The Charlottesville 29

Wilson Richey was not present for this month’s tenth anniversary of The Bebedero. Or was he?

Biologists define death as the irreversible cessation of an organism’s integrated functioning as a whole. Fine, the tree that Wilson’s car hit in December 2023 may have done that. But, against other aspects of his life, it was powerless.

Richey poured his life into The Bebedero, and at the anniversary celebration, its presence was impossible to ignore.

Present was his creativity. An insatiable creator, Richey would be thinking of his next project while still finishing his current one. His idea for The Bebedero was to bridge a gap by combining traditional Mexican flavors with a polished restaurant experience. Richey enjoyed a taco truck as much as anyone, but he wondered why so few sit-down restaurants that called themselves Mexican served food you’d actually find in Mexico. Hence, The Bebedero.

Also present was Richey’s grit. Like any restaurateur, Richey faced constant challenges. He never let one stop him. The Bebedero embodies this so well because it is now in its third location. The restaurant opened in 2016 in The Glass Haus, which Richey and his staff took months to build into a dazzling two-story space that would transport guests to Veracruz. When the landlord hiked the rent to an unsustainable rate, instead of closing the restaurant, as some owners might, Richey relocated it. And a few years later, after another rent hike, he moved again. Building a restaurant just once takes enormous effort. Building it three times over is almost unheard of.

But Richey’s biggest inspiration for The Bebedero was his inspiration for everything: people. First, his staff. “Up or out” is the typical employment progression, but for restaurant staff, there can be a ceiling: what happens once staff master management, and there’s nowhere to promote them? Richey had a solution. To avoid losing valued staff, he would make them co-owners for his next project. And so, The Bebedero is owned by people who first worked for Richey at other restaurants: Cesar Perez, Yuliana Perez Vasquez, Cheley Napoli, and River Hawkins.

The other people who inspired Richey were guests. They were the reason he did what he did. “I like to make people happy, and I seem to draw joy from and be decent at doing it from a restaurant,” Richey once said. A deep empath, Richey built restaurants to feel others’ joy.

And so, as I sat at the bar sipping mezcal on the tenth anniversary of The Bebedero, the joy that filled the room kept prompting the same thought: “If Will’s gone, how’d he make all these people smile?”

Ever since Mike Stewart first experienced the feeling of a true pub while traveling abroad, he has never been able to shake it. It’s not the drink, or even the food, he says. At his favorite village pubs, it’s something less tangible — a sense that the pub belongs to everyone who walks into it. He’s long wanted to bring that feeling to Charlottesville, and now, with two partners and a building that has been feeding people for three-quarters of a century, he’s ready.

A veteran bartender and former beverage director for the late Wilson Richey’s restaurants, Stewart is opening Maggie’s Midtown in late March at 606 West Main Street — the former home of Blue Moon Diner — alongside James Beard-acclaimed chef Tarik Sengul and restaurateur Bradley Geist. Follow their Instagram page for updates. From the setting to the food to the drink, the trio seems to have it covered.

The Setting: 150 Years of Brick and Wood

For a pub to feel like a pub, the setting matters. That was clear from Stewart’s time abroad, where the structures he visited were often hundreds of years old. Maggie’s Midtown’s home is the Hartnagle-Witt House, built in 1884 as a tenement house, and the site of a restaurant for 75 years — first the Waffle Shop, then Blue Moon Diner until it closed in 2024.

For its latest tenant, the building has undergone renovation, but the historic bones remain. The brick interior is original from 1884, as are the floors in the upstairs dining room. Stewart marvels that only his shoes separate him from the same wood Virginians walked 150 years ago. It’s the kind of history you can’t fake. Preserving that history while transforming the space to a pub is no easy task, and for that, Stewart’s team entrusted Sanger Carpentry, which has constructed some of Charlottesville’s most handsome restaurants.

Guests will encounter the bar upon entering and can choose between the casual bar area or a more polished upstairs dining room. The dual experience is common in pubs, and Stewart hopes it signals to the community that Maggie’s is the kind of place that fits any occasion, from a daily tipple to a night out worth dressing for.

The Food: Virginia’s Bounty Meets Its British Roots

Pubs have a long history of thoughtful cuisine, a tradition that has taken off in the age of the gastropub. Overseeing Maggie’s food is Tarik Sengul, James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef Mid-Atlantic and chef-owner of Smyrna, where his refined Anatolian-inspired cooking has made him one of Charlottesville’s most celebrated chefs. Sengul remains chef and co-owner of Smyrna, as his role at Maggie’s is building and overseeing the culinary vision.

Sengul’s food philosophy is to honor one’s place. “You have to respect the land you are in,” said Sengul. “You have to present that in your plate.” And so, Maggie’s food may draw influence from England, but it is grounded in Virginia, England’s first American home. This is similar to his approach at Smyrna, where he applies his French classical training and flavors of his native Turkey to Virginia ingredients to create a cuisine all his own. At Maggie’s, he will apply that same expertise to Virginia’s bounty, drawing on British and Virginian traditions.

What surprised Sengul during his research was how similar the underlying techniques of classic British dishes are to those he practices daily at Smyrna: butchery, braising, patient reduction. The traditions differ; the craftsmanship is the same.

As at Smyrna, that interplay of technique, terroir, and foreign influence will yield dishes new to Charlottesville. Take oyster rarebit. Virginia is known for oysters, and oyster rarebit is a British classic mash-up of oysters and Welsh rarebit. Poached Virginia oysters join rarebit’s traditional cheese sauce atop toast.

Scotch olives, meanwhile, riff on a Scotch egg: olives encased in Meadow’s Pride Farm lamb sausage, breaded, and fried into a savory pub bite. There will also be Sengul’s Virginian interpretation of other pub classics, like fish and chips, shepherd’s pie, and bangers and mash.  Like the setting, the aim is comfort, not dazzle.

The Drink: Classics, Enhanced

For Stewart, a bar program exists to complement a restaurant’s food and hospitality. The best a beverage director can do, he says, is deepen an experience someone else has already defined. At places like Keswick Hall, Kama, and The Milkman’s Bar, his creative mixology earned a following. At Maggie’s, he has pulled back toward the classics, tailoring the beer, wine, and cocktail menu to match the spirit of the place.

With his touch, of course. Negronis and Vieux Carrés will both be barrel-aged. The piña colada is clarified. And for pub purists, there’s Stewart’s version of a Pimm’s Cup: Pimm’s No. 1, cucumber, lemon, strawberry, ginger, and CO2.

That, in the end, is what Maggie’s is reaching for: a place that feels like it belongs to whoever walks through the door. With 150-year-old floors underfoot, Stewart hopes his Virginia pub might feel like it’s been here all along.