Lovely Day: Tim Burgess’s Charlottesville Food Legacy is Unsurpassed. Now It’s in His Son’s Hands.

My son never liked change. The first time he noticed I got a haircut, he cried. Selling our minivan brought more tears. And, on our visit to the market every Saturday morning, I learned always to wear my “market shirt.”

Tim Burgess and his son Travis are facing a much bigger change. After decades running one of Charlottesville’s most successful restaurant groups, Tim is passing the baton to his son. Filling Tim’s shoes will not be easy, and it’s not just because of their size. It’s their number. To achieve what Tim has in a food community requires filling so many roles so well.

Shoes of a Chef

Even measured solely by his current places, Tim’s impact has been vast. Combined, Bizou, Bang!, Crush Pad, Luce, and The Space have been open for more than 70 years. Tim’s greatest influence came not from any of these, though, but from a restaurant he opened before Travis was even born. It changed the way Charlottesville eats.

The t-shirt my son insisted I wear to the market bore the logo of Metropolitain. I wore it not just to keep him happy, but also in tribute to the restaurant that influenced Charlottesville dining more than any other.

When Metropolitain opened on the Downtown Mall in 1991, the mall was nothing like it is today. There were few other restaurants, people rarely visited, and the week it opened there was even a murder steps from the doorway. But, location was not the only thing that made Metropolitain daring. So was the concept. At the time, going out for a nice meal often meant doting service and an upscale setting. Metropolitain threw this out the window. The ethos, as Tim puts it, was: “What if it’s all about the food?”

Unexpectedly, that ethos has come to define Charlottesville dining ever since. Restaurants ditched tablecloths and stuffy service, prioritizing food instead. It would make a nice story for Tim to have intended the transformation. But, necessity is the mother of invention, and in reality, a food-first approach was all he could afford.  When Tim, then 27, and his partner Vincent Derquenne, 25, opened Metropolitain, they were as poor as they were young. With no resources to convert the former Fat City Diner into anything fancier than it already was, or to hire and train an elite staff, the two cooks relied on what they knew best: food.

And, what food it was. Though they started slowly, Tim and Derquenne set out to broaden the horizons of cautious Charlottesville diners. Tim was passionate about food, and wanted others to share that passion.  As Derquenne explained the dilemma, on the one hand, “we wanted to cook what we wanted to cook.” But, on the other hand, there were bills to pay, and so they had to appeal to customers as well. The solution was to use the flavors and techniques that they were passionate about, but present them as simply as they could. “It was a certain type of elevation in food that people still felt comfortable with,” said Derquenne. Vital to making it work, said Derquenne, was Tim’s understanding of what customers wanted.

“We made it simple on paper,” said Derquenne. While liver was a key ingredient in sauce for a popular chicken dish, for example, the menu called it “homemade gravy.” “Sometimes you didn’t want to tell them what was in there,” said Derquenne.

Over time, though, Tim and Derquenne found that this kind of subterfuge became less and less necessary. Charlottesville diners were soon lopping up rabbit livers, steak tartare, and foie gras crepes, no matter what you called them. By creating a market for the food they wanted to cook, Tim and Derquenne transformed Charlottesville palates. That transformation then freed other chefs to do the same, changing Charlottesville restaurants forever.

Take Angelo Vangelopoulos, a James Beard semifinalist who has run The Ivy Inn since 1995. “It’s an understatement to say that chefs and restaurants paid close attention to what they did,” Vangelopoulus said. And, it was everything they did, he said: what they cooked, how they presented it, and their casual approach. “There wasn’t a fussiness to the service, just simple and efficient, and the level of the food was way above the atmosphere.”

Dean Maupin, who has run C&O since 2012 and cooked at Metropolitain in the 1990s, says he still finds daily inspiration from the restaurant. “Their flavors were so original and creative that the food they were cooking back in the 1990s is just as relevant today,” Maupin said.

Metropolitain’s influence was so vast that it not only impacted chefs in Charlottesville, it even lured those from elsewhere. The NY Times once said: “If one were contemplating moving to Charlottesville, Metropolitain might well be the decisive factor.” Though this sounds like hyperbole, it proved true. Several stalwarts of the Charlottesville food community might never have moved to the area but for Metropolitain.

When Gail Hobbs-Page and her husband were looking to relocate from Tidewater in the mid 1990s, they sought a rural area that would still have good food nearby. During a visit to Charlottesville, they had a meal at Metropolitain she still remembers thirty years later: housemade pate, rabbit, and rare hanger steak. “Yep, we can live here,” she said. Hobbs-Page went on to run the kitchen of Hamiltons’ on Main, before launching a cheese-making business earning worldwide acclaim.

