Places to Eat in Blacksburg, VA

[Carrot Top]

Busboy's recent thread on trying to find a good place to eat while driving through Lexington, VA brought the thought that maybe someone might find themselves in a similar situation in my neck of the woods.

Blacksburg (which is home to Virginia Tech) has a lot of places to eat. It can be confusing to a visitor with the jumble of pizza places and bars that exist to keep the student population going strong.

I thought that to start I might just list the places that I can whole-heartedly recommend for one reason or another. If there is a restaurant that someone travelling through does not see listed that they are curious about, please feel free to PM me and I'll tell you whatever I can about it. . .

My personal criteria for a whole-hearted recommendation includes the following:

1. Taste of foods offered must have a sort of vitality and life.

2. Consistency, i.e. the food should not suffer if the cook is making it rather than the chef that particular day.

3. Sanitation (a big one for me). In a college town with lots of staff turnover in the kitchens, this can be a problem. I try to be hooked-into the goings on enough in the places to be able to know staff who can give me the scoop on what "really" is going on back-of-house.

4. Atmosphere and service should be pleasant.

5. Style. . .a sense of style definitely adds to the experience.

6. Food made in-house not ordered from Sysco ready-made then reheated and served.

Places for lunch or dinner: (I'll attach a link to a website where one exists.)

Nerv http://thenerv.com/dinner_menu.php

Cabo Fish Taco http://www.cabofishtaco.com/menu.html (A new addition, located right on Main Street in downtown Blacksburg.) (Note: It might be closed on Mondays. . .at the moment it is, but when the students return to town that could change. . )

Five Guys Burgers and Fries http://www.fiveguys.com/images/Menu.html (On University Boulevard, across from University Mall.)

PK's Pizza (On Main Street.)

Places for Coffee:

Mill Mountain Coffee http://www.millmountaincoffee.com/

Bollo's http://athena.english.vt.edu/~nquesinb/Nq/...tra/gbhome.html

Starbuck's is here too. The difference between Mill Mountain and Bollo's seems to me to be that everyone's hair at Bollo's, whether they be male or female, is about six inches longer than everyone's hair at Mill Mountain. Bollo's also does not accept credit or debit cards, and Mill Mountain does.

Places for Dessert:

Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, Kent Square on Main Street

Hope this little list might be of use to someone that might be "driving through"!

Karen

Edited July 26, 2005 by Carrot Top (log)

[Busboy]

I'm glad you posted this. After my whining about Lexington, it occurred to me to start a thread on Valley/Blue Ridge/Highlands eating -- I'm not sure I can think of a region in the country that I find more beautiful and welcoming and, having scored a truly spectacular ham at a place called Laynes outside of Natural Bridge, I know that there is some good food to be had, when I'm not falling in love with the countryside or trying to cook dinner on a camp stove.

(Tried to get my son to apply to Tech, but he swears he's going farther away from home than Blacksburg when he goes off to college. Dang.)

[stringcheese]

Hi Carrot Top! Wow, so we were neighbors for a while...I lived in Blacksburg from 1998-2004. I've since moved home to Wisconsin, but really miss that area (no mountains here!). It sounds like there have been some significant new additions even since I've been there.

I don't know if we're including breakfast, but I always enjoyed Gilles, next to Bollo's. I was only there for lunch/dinner a few times, and found that they probably would not rate well on your consistency scale. However, I always had good breakfasts there.

On the "cheap eats" side, Emilio's and Souvlaki had good fare for lunch on a grad student budget.

[Carrot Top]

Hey, stringcheese! Probably good you are not here in Blacksburg today. . .it is verrrrry hot!

The places you mentioned would have been in my "second" list, if there had been one, definitely. Plus Boudreaux's (Cajun) and Sharkey's if it re-opens well (it is undergoing transformation to a BBQ ribs place).

The two top places are both new, and both have taken "places to eat" here to a higher level than before, both in terms of a sophistication of sorts and in terms of the technical level demanded of the kitchens. They have made it so that I don't blush when someone asks me what Blacksburg has "good to eat". (Yes, I am demanding in ways, used to be a chef and such-like myself in a previous life experience ).

