Downtown Dinners: Bizou and Brookville

Posted by slowfoodiebear on May 3, 2013 · 1 Comment 

This will be a quick post without many words because I think the pictures will speak for themselves.  I want to document some amazing recent dinners I’ve had on the downtown Charlottesville mall.  The first set of images is from my first trip to a French restaurant called Bizou.  It doesn’t have a website, and its menu changes every day, so to preview the dishes, you must walk by the restaurant in person.  It has a cozy, small feel and food is fantastic.  Here’s their light, flaky chicken pot pie:

I had the salmon entree with citrus aioli and roasted vegetables:

And for dessert, I had their signature grilled banana bread with ice cream and caramel sauce:

The next time I visited Bizou, it was with my roommate on one of the first warm and sunny days of spring.  We got to eat outside their restaurant at a cute bistro-like table on the downtown mall.  Here’s the spring ratatouille with fried green tomatoes:

I had one of the specials for the night which was a duck leg cassoulet on a stew with pork sausage, cannelini beans, fresh tomatoes, and pesto:

The final dinner I want to share was at Brookville, one of my favorite restaurants in Charlottesville.  The amuse-bouche was a savory pork-fat popcorn, and for appetizers, there was Chef Keevil’s signature 61 degree egg on top of porky and cheesy grits and maple syrup.  It reminded me of the flavor of one of my favorite childhood desserts, sausage dipped in honey or maple syrup.

I had the ham hock appetizer with mustard and salty pork broth.  It was both tasty and beautiful.

For dinner, I had my favorite–pork belly!  Chef Keevil served is grilled over a cold black bean salsa and a warm, purple bean puree.

Filed under Charlottesville, Dessert, fish, Main Dish, meat, Restaurant Reviews, veggies · Tagged with banana bread, beans, Bizou, Brookville, Charlottesville, chicken, downtown mall, duck, ham hock, pork, pork belly, pot pie, salmon, sausage