Last week I dined at Tavola, the newest restaurant to spring up in the Belmont neighborhood of Charlottesville, Virginia. Now, this is not my first encounter with Tavola, even though the restaurant has been open less than a month. I went the second night the restaurant was open and fell in love with the fresh, ITALIAN dishes – thats real Italian ,not Americanized, Olive Garden Italian. So much in love that I went to every electronic venue I could find to sing its praises.

Everything was how I remembered it. A small, warm restaurant that was further warmed with the sounds of friends enjoying great conversations, great wine, and even better food. And if you didn’t have friends there, you would quickly make them. The small restaurant also means you get quite cozy with the staff (including the chef/ owner, Michael Keaveny, and his wife Tami who walk the restaurant receiving greetings, compliments and feedback). This also means of course, that the restaurant feels that much more warm and comforting.

But what made this second trip even more special than the first was that that night’s menu mentioned the dishes contained local ingredients from area farms and local food providers including the Local Food Hub and Roundabout Farm. I was blown away to see that how quickly the team behind Tavola got behind local ingredients. But its only fitting, because if you’re going to make authentic Italian food, then you should do it the way the Italians do – with the freshest, local ingredients. And it certainly makes a difference. Italian food is many times heavy on the tomatoes, and when they’re in season and locally grown, like the ones I had last week, you can’t help but to enjoy your meal.

Charlottesville has been lacking a fabulous authentic Italian restaurant . Actually Charlottesville has been lacking a fabulous Italian restaurant of any kind. Tavola brings the authentic feeling, sounds, and tastes of Italy to a little street in Charlottesville and I couldn’t be more excited for the friends and food to come.

Starting the Meal with the Antipasti Special

A beautiful Line of Colorful Dishes

Tags: buy local, charlottesville, eat local, local foods, restaurant, virginia

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 at 8:46 pm and is filed under Buy Local, Eat Local. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.