(Photos Above By: Jan Seale and Bob Brandenburger)

Strawberry pie from shoney’s figured heavily into my earliest culinary traditions in Charlottesville. I came here as a child for cardiology appointments, and after my heart got checked my mother, great aunt and I would have lunch – at Shoney’s, or at Morrison’s Cafeteria or at the Hardware Store – a fascinating place for someone under 10, on the downtown mall, sadly closed in just the last year or so.

Things change in 25 years. I’ve developed new culinary traditions here, and Charlottesville has too.

PROSPECT HILL INN

The Prospect Hill Inn is a quiet retreat just outside Charlottesville, offering high-end breakfasts and dinners.

When Bill Sheehan first came here with his French wife Mireille and opened Prospect Hill Plantation Inn, “the best restaurant in Charlottesville was Aunt Sarah’s Pancake House. There was no fine dining.”

Prospect Hill, on 50 acres outside of town, and the C&O Restaurant, an intimate little spot just off the downtown mall, were the first, says Sheehan. Today, the area is nearly crowded with places to eat, from historic to ethnic to the down-home. Both Prospect Hill and the C&O are still serving.

“I like to cook,” says Sheehan. “I was raised in an Irish family. Fifteen minutes is how long dinner took. But in my wife’s family, meals took hours. Eating was how they entertained.”

THE C&O
Its entrance, through a gate in a brick wall, is easy to walk right past, its “RESTAURANT” signs far from pretentious. But walk inside and you’re greeted by a gas fireplace and long narrow dining room, friendly staff who’ll tell you not only who’s playing on satellite radio but what band he used to play with and what his most recent CD is.

You can make reservations here, but for my husband Phil and me, our favorite way to experience the C&O is without them. We always head downstairs, where it’s first come, first serve, and sit at one of a few candlelit tables within throwing distance of the bar, which is long and of beautiful polished wood. It’s cozy, and the food’s delicious. The menu makes an occasional railroad nod (“Everyone please remain seated until the restaurant comes to a complete stop”).

OLD FAVORITES
There are many reasons to eat in Charlottesville. I have my favorites. In the Corner District next to the university: Martha’s Café (sit on the front porch of the blue-painted two-story house, and be sure and visit the goldfish who live in the ladies’ room bathtub) and Café Europa (brie and apples on baguette, pasta salad redolent with fresh basil, comfortingly nice rice pudding).

In Barracks Road Shopping Center, I like to stop at Hotcakes for their pumpkin spice muffins – they have a nice lunch, and for this story I tried dinner, the product of a relatively new chef who’s teaching cooking classes too. The lights go dim in the evening so you forget you’re in a shopping mall. The glass case is filled with polenta, little red crayfish, salads and gorgeous cakes.

DOWNTOWN EATS
You can stay downtown at the Omni, or at the Inn on Court Square a few blocks off the downtown mall, and eat for a week without once turning the key in your ignition.

After my childhood years, coffee was a big reason for going to Charlottesville. We start off one day in my favorite coffee shop – Mud House – with books on the couch in the front window, and strong cups of caffeine. A man teaches his daughter chess. There are children who’ve just gone ice skating, people in running clothes. The music merges from opera to cello to hip-hop; the walls are a rotating exhibit of local art and the chairs a bizarre mix of red, purple, yellow and green fabrics.

In the spirit of adventure, after Mud House we steer away from our comfort food-places and try out some new ones.
We head to The Nook for brunch. It’s been here since 1951, the neon proclaims. There’s a bar with black vinyl-seated swivel stools, a couple TVs, track lighting and swinging doors into the kitchen. Phil contemplates meatloaf and egg and Irish oatmeal. I settle on the lemon curd French toast, which is much better than it sounds, and am told it’s the latest in a line of 50 varieties – “we’ve been doing a different French toast every week for a year,” bartender Jeremy Taylor tells me.