During a visit from New York in 1995, Ivan Rekosh had an “aha moment.”  “I still remember the room when I first walked in, and the exact table where we were seated,” said Rekosh, who called the experience a revelation. Unlike the big city restaurants to which he was accustomed — stuffy, too cool, and with rushed service — Metropolitain felt accessible. “Without exposure to Metropolitain in those early years and the idea that great food can be served anywhere, I may not have returned to Charlottesville to open Zocalo.” The first restaurant entered into The Charlottesvile 29, Zocalo celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year.

When Michael Keaveny visited from the Northeast, he had a similar experience. “We were considering a move to Charlottesville, but it was going to be a big change for us since we had always lived in big cities,” said Keaveny. In a weekend scouting the area, dinner at Metropolitain was a turning point. “The meal was on par with any I’ve had in some of the bigger cities I’ve lived in, which certainly made me feel better about the prospect of living here.” Keaveny’s Tavola restaurant turns fifteen this year.

Shoes of a Restaurateur

For those who know Tim’s restaurants only through his current ones, it may be hard to imagine that service and setting ever played second fiddle.  Today, Tim’s restaurants shine in every aspect of the experience. That focus on the entire experience took hold when Metropolitain moved from its Downtown Mall location to a building on Water Street, in 1995.

Until then, Derquenne said, he and Tim survived on “pure spirit.” But the move to 210 Water Street meant Tim and Derquenne had to get serious. For one thing, it was twice as big. But, it was not just the size of the space that made it so daunting. It was their ambition. They wanted to give Charlottesville something it had never seen before.

To do that would require more than just cooking. They had to become great restaurateurs. “Chefs and chef-owners are completely different,” said Derquenne, as are the skills they require. Fortunately, it turned out, Tim excels at both.

Tim’s skills as a restaurateur were unmistakable from Metropolitain, earning acclaim not just for food, but its setting and service, too. The Washington Post wrote: “You feel good-looking when you dine at the Metropolitain.” NY Times called it a “masterpiece of both form and function that looked like an outpost of Manhattan’s SoHo,” while praising servers “who never faltered during our three hours of eating and observing.” As Derquenne put it: “We created something that we thought was beautiful.”

But as proud as they were of what they built, they also realized the toll it was taking to sustain it. They were tired. And burning out. And so, in 2002, paradoxically, for the sake of their careers, they closed Metropolitain. “Vincent and I just brought it every night until we couldn’t anymore,” said Tim.

Meanwhile, they still had a restaurant at the former Metropolitain location. Bizou, as they called it, had been gradually becoming more and more like its predecessor. And, the same year they closed Metropolitain, they opened Bang!, a modestly-sized restaurant serving playful Asian-inspired small plates. Metropolitain itself went through several iterations before they eventually turned it into The Space Downtown, which still operates today as a place for private events. And in recent years they added two more projects: Luce and Crush Pad. They made the transition that not all chefs can make: from chef to restaurateur.

A 33 Year Partnership

1991: Metropolitain opens
1995: Metropolitain moves to Water Street
1996: Bizou opens
2002: Metropolitain closes
2002: Bang! opens
2010: The Space opens
2019: Luce opens
2021: Crush Pad opens

Shoes of a Teammate

Restaurateurs will tell you it’s a people business. Sustained success requires finding good people, and treating them well. The length of the tenure of Tim’s staff confirms he did just that. Virginia Burton, who started at Metropolitain in 1998, is still with the team 26 years later. Laura Price counts 24 years. Juan Dominguez clocks 18, and Rachel Gendreau 15. Their loyalty speaks volumes to the way Tim cared for his staff.

“Working with Tim and Vincent for fifteen years has been the privilege of a lifetime,” said Rachel Gendreau, now GM of Bizou, Luce, and Crush Pad. “They have taught me how to make savvy decisions, how to read a room, when to hold, when to fold, and most importantly instilled in me a deep reverence for beautifully conceived meals and an unshakable commitment to having a blast while extending true hospitality to our guests.”

Derquenne credits his and Tim’s success in retaining staff to there being two of them. Unlike in music and other realms, duos are rare in the culinary world. Chef egos can often clash. How did they pull it off?

It wasn’t by being exactly the same. “Completely different,” Derquenne said. Derequenne, a native of France, is outgoing and direct, and tends to see things in black and white. Burgess, from West Virginia, is reserved and more open to subtlety and shades of gray. While Derquenne thrives on interaction in the kitchen, it wouldn’t bother Burgess if you never said a word.

Despite their differences, what bound them was a shared purpose: building a business that fundamentally was about caring for people. Caring for guests. And caring for one another. “Tim always said that our employees are the most important part of the business,” said Vincent. “We have to take care of them.”

