Charlottesville Food by Casey Ireland

providers.
    To Maupin, seasonal agriculture and local produces affects both his “psyche as a chef” and the business itself. He admits that while “it’s not like we go dormant in those months that the local economy is not producing the abundance for us,” C&O does “try to get creative with it.” Buying local produce does increase food costs for the restaurant. Maupin has found that “it’s not cheaper than the stuff we ship from California or Florida,” yet he continues to average at about 60–70 percent local ingredients year-round because of its ideological importance to Maupin. “I’ve learned to flow with the seasons,” he says. “I know what’s available now. I spend a lot more money now because I try to pull in as much as I can from the Food Hub or whoever is calling up.”
    The C&O has particular loyalties to certain local producers, such as trout from Rag Mountain. “Do I feel like every week when Ellen calls, I should get sixty or seventy? Yeah, because the place has been doing it for twenty-five years,” Maupin says. He has bought produce from Manakintowne Specialty Growers every week since becoming a chef in Charlottesville, though he has been increasingly using the Local Food Hub’s. “Caromont’s cheese is a staple,” Maupin states, as are mushrooms from Sharondale Farm and the foraging efforts of locals. Maupin lists with ease his various meat providers—Retreat Farm for lamb, Best of What’s Around for beef, Polyface for pork and chickens. “Those places have thrived for many years around here,” he notes, “but we certainly have a lot of relationships with a lot of local businesses.”
    Maupin’s transformation of the C&O from fancy French dining to a local mainstay and Charlottesville gem is a lesson on adaptation and resourcefulness. While his kitchen may use many of the same products and ingredients as the Whiskey Jar and Brookville, Maupin’s particular blend of locavore sensibility with a European culinary heritage makes his restaurant one-of-a-kind. Its varying levels of formality, intimate setting and inventive use of ubiquitous-seeming local fare all demonstrate the license that a creative chef can take with the best food products around.
    F ROM P ORK T ACOS TO P ASTRIES : H UMBLE F OOD T HAT ’ S L OCAL
    Despite the successes of places like the C&O or Will Richey’s food empire, not every chicken from Polyface Farms or scrap of pork from the Rock Barn goes to fine dining or even locavore dining. Local can be as easy as a fresh taco al pastor eaten out of a family-owned Mexican food truck or as simple as a still-warm donut. Matt Rohdie, a kind-spoken East Coast native who views Charlottesville as his unofficial hometown, has created a veritable food empire with his truck turned shop Carpe Donut. Rohdie’s business is an example of a successful micro-enterprise, a shop that started small and ended up in Whole Foods. “Our dream was to make magically good donuts and sell them across the counter,” Rohdie relates. 100 “We learned the donuts froze and rewarmed beautifully, which opened up tons of opportunities. One of the event planners whom I had worked with asked for a donut cart at a wedding, which gave us a financial base and whole new market.” Rohdie views Carpe Donut first as “a catering company, then a shop, then a street vendor.”
    What exactly makes Carpe Donut, initially a single-product business, so tasty and so successful? Rohdie defines his clove-scented cider donut as “organic comfort food, the kinds of food people grew up eating and wanted to eat.” His desire to provide a fun product that nourishes its eater stems from his attachment to his family. “I want to make food for Charlottesville the way I make food for my kids,” Rohdie says. Like local homesteaders and family farmers, Rohdie and his wife began their