Across the mall from The Nook, the Tea Bazaar, at the top of a narrow flight of stairs, feels a bit like an “opium den with photographs,” as Phil puts it. (The photographs are an informal exhibit, coffee-shop-style.) There’s middle Eastern music, a thermostat set to 75, and hookahs (exotic, but non-illegal water pipes) available (with ID) in a variety of flavors. The more mainstream items on the chalkboard include smoked salmon, hummus and smoothies.

These people know tea. The menu offers varieties not just of herbal and non, but of Chinese Red teas, Chinese aged teas, Himalayan teas, Chinese green, Japanese green, Chinese white, Oolong, milk, Moroccan, dessert teas – and herbal. The incense-smelling, darkish interior offers tables, some overlooking the downtown mall, and – even better – sofas. We pick a couch and enjoy two small pots of perfectly-brewed Soul Soother and Assam B.O.P. We make a brief foray back through its meandering rooms and reach a patio with a view that takes in rooftops and mountain ridges.

On our list of places to find is Revolution Soup, on 2nd Street NW – we get to 2nd Street SW (which runs parallel) and are confounded. On a subsequent trip, we track it down – a great, busy little place below street level, with a rotating selection of delicious and inexpensive soups. It’s around the corner from The Flat, a little brick building that serves crepes just like you get on the sidewalks of European cities.
We seek out Tastings, part wine shop, part restaurant. Don’t pay any attention to the carpet, which is hardly deep pile, or the water stain in the ceiling or the well-used, rather beaten-up furniture. Order the food.

We were recommended to try the lobster bisque by fellow diners at Prospect Hill Inn, and it’s worth the recommendation. The oyster stew has the biggest oysters I’ve ever seen in a soup. I order a burger, made of beef “from The Organic Butcher” (an actual shop) and it’s very good, with French fries the server says they make every morning. The tables are made of wine crates, dismantled and covered in clear glass. Conversations mix and mingle around us: wine vintages, thousand-year-old antiquities, architecture, garlic.

COMFORT FOOD

The Blue Moon Diner’s front windows look out West Main Street.

On West Main, there’s a revived legend I’ve been wanting to visit for a while – the Blue Moon Diner, birthplace of the bluegrass group the Hackensaw Boys, reopened by old friends of mine, Laura Galgano and Rice Hall.

The front room is definitely a diner, with long counter and stools and bright windows. But just off the main room is a smaller one with a fireplace, paintings on the walls and swinging doors into the kitchen. We sit here, and try to decide among the Mountain Trout Club, Johnny Appleseed Quesadilla and Hogwaller Hash.

It’s all good, the coffee strong and the musical heritage intact – I find out Sabra Guzman, our waitress, moved here from California last year. She sings, plays standup bass, guitar and ukelele, and heard, all the way out on the west coast, that Charlottesville’s a hotbed for music. “That’s why I came here.”

Me, I come for the coffee, the crepes and the Johnny Appleseed Quesadilla.


Where to Stay, Dine Well and Go to Heaven: The Clifton Inn

Minutes from downtown Charlottesville and in the heart of Virginia wine country is The Clifton Inn, a meticulously restored estate on 100 acres that was once in Thomas Jefferson’s family. Historic authenticity meets cosmopolitan flair in the Clifton’s salons, veranda-like indoor/outdoor restaurant, serene gardens, bucolic pool area and in each of 18 beautifully rendered guest suites.

But the real reason to be here is the food: Chef Dean Maupin crafts an unforgettable culinary dream. His tasting menus invite diners to savor a score of selections that tease the palate and sate the senses. Maupin’s inspiration combines pears with ravioli, caramelized shrimp veloute with stripped bass, Earl Grey caramel with Wisconsin mascarapone. Expertly staffed by an international team, the Clifton is a member of Relais & Chateaux, a collection of stellar restaurants and hotels scattered around the world.

cliftoninn.net, 434-971-1800 or  888-971-1800, 1296 Clifton Inn Dr., Charlottesville.
—Elizabeth Barbour