Overview
On Tuesday evenings, the parking lot at Starr Hill Brewery in downtown Crozet picks up the smell of steamed dough and pork. That is PotLucky, a Charlottesville-based dim sum operation that sets up at 5391 Three Notch'd Rd from 5:00 to 8:00 PM and hands handmade bao and dumplings to people who came for beer and stayed for the buns. It is not a restaurant with a dining room, and the website says so plainly: there is no physical location. What there is instead is a small, mobile kitchen that shows up in a few reliable places each week, and Crozet is one of them.
The food is Chinese steamed buns and dumplings made by hand from traditional recipes, with what PotLucky describes as an added southern twist. Bao, if the word is new to you, is a pillowy white steamed bun folded around a filling, sometimes savory and sometimes sweet. The dumplings are wrapped to perfection and made with fresh ingredients. Both come in vegetarian versions, so this is one of the rare pop-ups where a vegetarian and a devout carnivore can stand in the same line and both leave happy.
What to order
The menu is short by design: savory and sweet steamed buns, and PotLucky's unique dumplings. If you want to take the experience home, PotLucky sells frozen bao you can steam yourself later. To place a frozen order, text 540-836-8063. It is a genuinely useful thing to keep in the freezer for the nights you do not want to cook.
Where and when to find them
The Crozet slot is Tuesdays, 5:00 to 8:00 PM, at Starr Hill Brewery. The rest of the week PotLucky travels the Charlottesville side of the mountain: Wednesday afternoons, 3:00 to 7:00 PM, at Pen Park on Pen Park Road, and Saturday mornings, 8:00 AM to 1:00 PM, at the Charlottesville City Market on East Water Street from April through December. Because the whole model is mobile, the schedule is worth confirming before you drive out; the PotLucky website keeps a current list of spots, and the Instagram feed is where the buns get photographed.
Catering and the person behind it
PotLucky caters events for groups under 150 people and can supply frozen dumplings and steamed buns in bulk for parties, so a backyard gathering or an office lunch can be built around them. Estimates come by email through Janelle@potluckycville.net.
That Janelle is Janelle Dillard, PotLucky's owner and founder. By the account on the site, she trained in dumpling-making under an authentic dumpling food-truck owner in Charlotte, North Carolina, has worked as a chef, and is a graduate of Johnson & Wales University. It is a real cook's résumé, and it shows up in the product: this is handmade food from someone who learned the craft from someone who did it well, not a concept dreamed up in a marketing meeting.
The honest framing for a Crozet reader is this. PotLucky is a Charlottesville business, not a Crozet institution, and it is here one evening a week. But a good bao is a good bao, and having one folded fresh and handed to you in a brewery parking lot on a Tuesday is a small, specific pleasure that did not used to exist here. If you are in downtown Crozet as the week gets going, it is worth walking over to see what is steaming.
More restaurant in Crozet
Frequently asked questions
Where is PotLucky?
PotLucky is located at 5391 Three Notch'd Rd, Crozet, VA 22932, USA, in Crozet, Virginia.
What are PotLucky's hours?
Monday: Closed Tuesday: 5:00 – 8:00 PM Wednesday: 3:00 – 7:00 PM Thursday: Closed Friday: Closed Saturday: 8:00 AM – 1:00 PM Sunday: 3:00 – 6:00 PM
How do I contact PotLucky?
You can visit https://potluckycville.net/. Hours and current information are most reliable directly from the business.
What kind of business is PotLucky?
PotLucky is categorized as restaurant in our Crozet directory. See the description and quick facts above for what makes this listing distinctive.
Sources: potluckycville.net