Last Tuesday evening, Restaurantarama attended a unique event that had gourmands rubbing elbows with actual food growers and many professional food and wine folks seeing each other in the same room for the first time. The place was Fossett’s at Keswick Hall, and the purpose was Executive Chef Craig Hartman’s private presentation of Fossett’s’ new menu. Chef Hartman himself worked a carving station that included Polyface Farm pork tenderloin topped with marinated pork belly (divine), while trays were passed offering other morsels from the new menu that prominently features even more locally grown and raised ingredients, some from Fossett’s new on-site garden developed with the assistance of Monticello’s Director of Gardens and Grounds, Peter Hatch. The menu now is divided into four sections. First are classic European-American dishes under the “Mainstays” section. Second is fare inspired by the restaurant’s namesake —Thomas Jefferson’s third chef (and slave) Edith Fossett. Hartman describes these dishes as having African-American influences and “Southern gentility.” The third section includes Jefferson-inspired dishes that fuse down-home Virginia with French tradition, and the fourth section is called “Explorations”—dishes derived from cutting-edge techniques such as molecular gastronomy and sous vide cooking.
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Chef Craig Hartman’s new menu for Fossett’s includes ingredients from Fossett’s new on-site garden developed with the assistance of Monticello’s garden director. |
Heavies in attendance at the event included C&O and Bel Rio owner Dave Simpson, The Clifton Inn’s executive chef, Dean Maupin, and Barboursville Vineyard’s winemaker, Luca Paschina, all of whom looked quite fancy out of their chef and winemaking frocks, though they’d obeyed the invite’s suggested dress code: “open collar encouraged.” In contrast was Planet Earth Diversified farmer and “Meet the Farmer” television show host, Michael Clark, who mingled in his jeans and signature straw hat while filming clips for the Charlottesville Public Access-TV show about local food growers and their customers.
Hartman told the crowd that the new menu was the culmination of much debate amongst the Keswick staff, with the purpose of infusing “soul” into the restaurant. Likely, the economy is at least in part behind the menu overhaul and public outreach. Last November, Keswick’s general manager Tony McHale reached out to us to spread the word about Keswick’s “Winner’s Circle” of promotions and discounts targeted to the local community. He told us: “We were looking for a vehicle for communicating directly with the local community. For years, people thought we were private or just very expensive. That’s been perpetuated through the ages in Charlottesville.” McHale recently left Keswick for a position elsewhere in the Orient-Express Hotels family when his second-in-command, Matthias N. Smith, was promoted.
In addition to all this excitement at Fossett’s, Hartman told us the news that he and his wife are opening a North Carolina barbeque place called Barbeque Exchange in their hometown of Gordonsville. Expect a June opening.
Gift of clean water
Continuing today though March 28, diners at participating local restaurants are encouraged to donate $1 for tap water they usually enjoy for free in support of UNICEF’s Tap Project for World Water Week. Your $1 alone gives UNICEF the ability to provide clean drinking water for one child for 40 days! Participating restaurants include Aromas, Bang!, Biltmore Grill, Bizou, Blue Moon Diner, Bluegrass Grill, Boar’s Head Old Mill Room, Cassis, College Inn, Downtown Grille, Duner’s, Eppie’s, The Flat, Fleurie, Horse & Hound, Hotcakes, Il Cane Pazzo, Petit Pois, Rapture, Revolutionary Soup, The Box, Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar, X Lounge, Zinc, and Zocalo.
