The Best Food in Charlottesville – Part 1: Lemongrass

The Internet is full of posts about the X best places/items to eat in Y city. Sometimes suffixed with “before you die”. Take for example this one about Charlottesville – 43 Things to Eat in Charlottesville before you die. You can tell that this was written by someone who is not truly a foodie or at least not familiar with Asian food because they think curries are limited to Indian food while talking about a Thai curry. They picked Pad See Ew aka Drunken Noodles as what to eat Lemongrass, which you can eat at any of the excellent Thai places in town, while ignoring their signature dish – “Spicy Lemongrass” – which you can’t eat anywhere else. Also, being vegetarian most of these kinds of lists are useless to me. So here is adding one more to the list of lists of things on the Internet. And just to torture you I wont put all of my favorites in one long post and post one or two places at a time at my usual slow random intervals. Be warned that my list is predominantly full of Asian food. Plus blogging about the food basically gives me an excuse to visit all my favorite haunts just to click better pictures. Win Win.

Lemongrass

Since I already had a spoiler up in the introduction, let me start with it. Spicy Lemongrass Tofu at Lemongrass. I cannot get enough of that. When the restaurant first opened up and I tried the dish for the first time, I took it upon myself to bother the chef and his wife until they divulge the recipe. I failed miserably to pry the secret out but did manage to get this tidbit – this was the chef’s version of a Vietnamese dish and it used a combination of Thai and Indian spices. Other than that and on the whole great tasting food, Lemongrass has the best Massaman curry in town and one of the few places you can get it with Tofu.

Stay tuned as I will update this with better pictures than the above one taken a few years ago with my cellphone and keep visiting or subscribe for more of the best food in Cville.