Goodbye O’Neill’s, hello Trinity. The upscale Irish pub on The Corner opened in October and it’s already making a name for itself.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

After months of renovation, the former O’Neill’s Pub space on The Corner has finally been transformed into Trinity Irish Pub. Apparently, it was worth the wait. According to manger Mackenzie Smith, the Irish and “European bistro-style” pub has been attracting foodies, grad students, young professionals, hospital employees, late-night bar scene types, and just about everyone in-between.

“We’ve brought something a little more upscale to The Corner,” says Smith. “So we’re attracting all kinds of people.”

Indeed, the place has three bars on three levels with eight beers on tap, including Guinness, of course, and three separate sound systems for each level. There’s also a balcony overlooking the street on the second floor where folks can step out for a smoke, as the owners decided to make the restaurant smoke-free. When the weather gets warmer, the ground floor’s French doors will unfold “Paris café-style” so that tables can pour out on to the sidewalk.

Trinity is the brainchild of two young Chicagoans, Ryan Rooney and Kevin Badke, who may never have opened the place if it weren’t for a one-day visit Rooney made to Charlottesville last year.

“I was literally having lunch outside at the College Inn when they were putting the for lease sign on the building next door,” says Rooney, who says the only other time he’d been to Charlottesville was for a UVA football game when he was 13. Rooney says he tried to get an appointment to see the place that day, but wasn’t able to. Back in Chicago, he couldn’t stop thinking about the space, so friends told him to go back and check it out.

But Dish’s ears really perked up when Rooney mentioned the name of their chef: (more)

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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 told 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 partner 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 “nice 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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Dish’s foodie spys tell him that Taste of China, which recently opened in the Albemarle Square Shopping Center, is the real deal. Apparently, a very itinerant but renowned Szechuan chef named Peter Chang is currently biding his time there until his next big gig. Indeed, fans of Chang have been stalking him from place to place for years, and trying to learn about his whereabouts since he left the Hong Kong House in Knoxville, Tennessee. He specializes in “boldly seasoned” Northern Szechuan cuisine.

A call to Taste of China confirmed that Chang is indeed the chef, but a considerable language barrier prevented us from gleaning much more. This is good news for authentic Chinese food fans, while it lasts. In China, Chang apparently cooked for president Hu Jintao, and in 2000 he became the chef at the Chinese Embassy. He eventually began cooking at DC and Northern Virginia area restaurants and was quickly discover by folks like Tom Sietsema at the Washington Post.

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Zynodoa, Staunton’s stylish contribution to southern cuisine, the local food movement, and big city chic, raised the bar recently by hiring chef Michael Lund, who comes to the restaurant after six years at The Inn at Little Washington, where he trained with culinary icon Patrick O’Connell.

This is a real coupe for Zynodoa. After all, Lund has had to cook for celebrity chefs like Julia Child, Charlie Trotter and Alain Ducasse, not to mention the occasional royal. For crying out loud, the Inn was voted “Best Hotel Dining in the World” by Travel & Leisure magazine readers last year. And if Zynodoa was local food-focused before, it’s even more so now, as Lund works closely with local farmers, including the Staunton area’s most famous farmer— indeed, quite possibly America’s most famous farmer— Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms.

Lund calls his new Zynodoa menu “refined southern cuisine— simplified.” For example, the autumn menu includes a fried green tomato and Surryano Berkshire ham appetizer, Polyface Farm chicken parmesan, and a shrimp and grits that uses Hawaiian prawns and fried okra. You can check out the entire menu on Zynodoa’s website.

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With over 60 eateries and restaurants in the Downtown Mall area, it’s easy for some places to get lost in the crowd. And when you’re inside a hotel and blocked from view by a forest of urban trees at the far West End of the Mall, it’s especially easy.

“People don’t notice us sitting on the hill,” says Morgan Oliver, the executive chef at The Pointe Restaurant in the Omni Hotel. “I think we’ve been kind of looked over because we’re in a hotel.”

Those logistics have been particularly frustrating for Oliver, who, since taking over the kitchen three years ago, has changed the whole concept of the restaurant and given it a local food and organic focus. For instance, Oliver’s menu includes food from (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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