Though if one is in the mood for some good pita and tzaziki, the Souvlaki place is a marvel. Pita shipped in from Chicago, each bite worth every mile it travelled!

Which reminds me, "Steppin' Out" the town's annual street festival, is coming up on September 5 if anyone is wandering through. . .

Edited July 26, 2005 by Carrot Top (log)

[stringcheese]

I can definitely vouch for Nerv...we had the fortune to eat there more than once when it first opened, and that would be my first stop if I were to pass through again. (Not today, though--we just got through our own heat wave, and I have no desire to experience another one!

). I was impressed with the service as well as the food every time!

[Carrot Top]

Well, it seems that the heat wave affected me to the point that I dreamt that we lost a month of summer when I was writing the last post.

"Steppin' Out" is actually happening on August 5th and 6th. Not September 5th.

[Fat Guy]

We've been to Blacksburg several times to visit a friend who's a professor at Tech, and she always takes us to Gillies. I've always found the food decent, in a crunchy granola seventies throwback sort of way. Now that I have this intel, though, next time we'll be branching out.

[BrentKulman]

Like a number of folks from North Carolina, due to the limitation on selling beers with an abv above 6%, I go up to Blacksburg from time to time to purchase high gravity beer from Vintage Cellar. In the next block on South Main Street is a great little sandwich shop called Lefty's Main St. Grille. Lefty's is in a converted Long John Silver's so you might pass right by the place thinking it was a fast food joint. Bad decision. Not only are the sandwiches, burgers and salads excellent, they have a small selection of great beers on tap.

[Carrot Top]

Ah! It must be you guys from North Carolina that help Blacksburg in attaining its ranking as the single place in the state of Virginia that sells the most alcohol annually. . .(an unverified fact that is bandied about town but that the amount of bars on Main Street seem to attest to! )

Vintage Cellar is actually quite a find in a place like Blacksburg. . .the owner is quite knowledgeable about both beer and wine, has an incredibly good stock of both, and to boot there are often "wine tastings" held at the counter on Saturdays

where everyone gets quite chummy till they are forced by the growing line of people waiting for a taste to go off and buy a bottle or two. . Really. What beats a casual wine tasting when the wines are good, I ask you. . .

Which brings to mind to also suggest Gourmet Pantry for a bit of shopping for whatever pot, pan or kitchen utensil has come into your mind to desire. 712 North Main Street near Mill Mountain Coffee. . .wonderful things of all sorts here. She also carries a few good books and some pantry items and wines. Great place to browse, great place to buy that little gizmo for something or other or the tart pan that you are sure you'll need sometime!

And speaking of tarts. . .Our Daily Bread on South Main Street across from Vintage Cellar (which is a tiny place in the Kroger shopping center) has wonderful baked goods if you need something high-carb. Which you can gobble down then wander into Oasis next door, which is an "international market" with a surprisingly enormous variety of "ethnic" foods on its shelves. You can even get chicken feet there if you're in the mood to make a good chicken soup. . .

Edited July 28, 2005 by Carrot Top (log)

[Carrot Top]

There's something that happens to me when I taste something that is exceptional rather than run of the mill or even just plain good.

I never thought, honestly, that this would happen to me in Blacksburg, Virginia - but it did, today.

It was at a place I hadn't tried before though it's been open over a year. The space was vaguely unappealing to me from the front. There have been other places that have opened, places with more swashbuckle about them, that I've tried. Some have been good, some have been uneven in performance, some have been blah.

Sitting down late this afternoon, a hot and sunny late summer afternoon, I thought that at least I'd have an okay glass of wine and some okay pizza. I was proved wrong, and had more than that.

What happens to me when I taste something that is exceptional is that time suspends itself in an odd fashion. Time, suddenly becomes wrapped up in a bite, in a long taste, in a swallow, in an aftertaste.

Being a rather particular and often quietly cranky person underneath the smile that is always on my face, I do not often taste something that I consider exceptional, so today I was totally taken aback.

