The Trichotomy of Rapture: Part 1

Simple machines are always those least likely to break; this is a universal truth for many things in life, of which restaurants are no exception.

I've had the privilege of working at a multitude of different venues with concepts that vary in structure, crowd, and product. Considering that part of what this journey is aiming to explore geographic regions by framing them around the food and the community it creates, it felt fitting that I began with Rapture.

Rapture, a restaurant and live music venue tucked on Third Street and Main, took on the complicated task of being more than one concept. Being both a music venue and a restaurant is difficult in it's own different way; however, attempting to be both is assembling something from ikea (an already maddening task) using the instructions in Swedish. It's about balance and composure; a constant knife's edge. Rapture has been doing it for 17 years.

There are three very different parts about Rapture that make it special: The Chef and food program, the ingredients that they use, and the music venue and bar. I will be doing a three part write-up about this place and the people that make it special. And I could not help but start with the food.

Executive Chef Chris Humphrey wears his experience like a true professional; the kind of confidence that fits like you're favorite pair of blue jeans. There is nothing I find more impressive than a Chef conducting their line during a busy service, calmly but firmly directing the madness of a screaming ticket printer and a bustling staff. Many don't understand that in this position, you are directing about half a dozen people wielding very sharp knives, passing plates with things on them that are hot and need to leave, all the while surrounded by oil that will melt your skin and fire. It's how I imagine someone standing in the midst of a tornado whilst chaos flies around them, with nothing but a calm but determined expression. It's always the Chef whose head is up while everyone else has theirs down.

Chef Chris Humphrey and friend

Chris has a long history of cooking in Charlottesville. He bounced between a few different places, most notably Jarman's Gap, Fillini's, and Maya. It's always a joy to talk to these career, or "lifer," guys, because the story is almost always the same. He worked his ass off until someone gave him a chance, made some good decisions and some he'd change, but landed on his feet. He, like most in this industry, experienced the crushing burnout that makes us think we'll never work in a restaurant again, and managed to bounce back, and found his way to a kitchen that he believes in.

At first, Chris is no open book. I ask him about his food at Rapture and he doesn't really have an answer for me. I ask a few more questions and discover that to understand what he is doing at Rapture, you need to go back, before Rapture, before the aforementioned restaurants, all the way back to Grandma Lelia.

"I like to cook the way I like to eat," Chris begins, "and I like to eat the way my Grandmother used to cook." he says with a grin. It was no coincidence that in the restaurant that day, he was running a special on Grandma Lelia's macaroni salad."

"When I was a kid she lived on Belmont Ave, and her next door neighbor had a huge back yard. I had asthma, and couldn't play football, so instead I would go hang out in the garden with [Grandma Lelia.] I would pick and clean vegetables, she taught me how to can and pickle, (something that is spattered all over his menu. See: pickled watermelon rinds) and I'd hang out in the kitchen and cook. She seriously had a pot she would turn upside down so I could stand up on it and reach the stove. She grew up poor in the country...and growing up like that that you would grow, raise, and kill your food. They were dirt poor. That was life. And Grandma Lelia is where is started. That's where I learned that I liked to cook, and that I could cook."

Grandma Lelia: center

This is when Rapture's menu begins to fall into place for me mentally. Pimento cheese pickled eggs? Oh my yes.  Shrimp and grits seems a logical choice, but the addition of smoked tomato, okra, tequila, jalepeno and cilantro is bold. (I would later discover that the inspiration for that dish came from Chris's wife, Sarah.) A house garlic bratwurst with cider mustard, onion kraut, and vinegar potato salad? A simple southern veggie plate? Don't threaten me with a good time.

Andrew Oliver, sous chef, pops to our table with a spoon in hand. "Chef, is this what you're looking for?" He hands him a spoon with corn, trout, duck potatoes, (out of the ground yesterday) cherry tomatoes sautéed with lemon and butter. "That's perfect." he says simply. Andrew thanks him and walks away. "That's what I mean." Chris says, "We leave the cherry tomato out until the very end just to warm it. There’s not a single thing I can do to that tomato to make it taste better."

There is a pattern that I begin to notice, and things begin to tell it's own story. Many of the Chef's here are far outside of the modern story line of American Chefs: culinary school, perhaps an apprenticeship in France. There is a connection with the ingredients here, specifically the produce, that I find compelling, and frankly, surprising. 

