Get ready Pantops. Karen Laetare’s Brix Terrace Café is bringing you some fine dining.
FILE PHOTO BY WILL WALKER

Considering how many people now live around the Pantops area, Dish has always found it surprising how little fine dining there is east of Free Bridge. While there’s plenty of fast food, other chains like Appleby’s and Topeka Steak House, and better-than-average standouts like Tip Top, Guadalajara, andSticks, the really aren’t any upscale dining experiences to be had.

Karen Laetare hopes to change that.

Two years ago, Laetare opened the Brix Terrace Café next to theHallmark store in the Pantops Shopping Plaza, where she began serving her Mediterranean/California-style food (bruschetta, paninis, antipasti platters), as well as her homemade Italian pastries, with remarkable success.

For eight years before that, she ran the Brix Market near Ashlawn, and was tagged last year by the folks at Monticello to run the café in their new $55 million, 42,000-sq.-ft. visitor’s center. But the ventures all have one thing in common:

“We’ve never done dinner before,” says Laetare, announcing her plans to start serving it at Brix Terrace Café from Wednesday to Saturday, complete with white linens and candles.

Laetare says she had hoped there would be more fine dining options around Pantops by now, considering all the development nearby, but it appears she got tired of waiting.

“We’ll be emphasizing a more healthy, Mediterranean diet,” she says, “no butter, no cream, just fresh, healthy food that won’t be too expensive either.”

Indeed, Laetare, like all restaurant owners these days, knows that folks are reining in their restaurant spending, but she’s trying to strike a happy balance.

“It’s sad to me, I know people are having to eat cheaper food these days,” she says. “But so much of what you find at fast-food places is so bad for you. For a few dollars more, you can eat so much healthier.”

Laetare says she surprised her staff recently by showing up for dinner at Brix (”To keep my kitchen staff on their toes,” she jokes), and says she spent about $50 for a dinner for two on a Saturday night.

“That’s not bad,” she says. “We also have a wine wall where we sell bottles for $11.”

If the response is good, Laetare says she’ll expand dinner to six days a week, but for now she’s just testing the fine-dining waters on Pantops.

Oh, and for all you Pantops visitors with a sweet tooth, Laetare says she’s going to start serving Italian gelato at the end of the month.

Meanwhile, her Monticello visitor’s center gig appears to be blossoming. “They were slammed last weekend,” she says, “and the Washington Post just did a full-page spread on the new center. So we’re gearing up for the April 15 grand opening up there.”