Back in Charlottesville

It’s been around ten years since I’ve been back here and this place is not ready to stop changing. I was on parental duty this trip as I brought my son to UVA (The University of Virginia) for the first year’s orientation. We were here for last year’s Fall Fling on an introductory visit but I didn’t have time to explore then. Boyo liked the University fine enough, applied and was accepted, hoorah. I dropped young Adonis off for the day’s program and went looking up old haunts.
The old standby, The Blue Moon Diner is bigger and hip as ever. A new generation has embraced the place and it feels relevant and funky and I reminisce about when I met LeRoi Moore here back in ’84 or so. We were having breakfast and looking for roommates or a band or something. We hit it off from the start as we were both wanderers and shared fond memories of Brooklyn and funk and jazz and such which began a friendship that lasted 25 years or so. Damn, I miss him. The Moon is now the local gathering spot for a fine weekday brunch, you know, breakfast for musicians, waiters and night-shifters all. Beer is consumed here with the huevos rancheros, my kind of place. Yeah, but now the Blue Moon serves Cerdon de Bugey and we just buried LeRoi and it’s hard not to get misty when I put those thoughts together like that. This is more than a travelogue with restaurant reviews so give me some latitude here, okay. This place was the epicenter of the C’Ville music scene more than 20 years ago. Johnny Casual and the Sport Coats, Public Service, TR3, Point of Departure and most famously then, the Skip Castro Band, all could be found at the Blue Moon at some point in a day.
The Blue Moon is located just down the block from another must visit resto, Zinc so let’s mosey on over there. Zinc is a tastefully refurbished Francophile gas station that bills itself as a gastropub. I dig it. Call it what you will, it puts out affordable small plates with a simple efficiency I find appealing. The first night I sat at the bar and drank my way through the wines by the glass, four plates and it was $60 with 20% tip!
Pleased to see a Viognier offered, I ordered it with a plate of White Asparagus. Perhaps just butter, salt, and pepper were added to the nutty tasting, tender shoots, in one word, exquisite. (A healthy start I was thinking, The Wife will be proud of me). Next, I just had to order the scallops and really, really wanted an Alsatian Pinot Gris to match it but settled for a most compelling Pinot Grigio. The three scallops would be an entrée in NYC and would cost two or three times the C’ville price, nice. Oh yeah, they were quite good, really. Firm, sweet flesh simply prepared and seared just so.
Brussels sprouts were sautée with bacon, onion and duck stock. More healthy food in an appealing triptych of sweet/salt/fat, yeah.
Broccoli was simply steamed and served with butter, a perfect four dollar side.
I passed on the Welsh Rarebit aptly dressed in Caerphilly cheese, but was happy to see quaint simple fare remembered. I imagine the tangy cheese was the traditional cheese for the job anyhoo.
The Mac and Cheese was done in a modern style with Gruyére cheese and a béchamel sauce finished with a garlic and parsley bread crumb topping. A rich and flavorful take on an American classic without greasy weight, or truffle oil. (Sorry, Ian)
Pan Seared Grouper was another astute choice of yours truly as the moist and tender white fish was perfectly cooked and matched to a roasted pepper tapenade with succulent bits of olive that transported me to a fishing village in Calabria, wow. The table concurs and orders another grouper at $11, nicely done.
The Trout filet was also pan seared but was dressed in a nut crust with butternut squash sautée. The crunchy skin added yet another crucial element as the crust was lightly applied in order that the subtle fish flavor be not abused.
Moving on to rosé, I dove into a rather coarsely cut Steak Tartare, accompanied by the requisite toast points, mustard and cornichons, which I enjoyed thoroughly. Okay, maybe it was a touch bland and lacked a quail’s egg, but I would order it again.
The Pork Belly might have been renamed but it was the highlight for me as it was a meaty, crunchy, perfectly cooked oeuvre that I scarfed down with a perverse delight.
I went for a bottle of Priorat as the wine list promised sweet fruit with subtle tannins. A perfect wine for the table and at $36 just the wine for me. Nothing like old-vine Garnacha for a great value but the complexity and seamless backbone spoke of Carignon and yes, a touch of Cabernet Sauvignon, truly an ‘international’ wine, from the composition of the grapes to its sweet, long finish.
I would love to tell you how tender and juicy was the duck breast, all seared to a golden perfection and coated in a dried cherry demi-glâce, but Boyo didn’t offer and I wasn’t risking a hand for a taste of duck. Hell, I’ve had duck before, right?
The only miss in three nights serious grazing was a rushed attempt at a Tarte Tatin. The cook neglected to caramelize the apples and sugar and left me with a raw mess. I was what, five glasses into it so I sent it back with the admonishment for whoever was responsible to “read the book again”. Granted I was an inebriated and spoiled twit but my buddy Marco, of Russian Tea Room fame, can kill you with a Tarte Tatin. Hell, this is a world-class place and I expect seamless quality even in C’ville. I drowned my pitiful sorrows in a local Late Harvest Viognier, yet another reason to return.
The wines were adequate and good examples of the variety and/or varietal. However, I was not able to recognize any profound wines nor was I steered to such. As they poured Viognier both dry and late harvest, it saves them from mediocrity, but just barely. There are killer wines out there at affordable prices, they just need to look harder. Or maybe there is no one with the experience or talent to find and promote great wine. Not everyone has the access that I have. So let’s cut them some slack and hope the learning curve is not too steep.
Yes, I will return and not soon enough I’m afraid. There was a Cassoulet at the bottom of the menu that has had me regretting not ordering the beloved confit of duck leg luxuriating in its stew of Great Northern beans and country ham.
Honestly, the wild-caught shrimp with saffron basmati rice, chorizo and harissa aioli might be the starter next visit. Thoughtfully conceived dishes realized with simplicity of execution is a hallmark of great cooking. Witness this for yourself when next you visit Charlottesville.
I still find it remarkable this is the same town I left nigh on these twenty years. But then I’m hardly the same man that rushed back to NYC from this jewel in the Blue Ridge.CS10/08

