Basic Necessities.

Overview

There is a French word the people at Basic Necessities keep coming back to: la table. Not just the furniture, they'll tell you, but the whole idea of it — the place where family and friends sit down to eat, drink, talk, and simply be together for hours over a fresh, unhurried meal. That is the organizing principle of this off-beat café, wine and cheese shop set among the Blue Ridge Mountains near Nellysford, and it explains a lot about how a visit here tends to go. The kitchen is not in a rush, and it would rather you weren't either.

Owner Kay Pfaltz opened the place in June of 1997 and has run it, from the start, on the conviction that food is worth slowing down for. She brings a working knowledge of French wines and cheeses to the counter, and over the years has built the café's kitchen and character alongside a small crew — Sallie Justice, Mae Collins Tyree, and chefs Angela Faris and Vera Miller among them — that has earned Basic Necessities a genuinely loyal following.

The Slow Food way

The café explicitly aligns itself with the Slow Food Movement, and it is not a slogan tacked on for effect. Meals here are made from scratch. Dinners take a little longer than you might be used to, and the staff would gently ask you to make peace with that: sit back, have some wine and bread, breathe deeply a few times, and let yourself slow down. As they put it, they don't turn tables, so nobody is going to hurry you out — unless it gets past their bedtime, in which case they might just hand you the keys.

That patience shows up in the sourcing, too. Basic Necessities buys seasonal produce from local growers including Blue Heron Farm, Little Hat Creek Farm, Whisper Hill Farm, and Edible Landscaping, and leans on local, seasonal, pesticide-free products wherever it can. The café is also committed to serving free-range, humanely raised meat from careful farmers at places such as River Oak Farm and Double H Farm. The menu shifts with what those farms have ready, which is the whole point of cooking with the seasons rather than against them.

What's on offer

Basic Necessities serves lunch, dinner, and Sunday brunch, with everything available to eat in house or take out. Beyond the café side of things, it operates as a wine and cheese shop — Pfaltz's background in French wines and cheeses runs right through the place, so it's as much somewhere to pick up a bottle and a wedge of something good as it is somewhere to sit down for a meal. The café also keeps up a steady drumbeat of weekend specials, posted regularly and sent out through a weekly newsletter you can sign up for on their site.

The overall effect is what they call a peaceful, relaxing haven where time stops, if only for a bit. It is an unfussy, thoughtful sort of place — the kind that trusts good ingredients, doesn't overreach, and assumes you came to enjoy the moment rather than get in and out.

Planning a visit

You'll find Basic Necessities at 2226 Rockfish Valley Hwy, Nellysford, VA 22958, and you can reach them at (434) 361-1766. The café is closed Mondays. Tuesday through Thursday it's open 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM; on Friday and Saturday the doors stay open later, from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM. Sunday is brunch, 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM. Given how the kitchen approaches dinner — unhurried, from scratch, no table-turning — it's worth arriving with time to spare rather than a reservation you have to rush off to.

More on the café's story and philosophy is on their site at basicnecessities.us, along with the newsletter sign-up and the running list of weekend specials.

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