Welcome home: Our guide to city neighborhoods

By Charlie Burns, Carol Diggs, Brielle Entzminger, Ben Hitchcock, Laura Longhine, and Erin O’Hare Life here in Charlottesville has changed drastically since we began working on this feature about city neighborhoods, more than a month ago. But if anything, our neighborhoods have become more important. With schools and many businesses closed, we’ve all retreated to […]

Breakfast is served

From bagels to biscuits to burritos, we dig in to the best meal of the day (and where to find it around town). BY: Brielle Entzminger, Ben Hitchcock, Laura Longhine, and Erin O’Hare Best in biscuits Biscuits are a breakfast staple around here-—but which one is the best? We rounded up our favorites (with top […]

Love at last: A mom of three finds a partner who’s all in

By Eileen Abbott When her physician husband lost his life to suicide in February 2011, “there were days it took everything in me just to breathe,” says Jocelynn Crum Helmbrecht, a Charlottesville resident and mom of three. “It felt like everything was broken—my heart…my children’s hearts, my entire world,” she wrote in a blog documenting […]

Hot chocolate month! And other cures for cabin fever

We’ll admit it, February isn’t the most exciting month of the year. Cabin fever has set in and the anticipation of spring is running high. Enter MarieBette Café & Bakery, with its fourth annual hot chocolate month. Both locations will offer a special hot chocolate flavor each day from Saturday, February 1, through Saturday, February […]

Sweet wine for your Valentine: Our favorite local dessert wines

Some “serious” wine drinkers malign sweet wines. It’s understandable, because most are mass-produced simply by adding sugar to a red or white base that doesn’t have much character to begin with. True connoisseurs stop short of condemning the whole category, knowing that some are made with great care and skill (and without added sugar), and […]

Fresh pasta, fast! And more food and drink news

And just like that, pasta is now a fast-food “thing” in Charlottesville. Following the late-October opening of Luce, a sliver of space on the Downtown Mall, a new instant-gratification, fresh-pasta shop has opened on the Corner in the spot that formerly housed Revolutionary Soup. Pronto is the brainchild of Daniel Kaufman, who also owns Public […]