This is the third “Week O’ Charlottesville Lunches” article. I will feature my favorite lunch places around the downtown mall. Monday, we covered Eppie’s, Tuesday, Rev Soup, Today, Feast!
Since we covered a local food paradise yesterday, I thought it would make sense to talk about another supporter of the local food movement. Feast, while not directly on the downtown mall, sits about 5 minutes away from the Federal Courthouse. Don’t complain about walking there.
Feast excites me each time I visit. Feast prides itself on offering high-end everything. It’s part retail, part restaurant and you can find everything from artisan meats and cheeses to local produce to bulk olive oil. I digress. This is a lunch review…
The question you need to ask is do I want a sandwich, platter or salad, or am I going to be adventurous and do my own combination of spreads, cheeses and more. It’s a tough choice, even for experienced foodies, but you can’t go wrong either way. Feast lays out enough samples for you to feel full, but I try to be polite and actually buy stuff.
Let’s start with the adventurous path. You MUST go to the cheese and meat island. Don’t be shy. There are plenty of nice dudes and chicks that will help you with your decision. Describe what you like. For instance if you are a cougar, you would say “I want a stinky blue cheese for myself and a light manchego for my afternoon escapades.” Find a meat (I recommend their mole, which is a coffee and spice salami) and get some bread or some crackers. Now head over to the produce island, grab some olives, one of their delicious spreads (I’ve been loving the white bean hummus) and anything else that sounds appealing. Enjoy.
For the less adventurous path, go to the little food side on your left and check out the menu. While less adventurous because the menu is made for you, it’s very good. I recommend watching for specials which often incorporate local, seasonal ingredients. This week I tried the peach and apple white gazpacho. Freaking incredible! I often do the salads because they taste so fresh and healthy, but sandwiches are good too.
Finish off everything with the winner of our great cookie roundup, the Molasses Cookie. Feast offers so many options, it’s hard to decide, but with the samples and the helpful cheese experts, you shouldn’t feel lost. You may spend $11 to $16 on lunch, but I think it’s worth it.
Happy Feasting! What’d we miss?
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Tagged as: Charlottesville, dining, Feast, Food, gourmet, lunch, recommendations, review
mmmMMMmmm cheese, lots and lots of cheese
The staff at Feast is really knowledgeable. My tip: go a lot and have a go-to person, he/she will start remembering you and the cheeses that you have liked in the past; their recommendations based on previous purchases are always dead-on.
Oh, Saturdays are sample days, so don’t miss those.
Thor, if you go today get a limeade with your lunch. It’s perfect AND they have the kind of crushed ice that Raising Canes has
I never knew they had limeade! Thanks for the tip, 434.
Limeade is so much better than lemonade
Oh how do I love Feast, let me count the ways
:) 
Hi Feisty, welcome to cVillain!
You know you can sign up for their “A year in cheeses” program?… they select a cheese and things that go with it for each month of the year (often seasonal). It’s a good way to learn about cheeses and they are really good about explaining it and giving you wine pairing recos
They have this cheese with beer in it. Simply brilliant.
Mmmmmm Porter cheese. Skrump. http://www.accidentalhedonist.com/media/chlprt.jpg
Shen we gotta get together and eat a block of that crap.
Also, Dave at the chee counter at Feast is a super cool guy. Tip that boy!
OMg it looks so gud. But eating a bunch of it will block up your crap.
Good sandwiches, friggin’ pricey though.
I’m not much of a cookie person, so I always go over to Gearhart’s after having lunch at Feast. A single peice of hand-made chocolate finishes off the meal perfectly!
The crazy thing about Dave is that he remembers my name from when he used to make sandwiches like 5 years ago. Its very impressive.
*Off topic…Thor, if I want to start making posts, what do I have to do?
@13: http://cvillain.com/2008/03/28/surprise-back-to-the-roots-how-to-write-your-own-cvillain-article/
Click the “About” button at the top right to find out more, as well.
Well.. I guess Lulu answered that one.. thanks Lu!
you have to give them credit for have quality products.
but i have a real problem with the profit margin they’re getting on some things. if they weren’t the only game in town, they’d be screwed. I wonder what would happen if another store opened and charged 15% less for every item. that’s what they did 5 years ago when Orzo was called Ciboulette. Then everything went up, up, up!
not that i want them out of business. i am just strongly of the opinion that they are not reasonably priced.
e.g. $4.50 for 6oz of hummus, $3 baguettes, and $16/lb cheese.
Well, Thor, secrets out… I am here to steal your job. First the red pen on screenshots, now helping people post in your name. Next, all of cVillain. Then, the world. Then, all of Spicy Bear.
/bigger than the world
Even though it’s not downtown, I think someone should do a review of Savour on Emmet St. We’ve all been seeing it get built for like a year now, and I know NOTHING about it except that they just now are putting ad’s on craigs list for serving positions.
