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.

Comments(0)

Author and historian Robert M. Poole will discuss the subject of his new book On Hallowed Ground: The Story of Arlington National Cemetery at the New Dominion Bookshop on Thursday, November 12 at 5:30pm. For a preview, you can watch a video of Poole discussing his book at Barnes & Noble Studio.

“Along Eisenhower Drive, as far as the eye could see, the grave markers formed into bone-white brigades, climbed from the flats of the Potomac River, and scattered over the green Virginia hills in perfect order. They reached Arlington’s highest point, where they encircled an old cream-colored mansion with thick columns and a commanding view of the cemetery, the river, and the city beyond. The mansion’s flag, just lowered to half-staff, signaled that it was time to start another day of funerals, which would add more than twenty new conscripts to Arlington’s army of the dead.”

So does Robert Poole describe a day like so many others in the long and storied history of Arlington National Cemetery. Created towards the end of our greatest national crucible, the Civil War, its story—as revealed in On Hallowed Ground —reflects much of America’s own over the past century and a half. The mansion at its heart, and the rolling land on which it sits, had been the family plantation of Robert E. Lee before he joined the Confederacy; strategic to the defense of Washington, it became a Union headquarters, a haven for freedmen, and a burial ground for indigent soldiers before Secretary of War Edwin Stanton made it the latest in the newly established national cemetery system. It would become our nation’s most honored resting place.

Robert M. Poole, former executive editor of National Geographic, is the author of Explorers House. He is a contributing editor at Smithsonian and has been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Preservation. He lives in McLean, Virginia.

Comments(0)

Kay Redfield Jamison, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University who is a leading specialist on mood disorders, and author of the An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness, which tells of her own struggle with bipolar disorder, will speak on Thursday, October 29 at 1pm at UVA’s Newcomb Hall Theater. She’s just come out with a new memoir called Nothing Was the Same, the love story of her marriage to the late Dr. Richard Wyatt.

Comments(0)

Kathryn Russell, bottom left, seen here a few years ago with her husband Wayne and some of their eight children and four grandchildren.
PHOTO FROM MAJESTY FARM WEBSITE

The local food movement lost one of their own last week, as Kathryn Russell, owner of Nelson County’s Majesty Farm and a founding member of the Virginia Independent Consumers and Farmer’s Association was killed in a traffic accident as she tried to cross Route 29 South at Plank Road on October 22. She was 54.

According to news reports, Russell was crossing 29 in a 1989 Dodge pickup with a crate of chickens in the back when she was hit by a van with two passengers inside. Police says neither alcohol nor speed was involved, and the two passengers were taken to the hospital with “non-life-threatening” injuries. Russell, however, who was not wearing a seatbelt, was thrown from her truck by the impact and killed instantly.

Russell leaves behind her husband of 36 years, Wayne Russell, as well as eight children and four grandchildren.

Russell, in addition to being a farmer, wife, and mother, was an outspoken activist for the local food movement. Like fellow farmer/activist Joel Salatin, Russell felt strongly that current government regulations on food production were (more)

Comments(1)

“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)

Comments(8)

Dr. Peter Heymann, head of Pediatric Allergy and Respiratory Medicine at the UVA Medical Center, spoke with Rick Moore on Sunday about  food allergies. A very informative discussion if you’re interested.

Comments Off

Jackson Landers, who teaches a deer hunting course for foodies, says he wants to create a “new breed” of hunter in Virginia.
PHOTO COURTESY JACKSON LANDERS

Back in July, avid hunter Jackson Landers wondered on his blog if anyone would be interested in a semi-formal class on how to deer hunt from a locavore’s perspective. After all, what better way to eat local than to hunt for your own food? Of course, it’s hard to imagine local foodies more accustomed to shouldering a tote bag at the farmers market than a .30-‘06 through the woods in camouflage gear actually shooting and gutting a deer, but Landers says the response was immediate.

Landers, a broker with Landers Underwriting, was bombarded with emails showing interest in the class, from people as far away as San Francisco, which forced him to limit the class size. Today, he says he has about 10 people taking his class, which is in its fourth week.