"The cool thing is that I hit [my farm] up about a month before a menu change, and we have a meeting about what she is going to grow. So the menu is written around what she has. She gives me an idea of what, in a month, she is going to have ready, and thats when we start to write the menu: around her growing schedule. And she likes to grow all the vegetables I grew up eating anyway, which is the stuff I like to cook with."

It is this ingredient first mentality that is the creative engine behind the food of Rapture, almost exclusively utilizing local farms and purveyors of Charlottesville for his menu. "So many vegetables," I mutter to myself, surprised and confused, browsing menu's of the various restaurants on Main Street. When I, like most people in the country, hear about Virginia, I immediately associate it with the south. And when I, like most people in the country, think about the south, I immediately associate it with BBQ and other protein heavy cuisine. I suppose you can include collared greens, mac and cheese, cornbread, and a few others, but I try to eat ribs with my pulled pork sandwich. My mom would have some words for me about this.

It isn't until you arrive here that you realize the love affair that the people here have with their soil. 

“Blackberries are an obsession." Chris tells me when I ask about his bacon with blackberry dish served for Restaurant Week. "I grew up with wild blackberries out my back door. My mom used to threaten to kick my ass because we’d come back and our t-shirts would be purple from gathering them. Thinking about when I was a kid and my grandma cooking, especially my grandma’s garden, she would make a pot roast, and that would be what it is. Then we would have stewed tomatoes, green beans, macaroni salad…there would be six different vegetables on the plate. And one protein. A lot of people think that southern cooking is anti-vegetable, but look at any southern cookbook and it’s all vegetables. That’s one thing that stood out when I had dinner at Husk; [Chef Sean Brock] had all these vegetables.”

Now, worry not, carnivores one and all. This is not to say that Rapture or Chef Chris ignores his proteins, because he certainly does not. Experience has shown me that "birds of a feather flock together," and those obsessed with their food are no exception. Like his beloved produce, Chef sources his proteins all locally, including Autumn Olive pork and Seafood at West Main, both of which will be explored at later times in later entries. It is Chef's love for curing and his monster prep schedule that includes total protein fabrication that really makes the Rapture menu shine.  Watching Chef talk about his house-cased brats is where you see his blue eyes begin to sparkle with the same obsession I am accustomed to seeing in those who have devoted their life to the culinary arts and people of parallel degrees of insanity.

A house garlic bratwurst with cider mustard, onion kraut, and vinegar potato salad.

“Too many Chefs forget about the old school stuff. I know everyone wants to move forward, but whats cooler than making sausage and bacon?" he says as he leans forward excitedly. "I know my day is gonna be good when I look at my prep list and say 'I gotta' do bacon, I gotta' case sausage, I gotta' cure country ham.' That’s what I look forward to.”

I sit down and carefully bite into a house made bacon with blackberries, and Chris, both as a Chef and a person, begins to make more sense to me. In fact, the entire South begins to make more sense to me. The South, and Charlottesville in particular, is a place misunderstood by outsiders but in no rush to clarify themselves. Working behind the bar in Charlottesville, I hear the same story almost every night: someone is from here, leaves, and finds no greener grass than the midst of the Shenandoah Valley. The summer's are hot, the food is fantastic, and the autumns are exceptional. The woman who makes my sandwiches already knows me by name. Regulars where I bartend are inviting. A born and bred resident of Charlottesville tells me, "I love coming out of the grocery store and getting smacked in the face with the most gorgeous view of the mountains." I begin to see the gravitational pull of Charlottesville, though I still wonder what is at the center of it's universe. 

Sunday morning, the soundtrack of my brunch is the gentile hum of Main St., in front of Rapture, this small world moving around me on either side.  Sitting with a cup of coffee, a country breakfast compliments of Chef Chris Humphrey, a sleepy Great Dane at my feet, and a man playing an accordion and a banjo in this distance, the Charlottesville experience gently washes over me along with the mid-afternoon August heat.  For now, I sit silently, watching people travel past like revolving stars, some bright and young, other that have been here for ages. You can see the same faces float past one day to the next, taking stock of a place they intimately know, that have graced this small city for years, and will continue to do so. For a little city, I feel even smaller; a visitor in a universe that seems content, with or without me, to stay just the way it is.

A Chef's hands tell a story. 

Until next time,

The Bar Fight