@19 It’s food is good but the decor is odd- it’s all so - not quite.
The cactus fries were really good. I’d go again
how has stanley not informed you both not to use those apostrophes? grammar police are slacking today.
$3 for a baguette is not that crazy. The quality is exponentially higher than what you can get at, say, HT. I doubt they could lower the price even if they wanted to, since they come from ABC right around the corner, which also charges $3. Though that doesn’t stop Mona Lisa or Market St. Wine shop from dropping it to below $3 on occasion…
@19….ate at Savour last week. Very good duck hash app.,the scallop app was excellent, short ribs tasty but nothing special. Kinda neat use of different types of potatos(different type, presentation with each thing we got). I’m looking forward to trying other things next time.
@17 If another store opened and charged 15% less for everything and everything was of the same quality and that store provided good service, then that store would likely win the business of folks who currently buy things at Feast.
Since Ciboullete doesn’t exist anymore, clearly something of the above wasn’t happening.
Also, I’m sure most everyone knows this, but Orzo is a totally different business run by totally different people that has nothing at all in common with Ciboulette save for the space they both inhabit(ed) and that they both sell (sold) wine.
@19, 23 anyone have a menu?
@24 yes the nice people who own and run Orzo are the complete opposite of the dude who ran Ciboulette. I loved his knowledge for wines and cheese, but man was he gruff!
and please don’t get me wrong i do love Feast. i am just shocked at how easily i find myself spending >$20 on just a few items. If they had a frequent shoppers club and offered discounts I would sign right the hell up - and I wouldn’t have even made a peep if they didn’t seem to have a high markup for some very basic products. They seemed to be so much more reasonable two short years ago, and now that they command a good portion of the high-end foods market, they don’t even make an effort to have any *bargains*.
or maybe the cost of everything has gone up and they’re not doing anything out of the ordinary and i’m just in denial. it’s happened before. i will still shop there so long as I can occasionally afford to.
@22 i guess i just remember when some places had good bread for <$2. it’s all the farms switching from wheat to corn for biofuels!! damn envirofascists!
how has stanley not informed you both not to use those apostrophes? grammar police are slacking today.
The grammar police are very busy with a hostage situation involving the subjunctive mood. Would that it were not so!
THat beautiful spanish ham in that beautiful picture is love!!!! At about $2 a slice or $72 a # it is worth your corporate grubbed well squandered cash…if you have love for porcine like I do (not back woods stylee) then you’ll supa love this supa ham…..hhmmmmmmmmm good hammmmmmmm, haug, haug, huug.
Stanley… we had a horrific incident involving an adverbial genitive earlier on this afternoon. I held off in the hope that there would be a grammatical apology but there was none forthcoming. Can we ban an IP on the grounds of misuse of such genitive usage in the face of a blatant partitive case?
/ignorant shower of bastards
oh hey, i wrote a poem:
subjunctive adverbial narcolepsy.
partial participle impunity.
you’re a towel.
swing things wrung flung,
switches what.
supposed handslug
finch hate
soapy fast like molden sandwiches
Oh damn, Parlies a witch.
/not even close
@31: parlie, “sucking” is a gerund form, so what I’m saying is your poem is a gerund form.
i once cursed at a student & he told me “there’s no need to be christing jesus.” of all the words that aren’t gerunds…
Some fule closed off the comments on the Bodo’s thread. My opinion: get your junk on a salad. Such as shrimp salad on Cleo salad. Tuna salad on a Caeser salad. Same goes for Rev Soup, actually.
As for the bagels, splurge & get the lox.
[…] lunch places around the downtown mall. Monday, we covered Eppie’s, Tuesday, Rev Soup, Wednesday, Feast, Today, Bodo’s […]
Feast! is quite delicious, though you’ll be paying about 13-17 dollars when its all said an’ done…
@2 Saturdays are probably the WORST day to go there however… the crowds… and thus the waiting can get ridiculous. They have the same samples, more or less, all week long, AND you’ll get more one on one attention which always helps when you can’t decide between brie and cheddar.
When it comes to fresh, delicious, and often local lunch… Feast is pretty great! They’re chef Angela is a friend and she’s awesome too!
@16 …$16/lb for cheese is not steep at all, they sell cheeses there for >$31/lb
mmmm Duck Mousse or however its spelled. and olives and stinky cheeses and 5 dollar tomatoes that are worth every penny…. CRUSH has the foie gras spelling issues that feast SHOULD carry though
any more info on Savour or a menu ?
@40: Not that I know of. You should go scope it out for us.
I think I may just have to go and do that—-
Please do. You can do a little review if you’d like.
Went to Savour tonight, not bad. Had a “pre-fixe” special where one could have an app, entree and dessert for $30/person. Almost died when I got the bill and my Cosmo was $14……are you kiddin me?? Will post a menu this weekend if I get a chance.
Lost my menu……Anyone else have any experiences there they wish to share?