“The curriculum that I’m teaching is largely a natural sciences approach rather than coming from (more)

Comments(6)

Homegrown poet Taije Silverman reads from her new book Houses Are Fields at the New Dominion Bookshop on Friday, October 30 at 5:30pm. Silverman, who grew up in Charlottesville, has published poems in Poetry, Shenandoah, Ploughshares, and other journals. Houses chronicles her family’s struggle to deal with the death of her mother, Karen Shea Silverman, who died in 2004.

Silverman, who holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Maryland, was a Creative Writing Fellow at Emory University, and now lives and teaches in Philadelphia.

Comments Off

First time novelist Joanna Smith Rakoff, author of A Fortunate Age, and Dylan Landis, author of the short story collection, Normal People Don’t Live Like This, read at the New Dominion Bookshop on Wednesday, October 28 at 5:30pm.

Comments Off

New York chick lit author Lucinda Rosenfeld comes to the New Dominion Bookshop on Wednesday, October 9 at 5:30pm. She’ll be reading from her new novel I’m So Happy for You, which explores an average woman’s friendship with a glamorous friend. As a review in the New York Times put it, the novel “may not transcend its genre, but it is a thoroughly enjoyable and somewhat rare specimen of chick lit that stays focused on the chicks.”

Rosenfeld, 39, is the author of a number of other novels, which you can read about here, and her fiction and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Slate.com, Glamour, and the New York Times Magazine, and other places.

Comments Off

Jeff Parsons and Ian Saul have resuscitated gossip blog Cvillain.com.
PHOTO COURTESY IAN SAUL

Less than two months after its founder shut it down, two-year-old Charlottesville social gossip blog cVillain.com is back with new webmasters but the same mission.

“What built the concept was the active reporting, restaurant reviews, getting people excited about what’s going on in Charlottesville today,” says Ian Saul, 28, an IT consultant who, along with his business partner Jeff Parsons, took the site over from founder Kyle Redinger.

Saul says he’d long enjoyed reading cVillain and participating in some of the social events the site organized. But over time, he says, the online atmosphere strayed from its original purpose as comments grew more personal and off-topic.

“People in their mid-to late 30s found it to be kind of hipster-ish,” he says, adding that he and 45-year-old Parsons “want it to be much more accessible to all age-ranges– to try to get better sense of overall community rather than the one specific hipster-esque ideology that it got tagged with.”

Much of the site’s future content, Saul hopes, will be the product of its readers-turned-reporters. (more)

Comments(1)

Richard Ben-Veniste, who investigated the Watergate break-in and served on the 9/11 Commission, discusses his book The Emperor’s New Clothes: Exposing the Truth from Watergate to 9/11 on Friday, September 18 at 11am at the Miller Center. At age 30, Ben-Veniste was hired by Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox to investigate the break-in that led to President Nixon’s resignation. He also handling the questioning of Condoleezza Rice for the 9/11 Commission.

Comments Off

Andy Straka, author of Kitty Hitter, will read at the New Dominion Bookshop on Thursday, September 17 at 5:30pm.

Straka is the author of the Shamus Award-winning and Anthony and Agatha Award-nominated Frank Pavlicek novels. A licensed falconer and co-founder of the popular Crime Wave at the annual Virginia Festival of the Book, he is also the author of Record Of Wrongs, which Mystery Scene magazine calls “a first-rate thriller.” A third generation Czech immigrant whose grandfather came to work in the coal mines of Pennsylvania, Andy is a graduate of Williams College and a native of upstate New York.

Comments Off

Kelly Corrigan, author of The Middle Place, will read at the New Dominion Bookshop on Tuesday, September 15 at 5:30pm.

“Kelly Corrigan’s utterly absorbing memoir, The Middle Place, is wry, smart, and often heart wrenching. Corrigan takes us down memory lane and then, at the same time, down some other, darker road most of us hope never to travel. Yet we follow her all the way, quite willingly, I might add, thanks to her sharp eye for the details and her great sense of humor.” —Cynthia Kaplan, author of Why I’m Like This and Leave the Building Quickly

Comments Off