WV Living Winter 2019

WINTER 19

WOMEN OF SNOWSHOE | THOMASYARD | GRAMMA AND GINGA

Food & Drink CULTURE Travel SHOPPING Towns

f BEST o

WEST VIRGINIA +

WEST VIRGINIAN OF THE YEAR

MARY HUNT

VOLUME 12

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ISSUE 4

Winter 2019 features

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CARLA WITT FORD

Snow Better Snowshoe Mountain Resort’s female leadership is propelling the resort to new heights.

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West Virginian of the Year For the past 38 years, Mary Hunt has worked tirelessly to sow community development seeds around the Mountain State—and West Virginia is better for it.

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Best of West Virginia Here are our readers’ 2019 picks for the best businesses, towns, and people across the state.

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ISSUE 4

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14 Made in WV Traditional Appalachian folk

58 Outdoors Canaan Valley Resort shifts

toys maintain their appeal through the years.

15 Events Check out these indoor beer fests

61

this winter.

16 Town For 150 years, this tiny town has brought the Swiss Alps to Appalachia.

18 Book Rajia Hassib’s latest novel is a stirring portrait of two Egyptian sisters and what it means to be human.

19 Sounds This native Charleston singer is poised for a breakout year..

21 Shop Noelle Horsfield’s Full Circle Gifts and Goods is keeping Huntington hip and sassy.

24 Shop A unique Thomas boutique offers a

taste 36 Makers The seventh-generation makers at J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works shake up palates and plates in Kanawha County.

of Harpers Ferry’s Light Horse Inn.

67 In Lovely Spaces One of the Mountain State’s most unique homes is on the market.

70 Local Bluefield is looking for a return to glory days through economic development and a focus on tourism.

41 Restaurant Whistle Punk Grill &

100-year-old became internet sensations and stole the hearts of millions.

whiskey made with local ingredients and traditions.

Taphouse has put Richwood on the map as a dining destination.

26 Folk Americana artist Tony Harrah is fixing

44 Memorable Meals A bit of Brussels is

up his sailboat for a spring Gulf Coast tour.

sprouting up around Morgantown.

28 Power Partners This Huntington

46 Local Flavor High-quality sandwiches

power couple is doing big things in Mountain State food, beer, and music.

keep ’em coming to this longtime family market in Fairmont.

30 Hangouts Where the chefs eat.

32 Innovation Serucell, a new skin care

49 This This holiday season, we're all about

6 wvl • winter 2019

61 Away A look inside the past and present

40 Libations Still Hollow Distillery offers

place for regional artisans to sell their wares.

company, celebrates its roots in the Mountain State.

gears during winter, opening its 18-hole golf course to cross country skiers.

the apps.

56 Vittles Who knew something so delicious could start with a box?

72 Out Loud How a 105-year-old and a

ON THE COVER Main Street Buckhannon blanketed in snow.

Photo by Robbie Skinner

editor’s letter An early winter hike at Dolly Sods in Tucker County with friend Sam Crichton.

When I first met our West Virginian of the Year, Mary Hunt (page 82), I had

just started the magazine. She greeted me with such enthusiasm and passion for what I was doing, I knew we would be fast friends.

And I think everyone who has worked with Mary—and there are hundreds and hundreds of people across the state—feels the same way. When I first came up with the idea for Turn This Town Around, she was the first person I called. As a program director for the the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, she connected me with the West Virginia Community Development Hub, and together we created a fascinating partnership that helped a handful of towns engage the community on a path of revitalization. No matter who she is talking to, she listens intently to the issues at hand. She’s enthusiastic but honest in her response to challenges. And most of all, she is passionate about helping to build a better state.

A couple of years ago, Mary and I traveled together to Whitesville, one of our Turn This Town Around towns. During that roadtrip, we solved all of West Virginia’s problems.

