|
|
For
Rockbridge Area ‘Foodies’
by Claudia Schwab, The News Gazette, Lexington, Va.
|
 |
No need to pack your bags and board a plane to experience
the culinary delights of foreign countries anymore. Foods International
is now bringing a vast variety to its new Rockbridge County store.
The gourmet market, along with its in-house Shelia's Cafe Mohring
and Matsumoto Sushi Bar, is slated to open this Saturday in the
location of the former Kroger/CVS complex in College Square Shopping
Center.
Foods International is the idea of store co-owner Erik King, whose
father, Don King, founded Foods of All Nations in Charlottesville
in 1952. He said that people will find many similarities but also
many differences between the two stores.
“Because Lexington is smaller than Charlottesville, I thought we
needed three businesses under one roof that would complement each
other,” he said. “This is the most exciting thing I've
ever done. I think Lexington's where Charlottesville was 10 years
ago, and I think this store will be the gourmet mecca of Rockbridge
County.”
“We subscribe to the fact that quality is economy, and we'll be
much less expensive than most gourmet food markets,” he added. |
King, who was former manager of Foods
of All Nations and vice president of operations of sales and marketing
with Haddon House Foods, speaks from a lifetime of experience.
He said he got the idea for this store from a group of stores in
Texas, each called Central Market.
King was familiar with Lexington all along, since he had been
distributing food here for years in his capacity at Haddon House.
He was approached
by Joe Harding of Harding & Associates Inc., who operates
the shopping center. Harding asked him if he was interested in
opening
a store here, and King was obviously delighted since he had wanted
to go in business with a store of his own.
King and his brother, Keith, had looked forward to going into the
business together, but Keith's death last spring delayed the store's
construction considerably. King then had to regroup and has subsequently
gone into partnership with L.F. Wood of Charlottesville, a former
regional director of Ponderosa Steak House restaurants.
Although this store obviously owes a lot to his experience with
the Charlottesville store, it is a separate operation. Besides
the addition of a sushi bar and cafe, this store will also place
a much greater emphasis on natural, organic foods, said King.
“We'll feature Artisanal cheeses from the caves of Manhattan
in New York City,” he said. “These are manmade caves
emulating the caves in France with the same humidity and other
features in
which cheeses can age.”
“We'll also feature Godiva chocolates and nostalgic chocolates
like Necco bars from the '50s,” he added. “We'll
partner with as many Virginia food producers as possible, like
the Homestead
Creamery which still produces milk in glass bottles with the
cream on top like you drank in the '50s.”
King said the store will embrace the “slow food movement,” a
term used to describe the whole industry of small manufacturers
that do not mass market their products.
“We hope to appeal to the ‘foodies,’ he said. “That's
people who live to eat rather than those who eat to live. Food
is the affordable luxury.”
The 17,000-square-foot store will house 10,000 specialty items,
said King. Normally, a grocery store stocks 2,000 specialty items.
Such items will include 200 varieties of olive oil and 100 different
kinds of pasta, as well as over 1,100 different wines from 80
countries, for example.
“It's a culinary travelogue,” said King about the store's
motto. “There will be a country of the month, and the prices
will be lowered during the month on that country's goods.”
|
|
The first month the country
will be Great Britain, and in conjunction with that Shelia's
Cafe Mohring
intends to feature Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee, probably the most
exquisite coffee in the world, at regular cup prices, said owner
Shelia Austin, who will run the cafe with her daughter, Lisa Hemlinger.
In addition to hot and iced coffees, lattes and cappucinos, there
are teas, fizzies and smoothies. The food complement to the beverages
will include English scones served with jams and curds, bagels,
brownies and J&J breakfast pretzels. The latter have “scrumptious
fillings which are an excellent meal within themselves,” said
Art Robinson, Austin's fiance and financial backer.
