Everyone’s favorite tapas bar MAS is graciously hosting our second weekly Club Villain event TONIGHT.  Tomas and I sat down last evening and discussed his new food & drink offerings, and also his newly attired staff, sporting Pink Mas shirts in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  We are inviting everyone to join us @ 9PM tonight for this awesome opportunity to mingle with other readers, and enjoy a special list of delicious.

Drinks - $2
Mas Tea
Cava
Sangria
Star Hill – Northern Lights
Primavera Rioja

Tapas - $2
Pulpo with palette – Acorn Ham wrapped octopus grilled
Gambas – Poached Chilled Shrimp
Resde Tarilla – Grilled Hangar
Padron Peppers – Spicy green peppers, olive oil, & sea salt.
Chorizo – Fresh Sausage

I just went into enoteca for the first time in a couple months and it seems like the entire staff has changed including the manager. Does this mean that the long anticipated CC overhaul/ firesale is underway? Now accepting field reports from Ten, Blue Light etc.

Tomas Rahal,  local entrepreneur, restaurateur (owns Mas) and former UVa architecture graduate student, declares peace in response to the heated commentary in last week’s fancy Spanish Bellota ham post.  After reading his comment, I knew then and there that it had to be immortalized for everyone to see on cVillain’s front page.  This comment gives a terrific insight into a wonderful and carefree personality:

Make Jamon not war! Jamon Bellota is indeed rare and serves to illustrate the great divide between sustainable agriculture and agri-business. These pigs are the descendants of Europe’s arboreal forest pigs when acorns and hardwood mast were more plentiful before the armadas cut every dang tree down for warships and crucifixes. It is delicious, melt-in-your-mouth scrumptious with incredible marbling enhanced by years of aging. Years of aging, (not weeks like American hams which are injected with cure and whose production leaves indescribable bio-waste behind) and the patience to wait make it so much a treat. Our’s is aged minimum of two years but families and producers have been known to bust out the 5-10 year-old Jamon or Palleta which is the shoulder cut. We are still waiting for the thoroughly discredited USDA to approve chorizo made from these pigs. There is precious little fat left on the exterior but what’s there makes damn fine chiccharon (pork rinds). The Spanish pigs live out on the Dehesas, an oak-strewn savannah, where they range freely eating ‘corns, roots, letting their fur grow out, fucking and making more Jamon in the hot Spanish sun. Sounds good to me. Where’s the wine? At no time do they consort with squirrels but i have heard of massive parties amongst the free wildlife when the shepherds or Pastors go to bed. Come and get it, it’s pricey but we just want you all to taste the best Jamon in the world. Then the wine!

I don’t think we have ever received such a candid comment from a local business owner in response to a post about something they offer, be it good or bad. Tomas, I want you to know from the bottom of my and the rest of us villains’ hearts, we love you. In fact, I think we like you so much, we want you on here more often.

PS:  send us your ham!

[pic of pigs shagging from bryangeek on Flickr]

I have heard from a couple people that Mas is featuring a very exclusive type of Spanish ham.  It is called “Jamón de Bellota” (hamm-one -like hamburg and ramone put together + bay-yota). It literally means acorn ham. The upper class pigs used for this type of ham lead a happy life (until slaughter). AGRC Tropical Spain gives us more detail:

The feeding conditions of the hogs are just as important as the kinds of hogs used. Iberian hogs are long legged, range fed and eat up to twenty pounds of acorns/day. “Jamón de Bellota” is “ham from acorns.” At this pace, the hogs gain about two pounds of fat/day but maintain a healthy lifestyle, living free range, not cooped up in tiny shacks or pens. The combination of a high fat, acorn diet, with a free-range lifestyle gives the hams that special, nutty taste. The majority of Iberian hogs are raised in Southern Spain near Portugal.

Jamón de Bellota, then, is a slow and very costly process. This is why there may be up to a two-year wait from certain farms for a good ham. (Keep in mind, this is only the feeding and raising process. We haven’t even begun to talk about production and curing!)

Do not confuse this king of ham with lesser common varieties of Spanish ham. Apparently most ham comes from white hogs and aren’t fed acorns to speed up production times (sounds a lot like American industrial farming yes?).

