Crops are tops: Have your pick of summer’s bounty

We’re halfway through June, which means fruit harvest season has begun, and that means now is the time to do our best impression of the very hungry caterpillar. You know the story: A tiny caterpillar eats through fruit after fruit (and a piece of cake, an ice cream cone, a pickle, etc.) on his journey […]

Cardamom dishes up contemporary vegetarian Asian food

Lu-Mei Chang can’t stay away from the kitchen, and we’re all better off for it. Chang, who grew up in Taipei, Taiwan, started cooking when she came to Charlottesville 28 years ago. She worked at Eastern Standard, one of Charlottesville’s first Asian restaurants (located where The Whiskey Jar is now) for years before she opened […]

Seasonal drinks to keep you jolly

Watering holes all over town are getting into the Christmas spirits—er, spirit—this week, decking the halls and pouring festive drinks galore. The Whiskey Jar’s Christmas pop-up bar will feature an all-Christmas cocktail list created by bar director Leah Peeks and assistant bar manager Reid Dougherty. “We’re going to tacky the place up, play Christmas music, […]

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 […]

Barbie’s Burrito Barn brings CaliMex to C’ville

For more than 20 years, every time Barbie Brannock cooked California-style Mexican food for her friends, they’d ask, “When are you going to open a restaurant?” They weren’t so much asking as they were insisting, says Brannock, who learned to cook in her mother’s Southern California kitchen, and was a Peace Corps worker, an artist […]