Austin and Robinson have modeled the cafe after a German cafe in
East Berlin by the same exact name, Robinson said.
|
The other separate concession in the
store is the sushi bar owned and run by Sam Matsumoto of Ishinomaki,
Japan. It offers a complete listing of sushi, sashimi and sushi
rolls from the sushi bar as well as hot beef, chicken, shrimp,
pork and vegetable items from the kitchen.
|
Both the kitchen and sushi
bar items are served with a salad, miso soup and rice. There
are 15 items listed on the lunch menu. Among them is chicken
teriyaki, tempura with shrimp and a number of lunch-box combination
items so customers can sample a variety.
The dinner menu is more expansive, with choices of soups, salads
and appetizers both from the sushi bar and from the kitchen. Dinner
offerings include 11 different
sushi bar combinations and nine hot selections from the kitchen. |
 |
Matsumoto had seven years retail experience
in Japanese fish markets and three years training with sushi chefs
in Japan before coming to America 20 years ago. He opened the first
sushi restaurant in Richmond and, later, he was sushi chef for
four Norfolk restaurants.
Matsumoto is also known as a caterer, catering for some of the
embassies in Washington, D.C., as well as for the Homestead and
for Kings Mill in Williamsburg. A little farther afield, he was
also the on-set sushi chef during the making of the movies “G.I.
Jane,” “Copland” and “Daylight.”
King has known Matsumoto for many years and they have worked together
before, he said.
The sushi bar and cafe are in the same area of the store that will
have indoor and outdoor seating for 75. It will also be an area
with a wireless cyber network to accommodate notebook computers
and cell phones that have network capability, said King.
Near the entrance, there is also a concierge desk, which will serve
a variety of purposes. Visitors can get directions and information
about the area there. It will serve as a pay spot for the cafe
and sushi bar and as a copy or fax center. People can also order
flowers, get dry cleaning done, buy fine cigars or get fresh cheeses
cut at the concierge desk, among other things.
King is excited when he talks about the rest of the store, too.
Although the store will include a number of departments, those
handling perishables like meat, fish and produce will not open
until after Dec. 1 nor will wine or other alcoholic beverages until
after that date, said King.
The meat department will be staffed by two experienced meat cutters:
Benori “Benny” Kadori, who has 25 years experience
as a gourmet meat cutter in California, and Daniel Wells, who has
15 years experience in New Jersey. They will offer free-range chickens,
kosher beef and nitrate-free beef and will feature black Angus
along with fresh duck, rabbit, quail, pheasant and venison, all
from Chicago.
There will also be a seafood department getting fresh fish from
a company that supplies many East Coast restaurants. The bakery
department is run by Higgins Stewart, former co-owner of the Boxcar
Cafe in Buena Vista, and it will feature rustic artisan breads
and many organic pastries like creme brulee, tarts, scones, muffins
and bagels.
|
|
The deli department is run by King's
son, Deke, who worked in Foods of All Nations' deli. Deli chef
is Esther Scherf, formerly of
Main Street Market in Lexington. The deli menu will closely follow
the successes of the Charlottesville store's deli, said King.
University of Virginia's Darden School did a feasibility study
for King and his brother when they were looking into replicating
Foods of All Nations and the most astounding fact was that 28 percent
of their customers travel over 75 miles to stop at the store, said
King. Based on that the study, King believes this store has the
potential to do as well as or even better than the Charlottesville
store.
King is very excited to be in the Rockbridge area and hopes this
will be the first of four new stores, he said.
“
I'm encouraged by the excitement this store is bringing,” he
said. “Many people have been coming by and calling asking
about specific items.”
“
The average hits a month to our Web site last spring and summer
was 5,000 but the total in October alone was 14,289,” he
added. “More and more are coming to the site as the store
opening approaches.”
Foods International's Web site is foodsofallnations-ltd.com, and
the phone number is 540-464-FOOD (or 3663). |
Through the holidays, the store will
be open seven days a week from 9 a.m to 7 p.m., but Cafe Mohring
will open at 7 a.m. and close at 4 p.m. The store will run a martini
bar, which will be a full-service bar in the cafe location, from
4 to 10 p.m. The sushi bar will be open for lunch from 11 a.m.
to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday and for dinner from 5 to 9 p.m.
seven days a week.
This article originally appeared in the Wednesday, November 17,
2004 issue of the News-Gazette. |
Archives
|