And so that’s what they did. Together. “It’s us,” said Derquenne, leaning on the latter word. “There is a Tim and there is a Vincent, but in in the business, there is ‘Tim and Vincent.’” While there was strength in that union, their differences helped, Derquenne said, by allowing them to retain a broader array of staff than if just one of them were at the helm. If an employee’s personality did not mesh with one of them, it might still mesh with the other.

A lousy teammate might survive a few years in the restaurant industry. But, no one could build a legacy like Tim’s without being a great one. As Travis put it: “He was always taking care and supporting everyone.”

Shoes of a Competitor

A sports background is not uncommon for chefs. Some pursue their work with competitiveness similar to what they bring to athletics. Tim loves sports. And competition. When his boys were young, he told them each he would give them $100 if they could beat him in one-on-one basketball before they turned 18. “I never won,” said Travis. “He’s a natural winner.”

That shows up at work, where Tim has always strived to improve. “If you’re not improving, you’re falling behind,” the saying goes. And, it’s true in the food industry as much as anywhere else. Complacency breeds failure.

“Sometimes you have to find ways to motivate yourself,” said Tim. Some of that came from external competition. If a new place opened, it would push them to improve. “He’s always wanted the restaurants to be the best,” said Travis. “And, has always wanted to create, innovate, and push the restaurants and the Charlottesville restaurant scene in general.”

And, other competition was internal. “Vincent and I would compete with one another, secretly, but we did,” said Tim. When a new cook came on board, they’d use their own cooking to send a message to the newby: “you’d better step up your game.” Tim demanded a lot of himself and others. “I believed if I was the active chef on line for that evening, then I wanted every plate to be perfect,” said Tim. “That’s a tall order.”

Shoes of a Son

Thirty-three years after launching Charlottesville’s most successful restaurant partnership, Tim is taking a step back. While he will still maintain an advisory role, he is passing the operational baton. And, there’s no one he’d rather hand it to than Travis. “I feel very very fortunate to have him replace me,” said Tim.

This is not just fatherly bias. Travis has two big things that make him uniquely suited for the task: nature and nurture. Travis has seen firsthand the many roles required of his father. He has seen him be a chef. A restaurateur. A teammate. And a competitor. And, he has inherited the traits that helped his father excel at them all.

It was Tim’s cooking that sparked Travis’s passion for food as a child: pasta, pot pie, grilled chicken, apple cobbler, biscuits, and focaccia sandwiches. “The repertoire he used to cook for me and my siblings was insane,” said Travis. “He’s the most incredible cook.”

But, having grown up in restaurants, Travis knows that it takes more than a passion for cooking to make a career as a restaurateur. Travis spent his teenage summers working in his father’s restaurants — washing dishes, prepping food, doing anything that needed doing. “Definitely the most sore and tired summers of my life,” said Travis, “but by the end I was hooked on restaurant life.”

Travis was so hooked that despite earning a degree in economics, after college he dived right into the industry. He spent two years cooking in Charleston before returning to Charlottesville in 2017 to work with his father. And, just like he watched his father do, he filled any role needed. First, chef at Bang! Then chef at Bizou. And then, in 2019, he launched Luce, the place he had always dreamed of, serving his favorite thing Tim would cook for him as a child: fresh pasta. Once Luce was up and running, Travis eventually began overseeing the kitchens of all three restaurants: Bang!, Bizou, and Luce. “He’s an animal, and that’s a compliment,” said Tim. “He’s not afraid of the work and the challenge.”

All the while, with his father as a role model, Travis prioritized a role he knew would be essential to success: teammate. “The whole team is an amazing and talented group, and they make it easy,” said Travis. “I essentially just manage my managers, teach, motivate, lead by example, and have fun cooking. The dream.” It doesn’t hurt to have great partners. “Vincent and Rachel are the two best people to work with in the world,” said Travis.

And, there’s one more trait Travis inherited from his father. Competitiveness. For many people in Travis’s shoes, just to sustain a legacy as impressive as his father’s would be a worthy lifetime goal. Three more decades of excellence. But, Travis aspires not to sustain it, but to improve it. Just as his father tried to be better each day, so does Travis. “The bar has always been set so high,” said Travis. “And I’ve always wanted to do better. To carry on his legacy means to continue to push, and see where and how high that bar can go.”

The rest of the Charlottesville food community is still watching, just as they did when Tim and Vincent pushed it forward with Metropolitain. “I enjoy seeing the extension and growth of Tim’s creativity and work ethos in his son Travis,” said Vangelopoulos. “It’s so cool to see his talent moving into the next generation.”

There’s one chef who will be paying especially close attention. “He’s got his own ideas and I’m excited to see what happens next,” said Tim. “I’m insanely proud.”