Time suspends itself in the bite, and after the swallowing there is an all-encompassing quiet that strikes me, a deep and unavoidable seriousness.It is as if Honor were invoked in the tasting, an honor that belonged to the cook and to the world. My smile disappears from my face. It feels as if something of serious and high intent happened, a wonderful zen-like thing. And I am caught in its trap, suspended like a bug in a spider's web, but not worried at all about being eaten, for it is me that is eating the magical thing.

This all happened this evening at a place surprisingly called "Ceritano's Ristorante".

Sitting at a table on the deck.

The food was food that others make other places. Clams in a white wine sauce. Mushrooms stuffed with crabmeat. Nothing unusual for an Italian-American place anywhere. Brick-oven baked bread, as brick-oven pizza is their specialty.

A cannoli came home with me. Soon I'll eat it. I can not wait to see if it resembles the other food I ate in being a Cannoli of Magic and Honorable Things.

Edited July 7, 2007 by Carrot Top (log)

[tautog]

There was a half way decent Vietnamese/Thai place near the Mall. Not sure if it is still open. Nothing special, but great for the area.

[Carrot Top]

There was a half way decent Vietnamese/Thai place near the Mall.  Not sure if it is still open.  Nothing special, but great for the area.

←

I just walked in the door from having another cannoli and Chinotto at the Italian place to see your post.

That Vietnamese/Thai place in University Mall closed last year. In its place, finally, after much construction woe, a Kebob place opened run by a young Persian couple (and I see Mom and Dad in the back, too, cooking). It is very good of its kind - their chicken kebobs are the best, marinated in a yogurt/spice mix.

"Not Just Coffee" is even better than before, on Main Street. Outrageous pitas made to order, huge and pillow-y, freshly baked. Have not been disappointed there at all lately. They've renamed it the Mediterranean something-or-other. Lebanese home cooking - the spinach pie is the best I've had since I lived around the corner from Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. I like the atmosphere, the bantering with the servers who most likely have a stake in the place . . .

There is a new Thai place that opened in one of the new buildings on Main Street. Nice upscale cool decor, nice menu, and when they are good they are great but unfortunately there has been some inconsistency and that drives me nuts as someone who used to have to be sure consistency was maintained in the food that exits a professional kitchen. It is worth trying, though - and they have bubble tea which is also nice.

Awful Arthurs just opened in another of the new buildings on Main Street and we went there a couple of weeks ago. It could have been that they need to work out some kinks, for the vegetables were not cooked through and the seafood was okay but not stunning and the service was rather confused. To say the least. But again, it's nice to have it here and we'll try it again.

I went to the Italian place mentioned above two nights ago and was disappointed that the tomato-mozzarella salad had tomatoes that were almost green. I pushed them aside and ate the mozzarella which was fresh and good, and am trying to convince myself that to some cooks in some cuisines the harder tomatoes are preferred to the riper red ones. That's how much I like the place. Their hearth-baked bread (huge loaves, taste like Florentine bread) are very good, so taking home one of those assuaged the sadness of the tomato debacle.

The last time I was at Nerv they had switched the menu to serving "tapas" with a hip attitude attached to the act which were not really "tapas" in the true sense of the word but rather small portions of all the things they offer plated differently and priced to make a killing. The experience was sort of silly not to mention overpriced and I haven't been back since. I like small portions but this thing was something small-minded shaped as something big-imagined and it was wierd.

Things are getting better in terms of different places to eat that are good, but of course there still needs to be improvement.

Oasis World Market is my most favorite place in town. Friday night the fresh seafood and veggies arrive and it is just plain fun. The stuff is actually better than the Farmer's Market, there is a larger variety, and it is much much cheaper as the Farmer's Market prices are at least twice the grocery store prices and Oasis somehow manages to get the stuff and charge less, often, than the grocery stores but it is fresh and better. A mystery, really.

Well, Tautog. You set me off on a roll. If you come through here again, you'll have a longer list to explore.

[stringcheese]

Well, Tautog. You set me off on a roll.  If you come through here again, you'll have a longer list to explore. 

