Charlottesville Food

by Casey Ireland

  Published by American Palate

  A Division of The History Press

  Charleston, SC 29403

  www.historypress.net

  Copyright © 2014 by Casey Ireland

  All rights reserved

  First published 2014

  e-book edition 2014

  ISBN 978.1.62584.165.0

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Ireland, Casey, author.

  Charlottesville food : a history of eating local in Jefferson’s city / Casey Ireland.

  pages cm

  Summary: “From the early days of ThomasJefferson’s Garden Book at Monticelloto the hustle and bustle of the modern City Market on Water Street, Charlottesville has an illustrious culinary history. The city’s cuisine ischaracterized by a delight in locally raised ingredients. The locavorementality appears at all levels of Charlottesville’s food industry, includingthe nationally acknowledged methods of Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farms, thesourcing of local pork for Chipotle’s Charlottesville location and theaccessibility of regional ingredients everywhere from Whole Foods Market toonline favorite Relay Foods. Author and food enthusiast Casey Ireland explores how Charlottesville’s residents have created a food culture that is all their own”--Provided by publisher.

  Summary: “A history of food culture past and present in Charlottesville, VA”--Provided by publisher.

  Includes bibliographical references (pages ).

  print edition ISBN 978-1-62619-027-6 (paperback)

  1. Local food--Virginia--Charlottsville--History. 2. Cooking--Virginia--Charlottsville--History. 3. Charlottsville (Va.)--Social life and customs. I. Title.

  TX360.U63C435 2014

  641.59755’48--dc23

  2013050304

  Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  For my parents and sister, lovers of good meals and good books.

  Contents

  Foreword, by Jed Verity

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  1. Monticello and Thomas Jefferson: The Origin of (Heirloom) Species

  2. Outstanding in Their Field: Farming’s New Wave

  3. Food Hubs: Getting Regional Ingredients to the Home Cook

  4. Charlottesville Dining: How Lowbrow Sustenance Becomes Highbrow Meals (or Vice Versa)

  5. Virginia Vinoculture and Breweries

  Notes

  Bibliography

  About the Author

  Foreword

  A few months ago, I went to Portland, Maine, to visit family and friends. Over truffled mac and cheese with a massive glistening pillow of lobster meat on top, my cousin asked me if the farm-to-table movement was as strong in Charlottesville as it was in Portland. I nodded vigorously and told her that Forbes magazine had referred to us as the “locavore capital of the world” and that we’ve also long enjoyed the honor of having more restaurants per capita than anywhere else in the country. At this, the locals at the table let out a collective guffaw. Portland, they said, is well known to have the most restaurants per capita in the country, and the local food movement is not really even a “movement” there because it’s the way it’s always been. We all took sips of our locally produced pale ales and cabernets and smiled tight smiles at each other.

  Reflecting on this later, I decided that both of us must be wrong. Surely there are more restaurants per capita in New York City than in either Portland or Charlottesville. And what are the chances that this local food craze sweeping the nation started in one of our small towns? Some quick Googling revealed that the current title-holder of “most restaurants per capita” is actually Juneau, Alaska, and that there is no consensus whatsoever about the origins of this modern incarnation of the local food movement (though Michael Pollan and Joel Salatin are surely founding fathers, with the latter giving central Virginia an edge over Portland, if I may be so bold).

  So why are we sparring over mac and cheese, trying to claim some small victory in this local food arena for our little towns?

  Until recently, my wife and I ran a restaurant reviews and food news blog in Charlottesville. We had hoped it would become a place for people to have conversations about food, and it did, but the character of those conversations was more often belligerent than convivial. How can you possibly think this restaurant is good/bad? How can you claim to know anything about food given that you’ve never been professionally trained? And, most pertinently, why would you patronize an establishment that makes no effort to source its ingredients locally?

  It was this last question that hinted at an answer to the earlier question. Any issues of pragmatism wrapped up in the local food movement—fresher produce, support for the local economy, reduction of energy consumption by shortening distances between producers and consumers—have been moralized in the extreme, glorifying those who source and eat their ingredients locally and vilifying the rest.

  To an extent, this is not surprising. Energy and the economy are powerfully charged, highly politicized issues. But it goes deeper than that. “Local” has come to be a synonym for other values as well. “Healthy” is one. We’re worried that food corporations are more concerned about the bottom line than our bodies, piping in all kinds of chemical preservatives and flavor enhancers to make sure we buy what they sell, such that it feels wiser to eat a local biscuit with local bacon than a corporate salad with foreign fruit. Is it actually healthier to do so? Maybe, maybe not. In the paraphrased words of one of our readers, “If I’m going to go prematurely, I’ll take a heart attack while eating a local breakfast sandwich over cancer from a fast-food salad any day of the week!”

  This points to another modern synonym of “local,” which is “trustworthy.” Local farmers could be engaging in all kinds of sadistic, immoral practices just around the bend, but we trust that they’re not. They’re our neighbors and friends. Surely they’re looking out for us more than the faceless executives just trying to make a buck. Right?

