After nine years in the North Wing of Barracks Road Shopping Center, Wild Greens is scheduled to close for good on Halloween. Owner Thomas Vangeloupos, who took over the historic Ivy Inn Restaurant in 1995 and opened Wild Greens as a casual alternative a few years later, told Restaurantarama it’s just time for him to slow down. “I’ve been in the business for 39 years,” Vangeloupos told us.
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It’s time to slow down, after 39 years, says Wild Greens owner Thomas Vangeloupos, who, with his wife Judie, will close shop on October 31. |
No word yet on whether a new restaurant is slated to take over the Wild Greens space. Calls to the PR department of Barracks Road Shopping Center’s management were not returned as of press time. In any case, it’s unlikely to be a quick turnover—Vangeloupos is scheduled to auction off the restaurant’s equipment and appliances next week.
As for The Ivy Inn, friends of the Vangeloupos family know that that’s where to find them most days. Thomas’s wife, Judie, handles marketing for the restaurant. His son and partner, Angelo, is executive chef and continues to focus on fine, seasonal American cuisine, and Angelo’s wife, Farrell, manages the front of the house. Angelo also authors a chef’s blog on The Ivy Inn’s website called “You Are What You Eat ?(!).” Reading it is a fun way to see food through the eyes of an expert. Check it out at http://ivyinnkitchen.wordpress.com/.
On the other side of town, a new Chinese restaurant called Taste of China recently opened in the old Daihachi space in the Albemarle Square Shopping Center. It’s conveniently located across from China Med, so after your acupuncture treatment you can walk over and get “Authentic Chinese Cuisine” or “American Chinese Food,” as the menu helpfully designates. Restaurantarama stopped in the other day for the generous lunch special offered Monday-Friday 11am-3pm: For $6.75, you get soup, an egg roll, noodle dish, entrée, rice and dessert. And of course, there’s take-out.
Two other new restaurants on the Corner we’ve told you about—Sushi Love and Semolina—still aren’t open, but they must be close to it. Sushi Love is hiring staff, and Semolina revealed its menu in our Food and Drink Annual last week. When owner Raif Antar, who also owns Basil, told us back in July that Semolina would offer more than 30 different “gourmet” pizza combinations (the menu now says “50”) and suggested there’d be combos we’d never seen before, we wondered if it were mere puffery. And then we saw these pies advertised last week and expect that even Wolfgang Puck himself would be surprised: Conglio & Vitello (rabbit and veal sausage, roma tomatoes, Sicilian pistachios, fresh mozzarella and San Marzano tomato sauce) and Oyster Rockefeller (spinach, portabella mushrooms, scallions, smoked oysters, fresh mozzarella and parmigiano reggiano and San Marzano tomato sauce).
No purchase pitas
You give and you get: Donate cash and/or food to the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank and pick up a free pita from the Pita Pit on 14th Street NW. It happens Wednesday, November 4, from 11am to 9pm, when the generous folks at Pita Pit and UVA students will be collecting money and non-perishables for local people in need. The Food Bank especially is looking for boxed pasta, rice, spaghetti sauce, peanut butter, canned fruits and vegetables, canned meats and dry cereal.
