In the never ending churn of restaurant and food rumors in Charlottesville, we’ve got a particularly chatty birdie who has sent in enough gossip to fill a 5 days of post. We’ll add a tidbit or two each day this week. Here are your Escafe and Bistro rumor..
Escafe has sold to “Dancing Queen.” He has some nice ideas that we have been trying to implement for years… which will def make escafe a strictly bar scene… bring the food back?
Clyde Clive who was the original Chef of Boheme has moved to Micheals Bistro
[kudos]
Popularity: 30% [?]
Tagged as: Boheme, Charlottesville, Escafe, Food, Gossip, michael's bistro, Restaurant, Rumors, unfounded facts
His name is Clive.
yes it is… Clive… that is. and his food is da bomb!
Please elaborate:
Dancing Queen (Huh?)
Strictly bar scene (Isn’t it already a bar scene? No food? No, law requires food. Confused)
Bring the food back (What?)
Did your birdie say any more?
I always liked Clive, and rather liked his partner (name forgot) in Boheme—shame that place didn’t fly—i assume it was in the insane-pricing range, and that late-night was excessively preeeeeeetentious.
Not their fault, i guess. It would have been a nice retro-nightclub (ever seen the film The Shadow—the Blue Oyster or whatever the place Alec Baldwin hung-out in in that film was super retro-hip), but didn’t have the right feel or the groups or the clientele to make it properly swank. I understood they served absinthe cocktails? Does anyone else in town? Any idea what’s going into the Boheme space? I assume it’ll be another 9-dollar-a-cocktail CAPSHAW-BAR. (i HATE to see anyone other than capshaw fail at opening/running a business around here).
Escafe as a bar-scene in the 90s had a VERY specifric character—if the name Dancing Queen is any indication, it is perhaps returning to that? This is all pre-hogwaller-ramblers, of course. When millers-C&O-FatCity-Felini’s-Escafe were the ONLY bars downtown, Escafe was always the second-stop, and of course where all the soi-disant swanksters hung-out (view the mural–anyone else here able to name all of them?).
Michael’s has been interesting, throughout. Used to have highly accessible waitresses of a tidy caliber, but not sure what it’s come to now.
I remember vividly a sortof dust-up the owner got into a few years back—Cville or Hook had an article (prob online somewhere) with a great mugshot of him looking like he’d been hit by a truck, post-donnybrook. I think there were a number of assault charges—all very similar to this recent spate of amusing coverage of his tangle with co-owner.
I report it as very funny, and evidence of his being a colorful character, not in any mean-spirited way–he’s a swell and likeable guy, and it’s nice to see there still exists a bar-fighting temperament, even if it’s the owner and not the under-rowdy patrons. Didn’t he run for city-council or mayor or something a while back? Like Tammany Hall, with the brawling irish politicos—shame he lost.
The two chefs who worked at Boheme after Clive were great, too; they should get some credit here. Owners/managers were pretty good guys too, but a little unorganized at times. That spot could be a great location for a restaurant/bar if they promoted right and put more signs, etc. outside so people actually knew where and what it was.
#5 agree whole-heartedly—space would be amazing, again, if not a typical capshaw coke-n-poke joint.
coke n poke… genius.
@4 Otter,
Escafe Mural:
Trixie O, Adrianna A., Shanti D., Jeff B., Sarah B., Daniel K.
who am I leaving out?
/good times, good times.
@8 Sarah, Yael, Drea, Larry, Michelle, Lea M., and half of Sean C….
/am trying to visualize it after years of seeing it every day…
I am impress by your memory and now can recall the famous one of all?
Sorry had to do it!
astounding.
and whom did the painter omit, tragically,
and to the detriment of the work as an cultural-historical document?
follow-up:
how many of those depicted have:
1) committed suicide (not a joke, just a tragic statistic, and a commonplace downtown those days).
2) since moved to new york (or, as we now call it: Brooklyn…).
3) made an utterly unwatchable 1.5 million dollar film set in cville and part-filmed in Escafe.
@11 The painter is Dominique
1.) could be many
2.) Larry, Shanti
3.) Hearts’ Lonely Hunters (dir. D. Kuttner) I actually sat thru it at Estouteville
/this is fun! 90’s trivia!!
I wonder if they will still let me play there.
I hope so. I like that place.
But with my luck lately, dang, who knows.
#13—
apologies my ignorance. ‘Play’ in the sense of swilling cocktails and chasing skirt while making wry observations at voice-top; or ‘play’ in the sense of scratching at an instrument and wailing like a lovesick tomcat to the crowd’s adulation and lauds?
@ 14 Niether really, but closer to the latter. I have been the house dj there for the last 2.5 years. (wed’s & every other friday). Its one of the few joints that has patience with “remixes”.
I just got a bunch of new Abba remixes, so maybe “Dancing Queen” can be audio-bribed…
@15
ah–never too much ABBA—
my pal the Hogwaller-Ramblers’ drummer is a huge ABBA fan—
and the music blogs have been full of them lately, w/ lots of MP3s:
http://mp3.blog.is/blog/mp3/entry/615081/
http://www.selective-service.net/?p=315
http://overfitted.ddcr.biz/?p=1477
http://halfhearteddude.blogspot.com/2008/07/albums-of-year-1980.html
and a whole dang album:
http://blog.tsururadio.com/2008/07/tsururadio-presents-abba-greatest-hits.html
ooooor… every remix imaginable:
http://remix-archive.blogspot.com/search/label/Abbacadabra
nice links list! music blogs make me tingle. ever tried this one?
http://aurgasm.us/
@ 17 - in soviet russia music remixes you!
Where is the Tuesday restaurant-gossip entry?
/hungry for vicious rumors
maybe someone quit after reading teh C-VIlle cover story about this site.
/just a rumor!
@12 I cannot find Hearts’ Lonely Hunters is it on Google all that comes up is “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter”. Please tell me more about this. I am interested in learning more about local off color history.
@21: It was a film shown at the Virginia Film Festival and a few others back in ‘96 about a German guy. That’s about all I have.
@21 Hearts’ Lonely Hunters Directed by Daniel Kuttner & written by Beatrix Ost
starring Hans Jorg Asman a film about a German man who confronts the legacy of Jefferson and America in Charlottesville, Virginia.