  “Slow” is another one. Many people talk about the “Slow Food movement” and the “local food movement” in the same breath. In this age of fast food—and “fast casual”—and instantaneous communication with people around the world, we are feeling agile but fatigued, connected but disconnected. Local food promises old(er)-fashioned techniques, fewer ingredients, a simpler and purer experience, with that guy over there who has some good chickens and that family over there with all the goat cheese–producing goats. Pull up a chair, my friend, and let me get you a plate of food. We’ll drink a beer from the brewery right around the corner and talk about old times.

  Putting aside issues of whether fast-food salads really are carcinogenic, whether local farmers really care less about making money than corporate execs and all the other complex dynamics at play here, we can see in the good-natured debate between Portland locals and Charlottesville locals a contraction of the ever-expanding universe. We have now collectively realized the insane dream of being able to video chat with someone in the Himalayas in real-time, both of us drinking a Coke and eating chicken McNuggets. The spectacle of brand colonialism—walking off a rickety plane in the middle of nowhere in a far-off country to see a Coke umbrella—has lost its luster, if it ever had any. The thing that is special about us is the thing you can’t get anywhere else. The people, the food and drink, the history of t
his place and the experiences to be had right here and now. These are the knowable things, the raw materials of our very being, and they can’t be bought or sold anywhere else.

  —Jed Verity

  Charlottesville, Virginia

  November 2013

  Acknowledgements

  This book is the result of the encouragement and opportunities given to me by Jed Verity and Erin Malec of Mas to Millers. Their guidance, experience and general know-how has been an indispensable part of the book-writing process. Greg and Debbie Ireland, Chelsea Ireland and Kevin Haney have given me incredible support—they’ve functioned as sounding boards, proofreaders, marketers and cheerleaders. Kevin’s photography, eye for detail and unwavering dedication have been essential to the completion of this work and my sanity as an author.

  The food community in Charlottesville is a knowledgeable and enthusiastic one. Without the backing of local farmers, retailers, restaurateurs and craftspeople, this text would have no stories to tell. Sincere thanks to Peter Hatch of Monticello for his easy wisdom; his vibrant personal background and incredible knowledge base proved integral to the historical foundations of this book. Every one of the individuals interviewed has been kind, resourceful and eager to help. I am forever grateful for the conversations, farm visits and friendships granted to me by this group of food-minded individuals during the past year.

  Introduction

  The local food scene in Charlottesville has taken off by leaps and bounds within the past twenty years. The once-scrubby City Market has morphed into a veritable Mecca of seasonal foodstuffs; the Boar’s Head Inn, one of the only places to offer simple fine dining with regional flavor twenty years ago, is now one of many stellar restaurants putting out quality meals with local ingredients. Gabriele Rausse, local vintner and director of gardens and grounds at Monticello, tells a story of fancy dinners flown in from New York and frozen baguettes from Washington, D.C., purchased at Foods of All Nations.

  Twenty years ago, gourmet retail standbys like Feast! had not yet burst onto the scene; the luxurious handmade lasagna sheets of Mona Lisa Pasta, raspberry jam of Agriberry Farm and delicate and precious quail eggs from Down Branch Farm were nonexistent during this period. While marked by an educated, somewhat cosmopolitan population in the city, Charlottesville possessed a food scene that was a far cry from its current luxuriousness today.

  What happened over twenty years that led to the creation of such a vibrant, accessible and renowned culinary tradition? Trends in agriculture and cooking, often small in scale, alternative movements spearheaded by freethinkers and discontents, have trickled into the mountains and valleys of central Virginia from California, New York and the urban South. The rise of organic agriculture, farm-to-table eating and farmers’ markets have all been absorbed with great success into the existing foodways of the Charlottesville area.

  Wendell Berry, a founder of the organic food movement, proclaimed in 2008, “‘Organic’ has become a label, as it was destined to be.”1 To Berry, “organic” as a descriptor has become “a completely worthless word now. It has been perverted to suit the needs of industrial agriculture.”2 In the wake of organic’s demise, a new label has appeared in the texts of Joel Salatin and the farms of the Piedmont: “beyond organic.” USDA-designated conceptions of organic growing, with their focus on fertilizers, feed and chemicals, remain an inadequate way of labeling a product influenced by permaculture, heritage breeds and biomimicry. The holistic, ecologically minded concept of “beyond organic” eating and farming has begun to fill the niches left by the large-scale successes of businesses like Horizon Organics and Earthbound Farms.

  Johnson grass at Timbercreek Organics. Photo by Casey Ireland.

  Organic, as a descriptor and a USDA-approved label, has begun to lose its monopoly over the food markets of health-conscious consumers. The imported California organic tomato, trucked across the country with a price tag to make up for its long transit, has begun to fall out of favor against the lumpy, lobed charm of a backyard plant purchased from Monticello’s garden store. The aisles of “natural” peanut butters, Australian honey and Vermont cheddar grow empty as consumers begin to seek closer, homegrown solutions to their allergies and preferences. To Charlottesville diners and cooks, the little green label of USDA Organic, once a revolution in its own right, has become less attractive than the farmers’ market, the CSA pickup and the roadside stand. Locavore eating has captured the city’s imagination and has made for some of the most memorable meals, colorful characters and captivating stories the commonwealth has to offer.

