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A family tradition moves from the Richmond area to western Albemarle with the opening of the Tea House in the Clover Lawn Shopping Center. |
Crozet Kung Pao fans rejoice! You now have not one, but two new Chinese restaurants within your little town’s boundaries. No need for you Old Trailers to haul yourselves to Charlottesville or Waynesboro for your chicken chow mein anymore. The Tea House, a small dine-in establishment that also offers take-out, opened two months ago in the Clover Lawn Shopping Center, which is across the street from Blue Ridge Builders Supply and the new Harris Teeter scheduled to open early next month. The menu offers all the typical Chinese-American fare—Szechuan Beef, Hunan Pork, Moo Goo Gai Pan—but also provides some slight surprises—a calamari appetizer, shrimp and vegetable tempura and weekly lunch and dinner specials that provide more variety. Front-of-the-house manager Kristi Huang says that she and her boyfriend, Alex Chen, who owns the place, plan to slowly introduce even more authentic Chinese dishes through the weekly specials. Though young, both are veterans of the restaurant world—Huang has worked on and off in the industry for years since graduating from Albemarle High School and moving to Richmond for college nine years ago, and Chen grew up learning the restaurant business from his family, which owns several Chinese restaurants in the Richmond area. This is Huang and Chen’s first foray into their own food business, however, so they say they are going to stick to the staple dishes and get to know the market before slowly introducing western Albemarle to more authentic Chinese cuisine. Like, bird’s nest soup maybe. (Just kidding PETA—no one around here can afford a $100 bowl of dried saliva soup these days anyway.)
If you’ve driven past the Clover Lawn Shopping center and haven’t yet noticed the Tea House tucked in between Domino’s Pizza and Otto’s and a few doors down from Pesto Mediterranean Grill, we wouldn’t be too surprised.
“We’re still waiting for the delivery of our big sign out front,” says Huang.
Currently, the only indication of the Tea House’s presence is a small sign with the restaurant’s name set on the overhang of the shopping center’s facade, and, admittedly, it is a bit dwarfed by the signage of the surrounding eateries. Focusing on the word “tea” and missing the telltale Chinese characters and Asian images, Huang says a few confused customers have wandered in asking for a cappuccino.
Once that larger exterior sign finally does come in and Huang and Chen otherwise settle into business at Tea House, they have long-term plans to open a sushi bar in the 600-square-foot adjacent space. Chen is actually a sushi chef by training and has prepared sushi in several other cities including Boston and New York as well as in Charlottesville at the Flaming Wok.
Now, when Huang and Chen signed their lease at Clover Lawn, there were no Chinese restaurants in Crozet. Just before they opened, however, another spot called New China opened on the Square next door to Fardowners and a couple of doors down from the old Uncle Charlie’s spot, which currently is being renovated and turned into a Mudhouse coffeehouse. New China is almost exclusively a take-out spot.
Lest you Charlottesville folks feel left out of all this exciting news, note last week’s news reports that county officials are pining for passenger rail service from Charlottesville to Crozet. Restaurantarama, for one, would be thrilled for a fast track to Crozet Pizza.