←

Karen, thanks so much for your report! I just found out that my spouse and I will have the opportunity to visit Blacksburg in August, after having moved away from the state in 2004. I'm looking forward to trying some new places!

[tautog]

Haven't stopped to eat there in a few years. Usually stop in Roanoke at have a late lunch at El Palenique or an early lunch at the Southern Inn in Lexington if I am going visiting in Blacksburg/WV. Eating down that way gives me a bad memory of a beautiful, barely legal girl I was dating who had no idea what good food was. Thought Taco Bell and Kabuki were the best thing going. Actuially told Frank Galvan at El Palenique that the food was almost as good as Taco Bell..*LOL*.

[Carrot Top]

Karen, thanks so much for your report!  I just found out that my spouse and I will have the opportunity to visit Blacksburg in August, after having moved away from the state in 2004.  I'm looking forward to trying some new places!

←

Ah. Let me post some more places for you to think of before you arrive, then.

Here's some links to places I mentioned before:

Ceritano's

Cafe de Bangkok (the new Thai place)

Smokey's Kabob

There's also a new BBQ place and a new Chinese place next to the Lyric Theatre. The BBQ is okay but to my taste the one that is open during the school year in Owens (VT) is much better. The Chinese place is called Happy Wok and the few times I've been there the food was fresh and good but not fancy of course.

There's a Cinnabon in Owens now, too. Sigh.

And I still think that some of the best sandwiches and definitely the best chocolate croissants can be found at Au Bon Pain in Squires (VT).

There's a hookah lounge ( ) that I have not been to. Yet. (Hah!)

There are two new sushi places - one in University Mall which is okay and one that I have not tried yet that looks very cute and has been pretty busy since it opened. Here's the link - it's part of Poor Billy's.

Interesting and good is the new Ethiopian take-out which is in a small space next to The Chocolate Spike.

And I would be remiss if I did not mention Preston's for white tablecloth dining at The Inn at Virginia Tech. I've heard the Sunday Brunch is a remarkable spread for "here" but do not know anyone who actually goes to dinner there from "here" yet - it is mostly for the visiting conference crowd so far I guess.

Yesterday I got totally thrilled driving down Main Street when I saw a small shop newly painted and decorated. I shouted "Look, look!" to my daughter, "A new place to eat!"

She gave me the fourteen-year old's look of disdain. "What are you talking about, Mom? There's nothing there."

I insisted on turning around to drive back past the place.

I was sure the sign had said "Blacksburg Taco".

It actually had said "Blacksburg Tattoo."

Trust me, we need more places to eat than we need more tattoo shops.

............................................

PM me, stringcheese, if you have free time when you visit. I can lead you directly to the cannolis.

Eating down that way gives me a bad memory of a beautiful, barely legal girl I was dating who had no idea what good food was.  Thought  Taco Bell and Kabuki were the best thing going.  Actuially told Frank Galvan at El Palenique that the food was almost as good as Taco Bell..*LOL*.

←

Ouch.

[Carrot Top]

Awful Arthurs just opened in another of the new buildings on Main Street and we went there a couple of weeks ago. It could have been that they need to work out some kinks, for the vegetables were not cooked through and the seafood was okay but not stunning and the service was rather confused. To say the least. But again, it's nice to have it here and we'll try it again.

←

We tried Awful Arthur's again, tonight. The last time was mid-June, soon after its opening. I really was hopeful that two months (with light service demands as the student population that makes up most of this town disappears over the summer) would allow the place to come together.

It is in one of the brand new buildings in town - one of the shiny brick and glass palaces that did not use to exist here till two years ago. The space is nice. Open, clean, large, sophisticated.

Too bad the kitchen can't recognize a rotten potato when they see it.

Again, tonight, service was slow, confused, waitresses (no I do not intend to say servers in this moment) wandering from table to table with plates asking if the food was supposed to be at that table, wrong all the time till they hit the fourth or fifth lucky table that actually was right. . . I ordered a fried oyster sandwich, not being willing to waste the amount of money I'd wasted on the last meal, and my daughter ordered clam chowder. When the food finally arrived after a forty-five minute wait (the place was busy, granted - the town is packed with students returning for the school year and their parents, but regardless . . .) it looked good.

