Cooking with Khadija: For authentic Middle Eastern flavor with backstory, look no further than the City Market

Khadija Hemmati fled Afghanistan in 2016, looking for opportunities not available to women in her home country. She landed in Charlottes­ville and has found those opportunities in the form of a catering business and farmers’ market stall she calls Khadija’s Kitchen. Hemmati recently spoke with Knife & Fork about her journey. Knife & Fork: How […]

Rockin’ stout

Beer drinkers are weaning themselves off of so many unfortunate St. Patrick’s Day traditions. Green beer? Gone. Drinking enough to shame their Irish forebears by the end of the night? Well, mostly gone. The next step? Reaching for a locally made, artisanal stout or porter, rather than that well-known macro sludge. No, we’re not talking […]

Small-town noir

S.A. Cosby set out to be the next Stephen King. But he soon turned to a life of crime writing, and his latest noir caper, Blacktop Wasteland, may have pulled him in too deep to let him out. “I love writing about crime because it’s something everyone can understand,” Cosby says. “The platform makes it […]

Gospel according to Harold

Between 1980 and 1994, Christian/gospel music sales grew from $190 million to $390 million. And some folks in the business were uncomfortable with that success. Because gospel music is different.  “Were the contemporary gospel artists who experimented with the rhythms of funk, disco, and hip-hop more concerned with selling records than with saving souls?” wonders […]

Another world

Charlottesville’s own rom-com queen Jenny Gardiner loves—like, totally loves—a chance encounter. Whether it’s a Las Vegas waitress literally falling for a prince on an Italian train platform, erstwhile lovers coming face to back-of-head in an Uber, or estranged fiancés pitted against one another in a cooking competition, Gardiner consistently finds ways to bring her characters […]