Roadtrip IV

It wasn’t a recommendation that pointed Jill and me toward Louisa County for our fourth lunchtime roadtrip last week.

In fact, nobody we knew had ever eaten at the restaurant that was our destination.

What drew us to the town of Louisa, the county seat of Louisa County, was the restaurant’s name: Floozies Pie Shop.

(Note the absence of an apostrophe. Perhaps that means this is not a pie shop owned by floozies but a pie shop for floozies. I forgot to ask.)
   
Who wouldn’t want to have lunch at a place called Floozies Pie Shop?

On a rare, beautiful July day with heat but little humidity, Jill and I drove west on Staple’s Mill Road, also known as state route 33, for about an hour. And there we were. Finding the restaurant was easy. It’s on Main Street, right across from the elegant classic-revival brick courthouse, built 110 years ago.

Floozies sells all kind of pies, whole or by the slice. The restaurant is a cozy place with a few tables inside and several more outside the front door. The interior décor is folksy and kitschy, with lots of knickknacks recalling the 1940s and ‘50s on a wall of shelves.  Admiring them while we waited to be served passed the time quickly. An old-school ice cream scoop brought back memories of riding my bike to the drug store soda fountain on summer Sunday afternoons to fetch a hand-packed quart of chocolate for my mom, my father and my little sister and me.
   
Floozies also sells standard cafe fare at lunchtime -- sandwiches and soups, salads and quiche -- but it’s the pies that take center stage.

A refrigerated display case holds at least a dozen varieties, many using locally sourced ingredients: apple, peach, blueberry and strawberry rhubarb, among many others, were available when we were there, along with one I had to ask the waitress to explain. It’s called Pucker Up and Kiss Me. She told me the secret to the Pucker Up was thin slices of candied lemon. But both Jill and I decided we had to have a slice of the double-crust peach pie. The crust was perfect, reminiscent of my mom’s crusts, and the filling was luscious. We had eaten a big lunch -- so we took the pie slices home with us.

Next time, I really want to try the Pucker Up pie.

And there will be a next time. The drive to Louisa alone is a treat. Floozies makes the trip even more worthwhile.

And you gotta like the pie shop’s slogan: “Take home a floozie today.”
          

Summer idyll

A beautiful summer day on the Rappahannock River.

A comfortable Adirondack chair in a shady spot on the beach.

Good company and good conversation.

Watching my great-niece and great-nephew building castles in the sand.

What could be more idyllic?

Nothing.

That was last weekend, and I wouldn’t trade the memory for the world.

Roadtrip III

“How about Michie Tavern?”

I was talking with Jill, my companion on this summer’s series of lunchtime roadtrips.

“I’ve never been there,” she said. So off we went to Charlottesville.

Michie Tavern is an hour’s drive from Richmond. It’s part-way up the mountain to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. Its location means that it serves lots of tourists who come to pay homage to Jefferson, either before or after a visit to his spectacular home and grounds.  There’s also an old-fashioned general store on the premises, with the predictable tourist souvenirs. An added plus are the Virginia jams and jellies and a wide array of hot sauces, grilling rubs and salsas.

But it’s the food that draws me back time and again since I first visited Michie Tavern in the 1960s: fried and baked chicken, black-eyed peas, stewed tomatoes, hickory smoked pulled-pork barbecue, homemade mashed potatoes with really good gravy, seasoned green beans, cole slaw, whole baby beets, cornbread and biscuits. Oh, yeah, there’s also apple cider.

The food is served at a buffet, and servers in Colonial costume circulate among the diners with seconds on everything.

There are desserts, too, if you’re still hungry. I never am.

The food, in a word, is wonderful.

After stuffing ourselves, Jill and I walked down to the general store, where we bought a few gifts.

Michie Tavern has a long history. Corporal William Michie was at Valley Forge in 1777 when he received an urgent message to return to Virginia.  By the time he reached home, his ailing father had died. William Michie soon began building his tavern by the side of Buck Mountain Road in Albemarle.