When we arrived in Whitesville, we were blown away with what was happening in 8 wvl • winter 2019

this tiny coal town. A grocery store was on the verge of reopening as a result of the initiative’s efforts, but the town was facing a major challenge. Their garbage truck had broken down, hindering trash pickup that would allow the grocery store to open. Mary wasted no time and began connecting the community to solutions. And that’s what I think about when I think of Mary Hunt. She is the consummate connector.

I rarely travel to a town that she hasn’t touched in some way through her work over the years. And it is for her devotion to the state—from Generation West Virginia to Create Your State to educational programs to housing projects—that she has been chosen as our 2019 West Virginian of the Year.

But it isn’t just Mary Hunt we celebrate in this issue. We applaud the best of the best from the tippy top of the state to our most southern borders. Our annual Best of West Virginia Awards (page 88) showcases the best places to eat, drink, and be merry. Looking for new places to visit, this should be your go-to guide. From the best places to shop to popular entertainment spots, you’ll read about them in this issue. But do more than just read about them—hop in the car and

congratulate them in person. If you can’t get there in person, then send them a message.

Show them some love.

Something else worth celebrating is the fact that Snowshoe Mountain Resort has its first woman president: Patti Duncan. When we started looking into doing a story on Patti, we realized that there were several women in leadership positions at Snowshoe—so check out our photo feature (page 74) capturing these lovely ladies, who are all geared up for a wonderful winter ski season.

As we wrap up another year, our entire team at New South Media would like to thank you for continuing to support our publications and our mission—you are the best of West Virginia! We look forward to welcoming a new decade with you!

NIKKI BOWMAN MILLS, Editor

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letters to the editor

Wonderful Women

We Feel the Love

What an amazing group of women and quite a few of my very favorite!

Thanks for spotlighting our very gifted West Virginia women! sally kirk adkins, via Facebook

Excellence. Wonderful example of the gorgeous flora and fauna of our magnificent Mountain State. vera page, via Facebook

We received lots of kudos for West Virginia’s 2019 Wonder Women.

I just wanted to send a message to the entire WV Living magazine team commending its ability to see clearly even when it’s risky.

Recognizing multiple transgender people as WV Wonder Women shouldn’t be as admirable as it is, however, there are many who admire the work but wouldn’t give the much-needed acknowledgment these individuals deserve as y’all have. Thank you for recognizing these women and the good work our state so much needs. All the best. caitlin cook, via Facebook

10 wvl • winter 2019

WV Living magazine is very informative. larry taylor, via Facebook

This publication is my favorite! Why? Because it highlights and uncovers the best of West Virginia. So beautifully done, first class, and fun. Every guest room in our inn has a WV Living magazine on the nightstand. melody urbanic, via Facebook This publication helps keep West Virginia Beautiful! sandy burky, via Facebook

Proud to Call WV Home

My heart is still back home and I LOVE your magazine. I also subscribe to Goldenseal and will be getting Wonderful West Virginia magazine soon.

When I worked in Charleston for the state Department of Commerce, Travel and Tourism/Industrial Development divisions, I designed a lot of the West Virginia travel/tourism/ID literature, printed information, and brochures.

Frankly, your publication is so much more professional and appealing to today’s consumer than what we were doing in the 1970s. Every time I read it, it makes me want to visit my home state again, which I will.

In closing, I read about A Step in Time Bake Shop in Harpers Ferry in your magazine a few years ago and have been ordering their delicious pepperoni rolls ever since.

Keep up the great work, and I’ll continue to personally subscribe to your magazine.

Makes me proud to be from West Virginia! fritz renner, Monterey, CA

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I love receiving this magazine! The stories are always so informative. candice roach via Facebook

Gift Giving

WV Living is the perfect gift for West Virginians afar and at home! t.a. reese via Facebook

Across the States

West Virginia is the most beautiful state! A place I still call home when I’m going to see my mom. Thanks WV Living magazine for bringing some of the best of WV to me in South Texas! lynn agee baer via Facebook

Picture Perfect

This magazine helps keep West Virginia beautiful! I love it and the beautiful pictures and stories so much! mary bodkin via Facebook

Insta-Shoutout

Such a wonderful magazine! @presidentgilmer on Instagram

“

letters to the editor

Beautiful magazine, inside and out!”