Except that someone had stripped an entire bunch of fresh thyme into a bowl of clam chowder for seasoning. Impenetrable thyme flavor - deep, oily, woodsy, overpowering. Where is Remy when you need him, I ask. A rat would have known better. So she did not, could not, eat the chowder. Either could/would I, for that matter.

I am usually supportive of restaurants trying to get their feet on the ground. I'm on their side. But I have discovered one thing that can make me wander right over to the other side. And that is when a rotten potato has been served to me. A rotten, literally rotten (as in, when you see a potato that has sunk into itself and which smells of iodine and must) french fry was part of my french fries. I can still taste it.

After eating the rotten french fry, I tried to eat the oyster roll but somehow the idea of the risk of eating oysters after having just eaten (and spit out into a napkin for it was unswallowable) a rotten potato somehow did not seem like a very smart idea.

The waitress came to refill our drinks and poured me some water and pleasantly at the same time refilled my daughter's soda which she had delivered no more than ten minutes earlier with the same water instead of thinking to refill it with soda.

We got the check.

I asked for a comment card and the hostess looked at me as if I had two heads. After a pause for deep thought she asked if I wanted to speak to the manager. Okay.

So the manager arrived and I told her the tale. Her response was "oh we have a new waitress" and "oh the french fries come in frozen so it could not have been our fault".

I sort of doubt both claims.

And even if true, sorry, no cigar.

I won't be singing "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" tonight.

[Carrot Top]

Destiny is calling me to sing that song today, though.

I had to go to a new area of Christiansburg (the next town over) where I hadn't been before. Semi-industrial, off the highway and out of the way a bit - to find some arcane part for my son's remote control helicopter. I had the hardest time finding the place, but lo and behold! Up the road a piece ( ) there was, to my disbelieving eyes, a pit barbecue in a small building.

Due South Pit Cooked BBQ. Only pit bbq in the area, they've been open about six months. And to make it even sweeter, they are the 2007 Virginia State BBQ Champions placing 1st Place Sauce - Hot Red.

I wandered in. Clean place, small and unassuming. Menu has (besides BBQ with four different sauces) "Mildred Lilly's Pimento Cheese Sandwich"; "Grammy's Bean Sandwich"; Banana Pudding; Fried Green Tomatoes; and Fried Pickles among the other offerings.

1465 Roanoke Street is the address. They have live bluegrass on Thursday nights.

The guy I got the helicopter part from said the place is good - he particularly loves the deep fried pickles.

[Carrot Top]

We ate at the barbecue place tonight.

I'm not going to say too much because it was the first time I ate there, but the rack of ribs I got looked steamed though they had been "pit cooked". The baked beans are half kidney beans half navy beans which is . . . unusual.

My daughter asked how I liked it. I said I wished it had been more. She said more? More what? More better? I said yes.

Worth a try again sometime with hope in my heart, maybe it was an off night.

[TGTyson]

We tried Awful Arthur's again, tonight. The last time was mid-June, soon after its opening. I really was hopeful that two months (with light service demands as the student population that makes up most of this town disappears over the summer) would allow the place to come together.

...

Too bad the kitchen can't recognize a rotten potato when they see it.

...

So the manager arrived and I told her the tale. Her response was "oh we have a new waitress" and "oh the french fries come in frozen so it could not have been our fault".

I sort of doubt both claims. 

And even if true, sorry, no cigar.

←

Awful Arthurs used to be a really good, reliable privately owned VA chain. Good seafood properly prepared with good sides.

UNFORTUNATELY, the owners (new?) have decided that they can make a lot more money with the bar than the dining room, so the food and service has suffered mightly. We've had the exact kind of experiences as you in the Roanoke, Richmond and Mechanicsville restaurants.

It's really sad, as the food there used to be worthwhile.

