Steak of America: Bank building has restaurant in its future

When Bank of America closes its branch doors downtown in February, it leaves a grand 1916 building in its wake that will house a steakhouse, according to building owner Hunter Craig. And while he declined to identify the grilled meat purveyor, he did say it would be locally owned, not a national chain. Also inhabiting […]

Virginia Tech’s impact on what, where and when to grow

You’ll often find a university at the epicenter of many of the world’s great wine regions. Learning institutions help drive and fund research and increase wine quality. Since 1905, the University of California, Davis has conducted vine and wine research just outside of Sacramento. Its findings have had an immeasurable impact on winemaking in Napa […]

The Salad Maker opens on Market Street

In The Big Salad episode of “Seinfeld,” Elaine asks George to get her a big salad from the coffee shop. “What’s in the big salad?” George asks. “Big lettuce, big carrots, tomatoes like volleyballs,” Jerry deadpans. You won’t get enormous salads with gargantuan vegetables at The Salad Maker at 300 E. Market St., but you […]

Mican and Lemongrass merge their menus

After celebrating a decade in business, Pham, the owner of Lemongrass on the Corner, has been looking ahead to the next 10 years. Yoshihiro and Yukiko Tauchi, owners of Mican, a Japanese restaurant that, until this fall, had been located at York Place on the Downtown Mall, fused with Lemongrass. Says Yoshihiro Tauchi, “[This was] […]

Local artisan launches bitters company out of necessity

Bitters are back, baby, and one local is looking to get in on the action. Wait, bitters? “The traditional recipes for a cocktail up to the late 1800s were all the same—bitters were a part of almost all cocktails,” says Kip McCharen, founder and owner of McCharen’s Bitters. “It’s a seasoning. It serves the same […]

City regulations could have an effect on new breweries

Breweries have been popping up around Charlottesville like mushrooms after a rain. About a dozen beer producers are now located within an easy drive from town. But curiously, only four breweries are actually located within the city’s limits: Champion, South Street, Three Notch’d and—the newest addition in September—Random Row. In the middle of a regional […]

Food options aplenty at the new shopping center

Loosen your belts, Charlottesville. We’re getting more food, food that we didn’t even know we needed. Here’s a quick roundup of what’s open—or will be open soon—at 5th Street Station. Wegmans A chain that feels less like a grocery store and more like a marketplace, Wegmans boasts a host of specialty items: organic produce and […]

Former Clifton Inn chef at home in meat market

What happens when a meat market hires an acclaimed fine-dining chef? Timbercreek Market is about to find out. When Timbercreek Farm owners Sara and Zach Miller opened the market in July 2015, their aim was to bring directly to consumers the same produce from their farm that had long been served at top restaurants around […]

Michelin-rated D.C. restaurants boast local ties

Star chefs In 1900, French tire moguls Ándre and Édouard Michelin found a creative way to get more people to buy their tires: a restaurant and hotel ratings guide that would get people in their cars, on the road and wearing down tire treads going from place to place. By 1926, the Michelin Guide started […]

Vitae Spirits opens for sales and tastings

For Ian Glomski, 2012 was a watershed year. He turned 40 and narrowly escaped a massive wildfire while on a birthday fly-fishing trip in Wyoming. He served as a juror for the George Huguely trial and fought cancer for the first time. “All of that added up,” he says, and with mortality on the mind, […]