- donna long via Facebook

Let us hear from you. We want to know what you think about the magazine, and we’d love to hear your suggestions.

Email: info@newsouthmediainc.com Call: 304.413.0104 Mail: 709 Beechurst Avenue, Suite 14A, Morgantown, WV 26505 Take WV Living with you:

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VOLUME 12, ISSUE 4

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New South Media, Inc.

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EDITOR

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Nikki Bowman Mills, nikki@newsouthmediainc.com Carla Witt Ford, carla@newsouthmediainc.com

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Pam Kasey, pam@newsouthmediainc.com

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Holly Thubron, holly@newsouthmediainc.com

STAFF WRITER

AD DESIGN

OPERATIONS MANAGER

WEB AND SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER

STRATEGIST

CONTRIBUTORS

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Jess Walker, jess@newsouthmediainc.com Hayley Richard, hayley@newsouthmediainc.com Christie Besse, info@newsouthmediainc.com Savannah Carr, savannah@newsouthmediainc.com Buddy Butler, buddy@newsouthmediainc.com Dave Lavender, Taylor Maple, Kate Mishkin Carla Witt Ford, Toril Lavender, Nikki Bowman Mills. Judy Sjostedt

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Frequency: Quarterly. Copyright: New South Media, Inc. Reproduction in part or whole is strictly prohibited without the express written permission of the publisher. © 2019 New South Media, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

12 wvl • winter 2019

Discover WEST VIRGINIA IS A PL ACE OF BOUNDLESS DISCOVERY. HERE’S YOUR GUIDE.

NIKKI BOWMAN MILLS

Snow Days

Here’s a flurry of ideas to beat the winter doldrums, from shopping to eating locally to curling up with a good book.

PICTURED: THOMASYARD IN THOMAS, PAGE 24. newsouthmedia.com 13

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merged the two businesses and relocated to Grandview Elementary School in Proctor.

Schnacke’s authoritative handbook “American Folk Toys,” which includes detailed plans for 85 traditional playthings and which has sold more than 100,000 copies around the world, is what the Conlon’s have used to continue making the many old-fashioned toys associated with the Mountain Craft Shop Co. Their gift shop is not filled with everything from tops and train whistles to popguns and puzzles. Their toys continue to captivate minds young and old.

Mountain Craft Shop Co.’s gift shop is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekends unless the Conlons are at a craft fair. It’s best to call ahead.

You might notice some of their toys on display in national museums like Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Bunker Hill Museum in Boston, Massachusetts; and Appomattox Court House National Historic Park in Appomattox, Virginia. Their toys can also be purchased at Tamarack in Beckley, the Wheeling Artisan Center, and O’Hurley’s General Store in Shepherdstown, as well as state park gift shops statewide. But for the whole catalog, check out folktoys.com. 7901 Proctor Creek Road, Proctor, 1.877.FOLKTOY.

Old-Fashioned Entertainment

Traditional Appalachian folk toys maintain their appeal through the years. some of the best toys are the old favorites that have stood the test of time—like the tops, paddle balls, and other handcrafted folk toys from Mountain Craft Shop Co. in Proctor, in the North Panhandle. Mountain Craft Shop takes the inspiration for its toys from designs that have been handed down over generations, changing a little each time until the original version and its inventor are lost to history.

The company got its start when professional engineer Dick Schnacke, originally from Topeka, Kansas, moved to West Virginia with his family in 1956. Schnacke helped to build the Ormet Primary Aluminum Corporation plant in Hannibal, Ohio, before setting his sights on fulltime toy making.

