food options to cheese, baguettes, and cookies. That doesn’t appear to have gone over well with Farm Shop fans. According to manager Kristin Moses, folks began “begging” the country kitchen that is part of the Kluge Estate Winery to re-open.

“We stopped for a short time and heard from our customers,” says Moses. “Although the cheese is beloved, people wanted some of their favorites back.”

Those favorites, which include the classic quiches, crab cakes, curried chicken salad and homemade cookies, will now return on the weekends from 11am to 4pm. Unfortunately, though, Moses says they are not bringing back the formal brunch.

Still, as Moses points out, with crab cakes, quiche, gourmet cheeses, and, of course, their own Kluge wine on the menu, “one can still make a brunch out of a trip to the Farm Shop.”

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