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.