  Chapter 1

  Monticello and Thomas Jefferson

  The Origin of (Heirloom) Species

  PUTTING CHARLOTTESVILLE ON THE MAP

  How has Charlottesville, a town of only forty-three thousand people, made such an indelible mark on the culinary landscape of the United States? From the winemaking dreams of Thomas Jefferson to the pasture pens of Joel Salatin, this white-columned city has fostered the careers of several of the nation’s most influential innovators of and experts on food and drink. How have the mountains and hills of central Virginia yielded such a bounty of restaurateurs and vintners, not to mention such demanding consumers? We may frame these questions better by mapping the area’s historical and geographic boundaries. The red clay soil underneath the ruins at Barboursville Vineyards or the gnarled apple trees left over from Jeffersonian intrepidness tell a story as rich and vibrant as the land itself.

  Charlottesville is the county seat of Albemarle County, but it remains an independent city within the geographic confines of Albemarle. The rural counties of Greene, Fluvanna and Nelson share borders with Albemarle County, connected by a network of major U.S. highways and smaller route systems. These four counties and the city of Charlottesville combined as a Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) host a population of a mere 200,000, a blip on the overall state population of 8 million.3 The 1,700 square miles that make up the Charlottesville MSA parallel or cross the Blue Ridge Mountains and cozy up to rural streams or the Rivanna River, an offshoot of the James. The climate is humid sub-tropical with four full seasons and considerable precipitation throughout the year, though a period from late spring to early fall sees the most rainfall. Relatively cold winters are a mainstay of the area, particularly in the high altitudes of the Blue Ridge. The yearly averages of twenty-two inches of snow and 35.9-degree Januaries contrast with hot, muggy summers with frequent highs over 90.0 degrees.4 This is a place of full, developed seasons, of crisp fall days and pebbly mountain streams. It’s a landscape ripe for peach orchards, roadside produce stands, cideries and heritage pork raising.

  Zach Miller holding a blue chicken egg laid by an Araucana chicken. Photo by Casey Ireland.

  Charlottesville as a metropolitan area, university town and corporate center takes up a mere 10.3 square miles of these 1,700 square miles of land.5 Its streets, neighborhoods and buildings are filled with a surprisingly wide variety of people from different nationalities, ethnicities and backgrounds. The University of Virginia draws professors and staff as well as students to the area; UVA itself and UVA Medical Center are the two largest employers in the city, offering more than thirteen thousand jobs to local residents.6 The International Rescue Committee’s office in Charlottesville resettles an average of two hundred refugees a year, offering them shelter and sustenance as well as job training and housing opportunities.7 The growing Muslim contingent, Bhutanese families from Nepal and Tibetan monks have made space for themselves among traditional Charlottesville communities and neighborhoods, making the city more diverse year after year.

  Even raw data like these statistics about Charlottesville’s population and geography gives some insight into what makes the area such a hotbed of agricultural, culinary and multicultural progress. The long growing season, humidity and topography of Charlottesville’s surrounding counties make the land well suited to a variety of agricultural products. Peppery-smelling field greens, long sheaves of rainbow chard and viscerall
y red beets are a sample of the produce available at the farmers’ market almost nine months out of the year. Snowy January evenings are perfect for hearty stews of local beef, eating thin shavings of Virginia-raised prosciutto and making sauces with the last Mason jar of August’s tomatoes. Fresh-caught mountain trout ends up on the plates of world-class chefs lured to the area by foraged mushrooms and first-rate teachers. UVA’s touted position as the second-best public school in the nation draws in intellectuals and students who then, when they combine passions for taste and for learning, take root in a restaurant loft above the Downtown Mall or a patch of earth in Monticello’s gardens.

  EATING WITH THOMAS JEFFERSON

  We modern culinary enthusiasts are not the first to have planted grapes, battled farmyard pests or cured sides of pork in this region. The beauty and ecological richness of Charlottesville and the surrounding counties led Thomas Jefferson to make his home at Monticello hundreds of years before homesteading came on board as a lifestyle choice. Our nation’s third president has the joint honor of being a founding foodie as well as a founding father.8 In the Charlottesville area, Jefferson is as famous for his experimental gardening efforts as he is for the Louisiana Purchase. Visitors to Monticello can tour flower, vegetable and fruit gardens re-created in painstaking detail from historical clues about the originals. A love of both imported wine and backyard cucumbers marks Thomas Jefferson as the original Charlottesville epicurean.

  Born in 1743 in Shadwell, Virginia, now a part of Albemarle County, Jefferson inherited five thousand acres of local farmland upon turning twenty-one.9 A deep-rooted love of learning and ceaseless quest for knowledge marked Jefferson’s intellectual life as well as his active gardening and horticultural efforts as a young man. A study of his Garden Book, a combination of horticultural diary, letter collection and sketchbook, reveals that Jefferson was gardening at twenty-three and recording the blooming dates of local wildflowers. Later deciding “the greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture,”10 it perhaps comes as no surprise that Jefferson spent a considerable portion of his pre-political youth laying the groundwork for the horticultural and culinary interests that so define both his presidency and personal life.