Sublime Aromas - Charlottesville

Aromas Cafe

Owner - Hassan Kaisoum 
104 Emmet St N
Charlottesville, VA 22903

Telephone 434-244-2486

@ Barracks Road (across from the Fountain)(where the Gaslight used to be when I was its manager) (now a Five Guys, which will never match The Riverside) 
11am til 9pm Monday-Thursday / 9:30 pm Friday-Saturday / 3:30pm Sunday

Thank you, Hassan Kaisoum!  

My very beautiful daughter Jessie Jane and I went to Aromas Cafe for a special occasion lunch ... I found the quality on a par with the last meal I had upstairs at the C&O ... and slightly better than the last meal I had downstairs.  Jessie Jane and I fought over the C&O's food too, perhaps a bit more than we did at Aromas ... portions might have been larger at Aromas? (necessitating less squabbling over morsels?)  Lunch for two with baklava and the chocolate dome dessert, the Moroccan Merguez Tagine, triple mezze and tzadziki came to I think $50 plus tip, or 60.00 all in.  So yes, it was expensive but on the other hand it was also  ...  Extremely Terrific.  I'm betting the rent is still really steep at Barracks Road these days.  The rent  about killed The Gaslight when I was its manager. That was long ago, but I think it is still difficult to make a profit on a small house (with only 50 seats) when you don't own the building.

Possibly three people could have done very well on the same amount of food Jessie Jane and I squabbled over so happily?  Three of us would have meant some real competition for tidbits and crumbs, however, and we would have needed two of the Chocolate Dome desserts.  And the Merguez sausage in the Tagine would have disappeared in a trice -- probably before I got my fair share.

However,  in rating Aroma's version of the cuisine bourgeoise of the Med, like many other people, I started from memories of the many very ordinary mediocre Greek/Mediterranean restaurants that do such a passable job of selling lackluster (and often canned) items for top dollar to people who probably neither know nor care much what they're eating.  Maybe I liked the lamb twang of the Moroccan Merguez Tagine so much because it was authentically Berber or North African more than Eastern Mediterranean?  

Can't we get a spit with some real lamb roast turning on it?  Pretty please? Mr. Kaisoum?  Maybe for parties? or special occasions? 

Anyone who reads this is welcome to review my notions about why individual differences in tasting ability offer an adequate explanation for why most restaurants don't find it profitable even to attempt serving food as sublime as that Moroccan Merguez Tagine Jessie Jane and I loved.  We ate every last lentil.  It was not overpriced.  I wanted the shrimp and white bean cassoulet, but got outvoted by the birthday girl.  I will get some the next time it appears on the menu.  I promise.

The mezze, also, were not overpriced.  More importantly, they struck me as being the best I ever ate in any restaurant.  Great Baba Ganouj.  Superb falafel.  Scrumptious tzadziki.

Cheap, however, Aromas is not.  It did not seem full on the Saturday late lunch hour of around 2:00 pm ... Barracks Road might probably perhaps not be the place most people would think to go for an outstanding but relatively high-priced lunch?  Perhaps we missed the rush?  A reputation for pricey-ness sometimes makes it hard to fill seats no matter how good the food is.  That said, Peter Chang seemed steep, too -- worth it to me but perhaps not to the others in my party -- so I'm blaming the rent.  And I haven't tried Aromas at dinner yet.  

Comparing prices seems silly, but lunch for two at the Nordstrom Cafe in Short Pump, my most-frequented nibble these days (because it's not just very good but also very reliable), comes in at just over $30 total including tip, though it's possible to feed two there for under $20 including coffee and dessert (and they do serve a "secret" breakfast menu ALL DAY.)  Nordstrom Cafe is worth a visit any time you're in Short Pump.  Coffee's great too, and bottomless.  After lunch you can slide down to Trader Joe's to pick up some triple cream French cheese and organic California wines for a price so reasonable you might be glad you drove to Richmond.  I hear they're opening  a store in Charlottesville this year.  Keep fingers crossed?  (though alas, I hear it will be North of the City -- Wegman's, I hear, will go for a 29 South location, which I think will be easier to get to.   -- Christian Gehman

Dalessandro's -- The Paragon of Philly Steak

In Philadelphia. Of course.

Where else would it be?

