A sunny outdoor patio, murals on the wall, gospel music and mimosas. This is the way breakfast should be.
If you cannot bear waiting in the omelet line at the dining hall on one more Sunday morning, try Southern Culture's Gospel Brunch instead. Named for the rock band Southern Culture on the Skids, this cozy establishment on West Main Street has become Charlottesville's favorite place for home-cooked southern fare. In addition to its ordinary daily service, Southern Culture offers a special menu every Sunday from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
The Gospel Brunch welcomes a healthy mix of students and Charlottesville residents, many of whom cross the street from the First Baptist Church looking for a hearty southern start to their afternoon. The kitchen serves eggs, French toast, hash browns, salads and sandwiches. Well-dressed women sip Bloody Marys in tortoise shell glasses and boutique scarves. Men come bearing smiles and handshakes, and the biscuits are covered in gravy. Sunday brunch at Southern Culture is like omeletsin the garden of good and evil.
If you can't decide where to start, the brunch sampler ($9.95) includes biscuits and sausage gravy, French toast, scrambled eggs, hash browns and one link sausage. It is a tasty introduction to the offerings, and its generous portions are less likely to have you nibbling off your neighbor's plate. The biscuits are huge and doughy, and the sausage gravy does have a homey and heavy feel, subtly jacked up with pepper and pieces of sausage.
The Cajun hash browns are pleasantly mushy, seasoned with Cajun spices and feature a medley of bright peppers and onions along with the potatoes. One complaint is that almost everything on the brunch sampler plate was heavily seasoned, from the scrambled eggs to the potatoes. The flavors help the meal tie in with the theme, but Southern Culture shouldn't be afraid to let fresh ingredients shine through and stand for themselves.
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The "start from scratch" omeletsstart at a base price of $5.95 for eggs and cheese. You can add vegetables for 50 cents and meat for 75 cents. Besides the standard mushrooms and peppers, it is tough to resist the more exotic ingredients like roasted red peppers, pico de gallo, andouille sausage and crawfish. Whether you choose traditional elements or not, the omelets are made to perfection. Three fluffy eggs surround the ingredients, which are cut into large portions, and the cheese ties everything together. Although the brunch menu remains constant, the omelet fillings are the one thing that changes from week to week.
Georgia Peach French Toast ($6.95) includes corn flake-crusted French toast topped with seasoned peaches, pecans and bourbon whipped cream. Three slices of bread are well prepared and the corn flakes give the dish a nice crispness on the edges to combat the usual syrupy mess. It's understandable that the dish wouldn't include fresh peaches, since peach season ended at the end of summer. But the appearance of canned peaches is always disappointing. The whipped cream evidently was so subtly flavored with bourbon that we missed it altogether. Still, the toast is wonderfully sweet without being overbearing, and the fluffy pieces do not leave you feeling the heaviness so common in French toast selections.
The "Eye-Opener" section of the menu includes a variety of fruit-based alcoholic drinks that you would feel guilty drinking at breakfast on any other day of the week but Sunday. Screwdrivers, Madras cranberry and orange drinks, Mimosas and grainy textured Bloody Marys, all $4.75, round out the selection.
Many restaurants in Charlottesville consider breakfast their specialty and several more offer special brunch menus on the weekends. Gospel Brunch at Southern Culture has been served for 12 years, as long as the restaurant has been open, and despite the quality of the competitions, it still rivals any brunch experience in town.
The combinations of good music, hearty food and distinctive southern flair creates an atmosphere to augment the cuisine. The optional outdoor dining is wonderful for the fall, but as autumn passes, the restaurant's interior offers an equally pleasant environment. Both upstairs and downstairs, patrons can view photographs of the owner's family as well as Southern Culture on the Skids themselves.
Life seems to move a little bit slower when you are inside Southern Culture, and stepping out of the hectic college schedule for a good meal on the weekend is a welcome break for those who visit. Excellent food seems to taste even better in an excellent atmosphere, and while the aliment at the Gospel Brunch provides salvation for the stomach, the milieu provides a little salvation for the soul.
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