If smoking’s your game, Lazy Parrot has you covered. Currently the Parrot is listed on SmokeFreelyVirginia.com—a restaurant smoking advocacy site—as the only restaurant in Charlottesville where you’re free to light up while you eat and drink up. The website has gathered information on restaurants and bars around the state based on tips from customers and restaurateurs. It details places that have separately ventilated, state-sanctioned smoking rooms, those in the process of building such rooms, and even those places where “smoking is at your own risk.” The latter means the establishments are breaking the law by allowing you to smoke (in which case you’re also breaking the law).
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Thanks to a separate ventilation system and a separate door, smokers are in the legal clear in this room at Lazy Parrot. Shannon Winkey walks to serve customers in the nonsmoking section. |
At the Parrot, presumably, you’re in the legal clear to smoke. We only say presumably because according to Parrot owner Kevin Kirby, the Virginia Health Department hasn’t inspected the restaurant since the smoking ban went into effect on December 1. The restaurant did, however, have an inspection before December 1 but after Kirby expanded the Parrot to take over the adjacent property and create a new nonsmoking room separate from the original dining room and bar by a glass wall and door and a separate ventilation system. At that time, Kirby says the inspector told him, “looks good to me.”
Kirby says he decided to expand the restaurant and create a separately ventilated nonsmoking room long before Virginia’s smoking ban legislation even passed.
“My full intention was to expand the restaurant,” says Kirby. “To be honest, I really needed extra bathroom space. They get really crowded on busy nights. Also, I didn’t want nonsmokers having to walk through the smoky bar area to get to the bathrooms.”
Kirby says with the addition of the new nonsmoking room, he now has three ventilation systems and three front door entrances—a nonsmoking entrance, a smoking entrance and a door in the middle. There’s a point of sale system on both sides, but the kitchen remains on the smoking side which means servers must carry your food across to the nonsmoking side. Kirby says he gave all of his employees the option to work only on the nonsmoking side and have their food brought over, but none of them chose it.
Excluding the large bar and bar seating, which remains on the smoking side, each side has table seating for 54, says Kirby. And though the stage, video games and several TVs remain on the smoking side, the nonsmoking side has its own 60" TV. As for the live music played on the smoking side, Kirby says you clearly can hear it on the nonsmoking side.
The 7-year-old Parrot, which is open for lunch and dinner, seems to be a smoker’s paradise, and word is getting around. “We’ve seen a lot of new faces in here,” says Kirby. “We’ve put a lot of money into the place—it’s not a dark dingy bar.”
A deal for you
If you’re dying to try the fried chicken and stewed tomatoes at Michie Tavern but petrified by the tour buses, you have another incentive: a first-time-ever discount for locals. You can get $4 off the midday meal weekdays through February 26. Visit the website at www.michietavern.com to get the coupons.