- TT

Edited September 9, 2007 by TGTyson (log)

[Carrot Top]

UNFORTUNATELY, the owners (new?) have decided that they can make a lot more money with the bar than the dining room, so the food and service has suffered mightly.

←

I'm glad you wrote this, for that had been my best guess as to the road this place had taken. The way the manager reacted to my comments almost spelled it out to anyone knowledgeable about restaurant operations, without directly saying it.

Yes, it seems the food is mere window-dressing in some places. Get 'em drunk (and I assure you, everyone around us was very drunk including a beautiful young college student at the table of eight next to us whose very loudly-rendered story of what her boyfriend liked and didn't like in bed not only had my throat closing as I watched my own fifteen-year old daughter listen to her, watching an example of how a fine young lady acts in public at a "nice" restaurant, and trying to deal with that, but also had two of the young men at the table leaving it after rolling their eyes repeatedly) and the food becomes fodder to sop.

It does seem to be a pattern followed too often in my opinion. Do the food well at first then skate along downgrading it bit by bit while floating along on past reputation. Blech. Tawdry, really, no matter what the price tag attached.

I dislike the pretense. If a place is all about beer, just admit it and break out the pretzels.

But on the other hand, it seems like my take on this is not the majority's take on it, for the place is packed, as are all the other places that do the same thing (bar scene masked as "nice" restaurant).

Edited September 9, 2007 by Carrot Top (log)

[TGTyson]

Karen,

I noticed you didn't mention Maxwells (heading out of town west on Main). I've eaten there several times and the menu was somewhat imaginative (for a college town anyway) and the food always seemed well prepared.

Are there problems there these days, or was it simply off the radar?

Vincents Ristorante? It wasn't knock your socks off good Italian, but they seemed to do a workman-like job the few times we ate there.

And the India Garden had some of the better Indian I've had in the western half of VA. (You may take that comment as you may )

Just wondering - I haven't eaten there since we sold our property over in Catawba and moved to Greensboro, instead, so I'm a bit out of touch with up there.

- TT

[Carrot Top]

Karen,

I noticed you didn't mention Maxwells (heading out of town west on Main). I've eaten there several times and the menu was somewhat imaginative (for a college town anyway) and the food always seemed well prepared.

Are there problems there these days, or was it simply off the radar?

←

Before we moved here we used to drive through town and I would think "what a cute little place" about Maxwell's but never stopped to eat. By the time we moved here, they were advertising for a chef, rather desperately, including putting up a big hand-written sign in the window. That, along with the fact that it is housed in the same building as the place that sells guns and gold with a huge day-glo orange sign decorated with camoflauge pattern that sat out in the front of the place, made me not ever decide to wander in there. After searching for a chef for some time (apparently unsuccesfully) they tried to sell it. Nobody bit, and I do think they were even willing to do owner financing. I don't remember ever seeing more than two diners in the place, and it basically became considered the place where cheating husbands took cheating wives for lunch from around the area. Just this year it closed for good.

Vincents Ristorante? It wasn't knock your socks off good Italian, but they seemed to do a workman-like job the few times we ate there.

I went into Vincents once to look at the menu, space, and to smell the food. ( ) I didn't stay but I'd say your assessment is correct.

It's impossible for me to be even close to objective about Italian-American restaurants though, for I compare them to the ones I used to eat in often in the Little Italys of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn and if they don't come close to meeting the criteria that's in my mind as far as menu selection, ambiance, and pre-sit-down aroma, I have no pity at all and can not summon the smallest shred. So living where I do, I can not remember the last time I had food at an Italian-American restaurant.

Oh. They just closed this year, too. There's a new Italian place called "Napoli's" which has opening in the shopping center across from Kroger on Main Street in the space where first the Vietnamese then the Thai then the Turkish places each closed after about a year.

And the India Garden had some of the better Indian I've had in the western half of VA. (You may take that comment as you may  )

The quality there will depend on who happens to be cooking that day. Usually I'll head to Roanoke for Nawab. The breads are generally good at India Garden and the veg dishes, too, for being within the geographic area you describe above.