While I haven’t tried this ham personally, I did see an entire leg of it at a friend’s apartment in Miami last December. His older brother put in an order two years prior. Besides waiting for the ham to cure he had to wait for customs to authorize this type of cured meat for import. I wish I had known what was sitting in that wooden crate in front of me at the time…

Has anyone else tried this? For those of you interested in throwing an acorn-ham themed cVillain party, you can do us all a favor and order an entire leg from La Tienda, and save us $1,500 (completely serious).
[pic from ABACERIA DEL SUR on flickr]

We got an updated tip from a reliable birdie who has some friends in the business:  There is some meat to the rumor that Coran Capshaw’s restaurant group, including Blue Light Grill, Enoteca, Mas, Mono Loco, Ten and Three Notch’d, is actually on the auction block.

The birdie points out that times are very tough for food and beverages businesses, especially high end places like Starbucks.  With ATO Records successful signage of new artists, do you think the Coran empire is tired of running local restaurants in tough times? It would make sense and we have a strong feeling this is the truth.

What do you know?

[pic]

If you recall, we reviewed Si Tapas in Richmond a few months ago.  Our conclusion was “if Si Tapas can overcome a difficult location, a very large venue and do a par or better job with service, then Mas should watch out, in fact, everyone in Charlottesville should watch out because small plates with unique tastes are winners in this town.  I’m really looking forward to Si Tapas and I hope you are too.”

So, what’s going on at the Charlottesville Si Tapas?  

»Read More

You know you are a little crazy about food when you trap your friend into driving over an hour from Charlottesville to Richmond to eat dinner at a place called “Si Tapas.”  My companion goes “but Thor, why do we have to go to Richmond, can’t we just eat at Mas!?”  I told this one (who grew up hunting wild animals and knows how to wrestle bears, but barely knows how to use the internet) that it’s something I’ve been meaning to do and we can’t question my intentions.  I digress.

In case you didn’t know, Si Tapas will open in the old Star Hill space in Mid-Town within two weeks.  It’s an exciting competitor for Mas, which is loved and hated by Charlottesville for its food and service, respectively (despite the employee praise that happens on this site, it’s a common issue).  What better way to preview it for Charlottesville than to visit the Richmond location?

»Read More

Another of our famous Mallstars, Tony is owner of the hippest coffee joint on the downtown mall, Cafe Cubano.  I don’t know anyone else in town that takes more pride in drawing a shot of espresso than Tony…be sure to ask for a cortadito (typical Cuban coffee:  lots of sugar, espresso and a drop of milk…it will knock you on your caffeinated feet), and you will see the attention he gives to the tiny succulent shot.  So I thought it would be great to find out more about the man behind the coffee…so here goes!

Starting a life and business in Charlottesville

Where were you before Charlottesville?
I was in Miami in the restaurant business, but when my wife was diagnosed with a serious illness we moved to Alexandria. There I partnered with a restaurant guy in the DC to manage a couple locations and we later sold the business to a South Korean group in 1992. That gave me the chance to move to cville. I started working in Richmond for about a year consulting for a restaurant group and later worked for UVa with a management consulting group.

Why did you come to Charlottesville?
My first wife, who passed away, had a sister that lived here.  For twenty years we traveled to cville about 2-3 times per year.  I was always impressed by the environment.

How did Cafe Cubano come about?
I had an opportunity to meet the brothers from Higher Ground Coffee. I loved their food and coffee and decided to buy it. My goal was to deliver a micro-concept on the downtown mall. I loved the diversity and “city” feeling of the mall. The customer base came from all walks of life. From movers and shakers to UVa professors and students to nerds to entrepreneurs…it reminded me a lot of old-town Alexandria.

»Read More

Alicia Keys said, “If I want to be alone, some place I can write, I can read, I can pray, I can cry, I can do whatever I want–I go to the bathroom”. I assume that she’s talking about the bathroom in her house, and not any of the public restrooms in Charlottesville, but for the moment, I will humor (probably only) myself and think that she could be applying this philosophy to say, Zinc. Or Maya. Or Mas.

»Read More

Daylight savings time. In addition to causing 3% of people to be late for work yesterday (I just made that up) it also gives us “Spring Fever.” Spring Fever is a medical condition; a shock to the system resulting from the one-two punch of marginally warmer temperatures and a precipitous increase in late-day sunlight levels. For some people, this causes a marked increase pathological dating. Let the record show that I am OK with this. Another common symptom is an almost irrepressible urge to leave work and head directly to the closest outdoor happy hour. It’s not a good idea, but goddamn it, you’ve had a hard day doing… whatever it is… you do here. Pull up a chair and take a long, slow pull of the strong waters. You’ve earned it (no you haven’t).

»Read More