Dalessandro's is on the Left Bank of the Schuylkill. From downtown, it's upriver to Manayunk and then over the hill to be precise.  On Wendover Street.  You can call ahead (215-482-5407) but then you'll miss out on experiencing a good anticipatory drool while you sit at the little counter waiting for your  steak.

You can have your Pat's, your Tom's, your Geno's. Take your wife there -- please! But don't expect to find a steak nearly as good as what you get at Dalessandro's.

Dalessandro's is at 600 Wendover Street on Henry Avenue, just a short block from the Walnut Street Entrance to the park. Handy for that empty feeling after golf. And they do serve beer. On the left bank of the Schuylkill, on the hill above and slightly northeast of Manayunk. You are at best a fool and at worst totally insane if you don't stop at Dalessandro's whenever you are even just near Philadelphia. Dalessandro's beats the sox off Pat's, Geno's, Tom's, and Chubby's -- though I have read that Chubby's, used to be the go-to call on Sundays before Dalessandro's began opening on the Sabbath, I have never been to Chubby's, can't personally recommend it and doubt I'd try anything but Dalessandro's whenever it's open.

Dalessandro's serves subs, too, very good subs -- but the best subs I ever ate were at The Rendezvous on West King Street in Lancaster, around the corner from my father's boyhood home at 342 West Orange. "You can go die in a well if you don't like it" (as someone said in another forum), and that's exactly how I used to feel about The Rendezvous. They have a great cheese steak, too. I pray the sandwiches are still that good. I used to stop there for a steak to fill me up and couple subs to tide me over on my long ride home to Charlottesville after visiting my grandparents, Martin Weaver and Nellie Boyd Gehman, often after the Gehman Family Reunion at the Behrville Fire Hall, where my great-uncle Harold B. Gehman, who was Town Constable in Blue Ball much of his life, used to tell me every year that his main job was "arresting drunken Amishmen on Saturday night." I don't know if that meant he had a lot to do or almost nothing, but that story, though perhaps apocryphal, may have been where my father, Richard Gehman, got the idea for his musical By Hex

How hard it IS to make a sub or steak sandwich properly, you will be able to judge for yourself -- but only after tasting a truly good one, after which you'll probably realize you have been eating cardboard imitations stuffed with inferior sliced meats at a shopping mall up until then. Amoroso rolls are one part of the secret. Not using "Wiz" is another. Wiz crept in later.  It's just watered-down Velveeta -- which I will admit does make a passable con queso. 

Measuring up to these two paragons is what I was aiming for when I opened Christian's Restaurant in McIntyre Plaza, Charlottesville. How nearly I succeeded! How people love great sandwiches! may be indicated by the fact that I was doing, sometimes, $1,700 a day at lunch -- in the middle Seventies! out of a place not much bigger than two big flat screen TVs.  Three previous restaurants had failed in that location.  I was aiming for enough business to pay the rent so I could make money catering.  But -- possibly thanks to the beignets!  One of my partners declined to continue -- too much stress.  The other one, I caught coming out of the place with an entire cooked roast beef and three six packs of Heineken under his arm.  We made the best sandwiches in Charlottesville!  (at that time) ... Before long we were doing a land office business!

Alas, the location has now morphed into a somewhat lackluster Vietnamese restaurant that I can't recommend: the Saigon Cafe, where the food was so mediocre on my last visit almost two years ago, and the place so devoid of happy customers that I began to wonder why I didn't just volunteer to help them learn to make subs and steak sandwiches.  Ah, youth!

There were hardly any decent sandwiches in Charlottesville back in the Seventies. There are not many today, for that matter. John Crafaik once asked me for the secret of making a great sandwich. Judging by the significant success of Bodo's Bagels, possibly the best advice I should have given him would have been: serve the sandwich on a bagel fresh out of the oven. And NEVER wrap it in plastic.

The best sandwich I have eaten in Charlottesville recently was at the Bodo's on University Avenue.

 Most people are not passionate enough about good sandwiches.

It is worthwhile remembering the great chef Louis Szathmary's notion that "Great restaurants are like a woman's private parts -- men know how to find them."

That said, I haven't visited Dalessandro's recently. I hear a rumor that it changed hands.  Let me know how you like it, please? (since I probably won't get up there this summer) ....

Dalessandro's
The Rendezvous