Stefan Friedman opened the now-shuttered Vitae Spirits tasting room (which eventually became Omakase Obscura) on the Downtown Mall in May 2023.
UPDATED 2/17/26: Behind the locked door of Ace Biscuit & Barbecue, ceiling fans spin above the empty dining room. At the former Omakase Obscura, the well-stocked bar shelves remain illuminated. Boxes crowd the Vitae Spirits distillery and the former Draft Taproom, some bearing address labels for other businesses under the now-closed umbrella of restaurateur Stefan Friedman’s A Moveable Feast.
On February 4, surprised staff at Ace received an eviction notice, according to a Reddit post from manager Ryan High. By February 6, the barbecue restaurant and every other food or beverage business Friedman owned, including The Wine Guild of Charlottesville, had closed or transferred ownership.
The sole survivor from Friedman’s fallout appears to be Old Metropolitan Hall on the Downtown Mall; control of the business has returned to previous owner Stay Charlottesville, according to a February 10 press release.
“This is a hard business,” Friedman says, “and I did not realize until I got into it how hard it was. And I’ve got no one to point fingers at other than myself for that.”
“It’s a brutal industry, and I didn’t realize how brutal,” he says. “But I also bit off more than I could chew.” He blames his inexperience in the restaurant industry for these businesses’ failure, and says he wishes he’d made harder decisions earlier on.
Head chef Chris Humphrey ran seafood restaurant Bonny & Read for Friedman from November 2023 until it closed in September 2025. “His lack of restaurant experience showed pretty quickly to me,” he says. “Costs were never paid attention to, payments would be lagged for one reason or the other.”
Humphrey says Friedman had more enthusiasm than aptitude for running his restaurants. “He loved being there and hosting people. But [the restaurants] were never treated like actual businesses.”
“It just seemed like there was always some drama that was going on,” says Bonny & Read pastry chef Cait L. Taylor. “There [were] always repairs that needed to be done that we were constantly fighting for. … I have never worked inside a company that would allow repairs to take so long to get fixed.”
Friedman says he got into the restaurant business a few years prior to the pandemic, when he and business partner Richard Wampler took over Draft Taproom on the Downtown Mall. But starting in late 2022, when state records show he first registered A Moveable Feast LLC, Friedman bought existing restaurants and started new ones at a dizzying pace. Humphrey says he and Friedman met in early 2023 when the restaurateur attempted unsuccessfully to bring Humphrey back to the former Fellini’s Italian restaurant, which Humphrey and his late wife owned from 2017 to 2020. Friedman registered Fellini’s as a business name in February 2023, but the restaurant never reopened, and Afghan Kabob took over the space in 2025.
Friedman purchased Ace Biscuit & Barbecue in March 2023, though he wouldn’t file state paperwork to become its registered agent until November 2024. In August 2023, he incorporated Tapt Charlottesville; the following month, according to court records, he and his Tapt partner Wampler signed a lease for 1427 University Ave., the former location of Littlejohns on the Corner. By the end of October, Friedman had purchased Vitae Spirits, with Bonny & Read opening the following month.
Friedman reopened the Vitae Spirits tasting room on the Downtown Mall, closed since 2023, in May 2024. In a Daily Progress profile that month, Friedman discussed plans to reopen Draft Taproom on the Downtown Mall under a new name, presumably Tapt Charlottesville, at 425 E. Main St., and add a second Corner location in the space above Littlejohns. (In November 2024, he applied for a liquor license for the East Main location.)
The downtown Vitae Spirits space became Omakase Obscura in August 2024 after a series of successful pop-ups. Friedman added Downtown Mall event venue Old Metropolitan Hall to his roster in February 2025, and purchased The Wine Guild, a wine bar and shop in Rose Hill, in December 2025.
But by that point, court and public records show, Friedman’s feast had started to spoil. In a November 12, 2025, filing in Charlottesville Circuit Court, Littlejohns landlord EKV Corner Property states that Friedman, Wampler, and Tapt Charlottesville stopped regularly paying the monthly $9,700 rent on the property in January 2025. Partial payments trickled in for March and April, with larger make-up payments in May and July, but EKV says it has received nothing since.
Bonny & Read folded in September. In October, according to court filings, Friedman appears to have missed a required $200,000 payment to the original owners of Vitae Spirits, part of a $250,000 debt he’d incurred upon buying the business.
On November 20, Vitae’s former owners filed a claim against Friedman in circuit court for $270,000 in principal and accrued interest. Meanwhile, EKV is seeking more than $85,000 in back rent, late fees, and interest from Friedman, who received a summons for that case on January 12.
Friedman still hopes he can salvage some parts of his businesses. “Right now, I am trying to see the art of the possible of what can continue,” he says. “If I’m able to do that, it’s going to be a small subset of what there was before. But I’m working with a lot of stakeholders to try to keep a couple flagship things going. And I think that’s doable.”
Taylor says she’s still hurt from how her time at Bonny & Read ended. “That was our careers. That was our livelihoods. We were putting our blood, sweat, and tears into that kitchen.”
“I have so much love for being able to be a part of that experience. But it felt like it was taken away without regard for me as a human,” she says. “I feel like we were owed at least an apology. I know that [Friedman] was financially in a bad place, but it’s just really sad.”
“It’s terrible what happened, and I feel terrible about it,” Friedman says. “People lost their jobs, and there’s no good time to lose a job, but in the middle of the winter, it has to be even worse.” Asked what message he’d send to his staff, he says, “I apologize.”
“I don’t think any of this was malicious,” Humphrey says. When he talks about the problems that ultimately scuttled Bonny & Read, he could almost be describing Friedman’s larger efforts as well: “It required more floor staff, it required more inventory, it required spending more money, and it just quickly got bigger than it should have, faster than it should have, I feel now, especially looking back.”