Wine Jeopardy

Ahh, the guessing game…I remember the rather well dressed piker attempting to sneak in a carafe of fine wine. "Remember the corkage fee", I remind the waiter as I nod to the not so sneaky dude at the banquette. I make sure he has the right glasses for his wine and so appear with a quartet of the large Bordeaux stems in hand. When he offered a glass to me with a healthy splash of an obviously richly extracted red wine, well, what could I say? The near opacity of the wine gave me an initial clue as to the body of the wine. I gave my professional swirl and tilted the glass filled with heady aromas and inhaled a well-measured lung-full of air over ‘round and through my dendritic receptors located so strategically in my vast and cavernous nasal/sinus system. “Mmmm, this is a fine wine from Bordeaux” I venture. The ladies at the table twitter and prattle, “Oh, he know it is from Bordeaux”, in her charming but imprecise Anglais. A good start, a fairly typical bouquet with the telltale cedar aromas led me to the visceral conclusion that this indeed is classic claret in my hand. I sip noisily and slosh and swallow letting the full experience of the finish progress. The gentleman was warming to the occasion and proffered this, “As one attempts to deal with vintage let us start with the decade. His logic led me to the conclusion that though this wine is in no way tired or fading it is most certainly not of a recent vintage. It did not have the monster quality of the ’90, nor did it possess the elegant austere, and to me the quintessential air of claret that is the signature of the '89 growth. Blocky and square-jawed like the '88’s it was not. Regal, plump and perfect are my thoughts on the '85 wines, no this was something different. This had obvious breeding and Left Bank sensibilities but a power and finesse that I do not often get to taste. “This wine was born in the eighties and furthermore this is from the 1982 vintage”, perhaps I wasn’t so confidant as all that, but I knew this was greatness and it is not a bad thing to cajole the guests from time to time. The look in the gentleman’s eye told me I was three for three.
I am lingering much too long at this table. Fine, if I was ‘just’ the sommelier, but I am the floor manager as well and must move more quickly than this.
Okay, I am thinking this is one of those ‘old dude’ wines that I am unwilling to pay $150 or more for the prestige and old-world charm of a classic growth Bordeaux. I’ll pay for Quintessa or Insignia before I drop a bundle on many of these archaic old chateau wines. That being said, this wine kicks! If more folk had the opportunity to taste this wine, there would be a lot more people who love it but can’t pay the price. So, and then…
Dammit, I have stated that it is 1982 Bordeaux from the Left Bank and I still have the one guess left. I don’t want to be wrong now, as I have done well with the education I have given myself. I have never experienced this wine before so now I must truly guess.
“My last guess is that this is from Latour”, I venture gamely.
I must be satisfied with an average of .750 as I whiff on the 1982 Chateau Mouton Lafite. The epitome of ‘old dude’ wine dressed up in a new suit driving a Z-3, sure fooled me. I thanked the gentleman profusely for allowing me to play such a wonderful game, "Won’t you come back often, this was fun". For that ‘education’ I whip out my Manager's card and take the corkage fee off of his bill. I mean, it was already decanted and all, yes? CS

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