One week. AP News, the USA TODAY Network, papers across Virginia, and our own News & Advance. All of it about the restaurant at 1200 Commerce Street with a wood-fired grill and a pizza dough that takes three days to make.
That's us. We're still a little stunned.
What the country read
The story that went out was simple, because the real story is simple. We grew up here, a few blocks from this building. This summer we rebuilt the restaurant from the kitchen out. We put a wood-fired grill at the center of the menu. We replaced the pizza dough with one that ferments for 72 hours. We brought in Luke Whitelaw, who cooked at Eleven Madison Park in New York, as culinary director. And we hired a sommelier named Andrew Trottier, a Lynchburg native who had spent his career in Key West, Austin, Boston and Manhattan, to come home and build the wine cellar this town had never had.
Andrew said it better than we could, and it's the line that got picked up:
"A wine list should be a book of traditions and stories, not just an inventory. Someone in Lynchburg should be able to experience a bottle here that they might otherwise expect to find only in New York, Chicago or another major wine market."
That's the quote that ran. That's what the country read about Lynchburg this week.
Why it traveled
We've thought about this, because a lot of restaurants send out announcements and most of them go nowhere. Ours moved because it had facts in it, not adjectives. A 72-hour dough. A chef from one of the most decorated kitchens in America. A sommelier who trained under master sommeliers and built Wine Spectator-recognized lists, coming home. A retail wine license, so you can leave dinner with a six-pack. A whole branzino roasted over wood coals. Duroc pork ribs glazed in a Modena barbecue sauce. A $10 glass of Tuscan red that Andrew isn't sure he can hold at that price.
It had a hometown story with real names in it. And it had a place you can actually go: Tuesday through Saturday, 4:30 to 10, on the Bluff Walk, overlooking the James.
The one that means the most
The AP pickup is the headline. USA TODAY is the reach. But the one we printed and put on the wall is The News & Advance.
The national wires tell the rest of the country we exist. The News & Advance is what Lynchburg reads. It's what our parents read. When the local paper decides your restaurant is news, the town treats it that way, and there's no bigger compliment we can think of.
We wanted to go national and come back home in the same week. We did.
Thank you
To everyone who's come in since the relaunch: thank you. To the five or so tables who told us, politely and otherwise, that they missed the old menu: we heard you, we love you, and we hope you'll give the new one another shot. Change is hard. We made a lot of it at once.
To Andrew, Luke, Chris, and everyone in the kitchen and on the floor who worked a very long summer to get this room where it is: this was you.
What's next
The relaunch is not a one-week story. Here's what's on the calendar:
- October 4: An Italian wine and cigar dinner in the private room. Forty seats. Multi-course from the wood-fired kitchen. $250 a person with tax and gratuity already in it, so all you do is show up.
- The wine program keeps growing: Seventeen wines by the glass right now, from a Shenandoah Valley Chardonnay to a Produttori Langhe Nebbiolo, and every bottle on the list is available to take home.
- The back room and the patio are booking for the holidays: Forty seated inside. Twenty-four under the pergola over the river.
If you haven't been in since the relaunch, come see us. Order the Tomato Pie. Ask for Andrew. Let him pour you something you've never had.
- Reserve a table: fratelliitalian.com/reservations
- Book the room or the patio: fratelliitalian.com/private-events
- Follow along: @fratellilynchburg
Grazie per la vostra visita.
Jason & Gordon Cudd
Fratelli Italian Kitchen & Wine Bar
