After a trip to Chicago, Birmingham, and India, I’m back to food blogging. Enjoy!
Last Thursday: Lunch at Seafood at West Main: I love having lunch at the West Main Market. When it was just Feast, I thought the food was excellent, but I always felt a little ripped off. The addition of Seafood at West Main has definitely changed things. I love that I can get quality fish cooked up fresh for under $10. The menu is fairly diverse, but I just keep getting the fish tacos because they are so delicious. I will probably continue to do so. They consist of lightly fried fish, fresh salsa, cabbage, and sauce. Very minimalist and very delicious. You only get two tacos, which is my only complaint. I could use three.
Last Thursday: Dinner at Horse & Hound GastroPub: First of all, a gastropub is supposedly a pub that serves fancier food than your average pub fare. I’d never heard the term before. Given that definition, Horse & Hound is definitely a gastropub. So how is it? Let me start by saying that I loved Bluebird. It was by far my favorite brunch place in town, and I’m sad to see it gone, and I had that in mind when I stepped into Horse & Hound. I’m glad to say they impressed me. My friend and I went half and half on the Belmont and the Warm Roast Beef sandwiches. The Belmont is pork, slaw, and spicy mustard and the Warm Roast Beef has fried onions and mayo. They were both excellent sandwiches, and reasonably priced at $8 and $10, especially considering the delicious fries they came with. Unfortunately, the price of drinks pretty much destroys any value here. A pint of Guinness is $5.50!!! Quite frankly, that takes balls in Charlottesville. A pint of Stella is $4.50. That same pint at South Street is $2.50 every day all day. They do have some interesting beers on tap, and they are all equally overpriced (Aventinus, $8.50/pint). I still like the place, though, and will definitely be going back. It’ll make a good place to start out a night with dinner and a beer followed by other more affordable establishments.
Monday: Lunch at Revolutionary Soup: The new Revolutionary Soup is the greatest thing to happen to food on The Corner in all my time in Charlottesville. This really surprised me, because when we moved here four years ago, I had a couple of disappointing experiences at the downtown location and never went back. That was a mistake that I know regret. Today, I ordered the Gulf Coast Shrimp Salad. It consisted of arugula, avocado, roasted red peppers, a hard boiled egg, and some grilled shrimp tossed with a garlic vinaigrette. Wow. I mean, Wow. This salad was delicious. The shrimp were perfectly done and very spicy. The dressing had a lot of zest to it. It was pretty much perfect. I want to go back tomorrow and have another one.
Tuesday: Lunch at Europa: The Majorca is the greatest sandwich in Charlottesville. I subbed mixed greens for the potato salad it normally comes with.
Wednesday: Lunch at Sticks: I love Sticks. It’s just too damn expensive for what you get. I’d definitely go there five times as much if they dropped the price on everything a buck or two. I had a chicken pita with sesame dressing, and as usual, the chicken was perfectly cooked and the dressing tasted fresh and savory. My only complaint was the ridiculous amount of butter they brushed on the pita before grilling it.
Friday: Lunch at Lee’s Grill: Chicken teriyaki. Blah blah blah. Best $4.95 you can spend in Charlottesville. Blah blah blah. Go to Lee’s Grill now.
Saturday: Lunch at Eppie’s: I love Eppie’s. I believe I’ve said it before, but I feel that Eppie’s is the best addition to the downtown mall in recent years. I always get the same thing: a quarter chicken, sweet potato, and mac & cheese. The chicken is unbelievably juicy and truly spicy. The sweet potato is a sweet potato, nothing particularly special about it, I just love sweet potatos. The mac & cheese is cheesy without being super creamy, just how I like it. The piece of cornbread it comes with is always the big winner. Unbelievably moist and perfectly sweet. I can’t wait until I’m downtown and I can eat there every week.
That’s it! More to come in the next few days.
Do all of the restaurants in Nashville suck, or do you just embellish Charlottesville as a culinary paradise? Or am I just eating at the wrong places here? There’s nowhere that is a) delicious, and b) not outrageously expensive. Seriously. If you say Calypso I am going to punch you in the nose.
It seems like the only bad food I’ve had lately is when we try going out to a restaurant instead of cooking something at home.
Exception: hot chicken.
Nashville has great food! Of course I put Calypso near the top of the list. La Hacienda is delicious and cheap. It’s the best Mexican restaurant I’ve ever been to in my life and lays waste to the ones here in Charlottesville. Here’s a few more: Prince’s Hot Chicken (as you said), Rotier’s, San Antonio Taco Company, IIRC Jackson’s isn’t too expensive, and Swett’s is awesome cafeteria style food. I’ll post more as I think of them.
And WTF is wrong with Calypso. It’s easily in my top three Nashville places.
:(