The Tavern continued operation until the mid-1800s, at a time when stagecoach travel had diminished.  In 1910, the tavern was sold at auction.  In 1927 the building was rapidly deteriorating, but Mrs. Mark Henderson purchased it, foreseeing a rise in automobile ownership and the development of tourism.  Monticello had been open to the public for several years and was drawing thousands of visitors. Mrs. Henderson decided to move Michie Tavern to a more accessible location. What better site than Carter’s Mountain, one-half mile from Jefferson’s home. The pieces of the old inn were painstakingly numbered, dismantled and moved 17 miles by horse and wagon and by truck.  Success followed, and her efforts ultimately led to Michie Tavern’s designation as a Virginia historic landmark.

That’s all very interesting, I know, but it’s the food that draws people back to the historic tavern on the mountainside down the road from Monticello. It’s good Southern fare.

Jill and I gave it four thumbs up.

Roadtrip II

We came for the restaurant. We stayed for the grocery store.

As Jill and I continue our informal roadtrips for lunch, our next stop was the Iron Horse Restaurant in Ashland.

First, some background. My first paid job in broadcasting, in 1961, was at WIVE, a new AM radio station on Ashcake Road in Ashland. I wasn’t paid much, mind you, but I did get a weekly check for doing what I dearly wanted to do: be a radio deejay. For a time I did the afternoon show while I continued my journalism classes at the University of Richmond. When school let out for summer, I switched to the early-morning shift.

Having a radio station in their back yard was exciting to the people who lived at the Center of the Universe, as Ashland calls itself. WIVE played rock and roll music, mixed with pop standards, so we developed quite a following among Hanover’s teenagers. I made some good friends in Ashland while I was working there.

I learned a thing or two about Hanover tomatoes, too. I spent two days that summer helping a friend pick tomatoes at his father’s farm just outside of town. I did it to help free my friend up for a trip to the beach. Picking tomatoes in the hot July sun is tough work. I gained new respect for the backstory on those fantastic Hanover tomatoes I’d been eating all of my life.

But back to the present day and lunch at the Iron Horse. (The Iron Horse, by the way, was Cox’s Department Store when I first got to know Ashland 50-some years ago. The building sits at Ashland’s main intersection, facing the railroad tracks, on the appropriately named Railroad Avenue.)

I ordered shrimp and grits: four perfectly spiced and cooked jumbo shrimp accompanied by parmesan grits with a piquant sauce and fresh herbs. So simple. So satisfying.

Jill ate lighter. She had a salad. She was also pleased with her choice.

But all through the meal, we kept looking out of a large plate-glass window and across the tracks at the Cross Bros. Grocery store. I thought I remembered it from the 1960s. Our waitress confirmed my memory and suggested that we check it out. After lunch, we crossed the tracks and did just that.

Cross Bros. mixes nostalgia with today. The selection of produce (including Hanover tomatoes), meats and other grocery staples was much larger than you’d expect if you just looked at the store from the street. On one shelf we saw a six-pack of Billy Beer (for display only) and other items that date back to long before the Carter administration. I discovered a package of horehound drops, which are not so easy to find these days. I quickly snatched up a bag. (When I was a kid, they were sold for medicinal purposes, to soothe a cough or a sore throat. Nowadays, they’re sold as candy.) Jill and I spent time wandering the aisles, calling out to each other with each interesting discovery.

I’m a sucker for homemade country sausage. The butchers at Cross Bros. make their own, and I took a pound of it home -- along with a couple of slices (more like slabs) of country ham.

The cheerful, friendly cashier told us on our way out that the store has been in business for about a century. The store is definitely worth a visit, as is the restaurant across the tracks.

Next stop on our summer of lunchtime roadtrips: Michie Tavern on Mr. Jefferson’s mountain in Charlottesville. It’s even older than Cross Bros. Grocery.