Schnacke quickly found his toys in high demand—so high that it took most of his family and friends to help him keep up with orders. Wholesale orders poured in from boutiques, general stores, and gift shops around the region. He did a steady business well into his 80s, when he sold to a couple he had known for a few years—Steve and Ellie Conlon—who themselves ran a honey business called ThistleDew Farm. The Conlons 14 wvl • winter 2019

written by zack

harold and holly leleux-thubron

Other places around the state to find old-fashioned toys this holiday season Berdine’s 5 & Dime 106 North Court Street, Harrisville 304.643.2217

Marble King 329 South 1st Street, Paden City 304.337.2264

Kruger St. Toy and Train Museum 144 Kruger Street, Wheeling 877.242.8133

Chimney Corner USA 15328 Midland Trail, Chimney Corner 304.632.1002

Kid Country Toys 908 Walnut Road, Charleston 304.345.5302

Tamarack 1 Tamarack Place, Beckley 304.256.6843

Wheeling Artisan Center 1400 Main Street, Wheeling 304.232.1810

O’Hurley’s General Store 205 East Washington Street, Shepherdstown 304.876.6907

Appalachian Gallery 270 Walnut Street, Morgantown 304.296.0163

ZACK HAROLD

M A DE IN W V

‹‹ discover EVENTS

Keep Warm with Beer Check out these indoor beer fests this winter.

nothing warms the spirit and brightens up the long, cold days of winter like a gathering of friends over a few handcrafted brews and some good food. These winter festivals are a great way for the Mountain State’s burgeoning number of breweries—now at 28—to connect with consumers and share the collective good about the brewing industry that in 2018 produced 18,951 barrels of craft beer, and that provided a $286 million economic impact to West Virginia, according to the Brewers Association statistics.

Morgantown takes the party indoors come February 8 with Cabin Fever, the state’s first and largest indoor craft beer festival.Cabin Fever features only Mountain State–made brews.

Last year, Cabin Fever took place at Mylan Park, with 21 of the state’s breweries pouring 80 different beers. wvbeerfest.com The Better Beer Coalition curates the Wild and Wonderful Winter Fest, now in its third year. This year the organization plans to celebrate India pale ales, known to hopheads as IPAs. Set for Saturday, February 15, the Wild and Wonderful Winter Fest heads back to the event space at Black Sheep Harley-Davidson on Fourth Avenue in Huntington. @wildandwonderfulwinterbeerfest on Facebook In Bluefield, The Bluefield Arts Center hosts a Winter Warmer in late February shining a light on the fast-growing regional craft brewery scene in southern West Virginia. The Warmer is a great way to get a taste of some of the newer area breweries: Sophisticated Hound (Princeton), Banning (Summersville), and Free Folk (Fayetteville) have all popped up in the past few years joining larger established area breweries such as Greenbrier Valley Brewing Company and Bridge Brew Works. Winter Warmer features craft beer, local food, and music from regional favorites. visitmercercounty.com written by dave

lavender

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TOWN

Happy Birthday, Helvetia

For 150 years, this tiny town has brought the Swiss Alps to Appalachia. high up in the snow-capped mountains lies a little village. Colorful buildings look as if they were plucked straight from a European fairytale. Painted coats of arms representing Swiss cantons, or states, peak beneath glittering icicles. Families fill up on good conversation along with their bratwurst and sauerkraut in The Hütte Restaurant.

This little village isn’t in the Alps of Switzerland. It’s Helvetia, West Virginia, a charming community that’s proudly lived its Swiss–German heritage for 150 years. “Anything we do here has purpose and intention. There’s something historically that backs it up and gives 16 wvl • winter 2019

it weight,” says Helvetia native Clara Lehmann.

Lehmann moved away during college, but she and husband Jonathan Lacocque returned in 2012 to this town where history runs deep.

During the mid-19th century, Swiss families traded peaceful Alpine pastures for America’s promising bustle. In Brooklyn, New York, rose a social group called the Grütliverein.

Amongst the growing city’s clamor, these Swiss patriarchs agreed crowded streets lacked the comfort of their mountainous home.

So in October 1869 they trekked deep into Appalachia. Six families nestled together in a single cabin to see the first winter through in Helvetia, named for Switzerland’s Latin moniker. “I can’t imagine how difficult that must have been because, when they came here, the land wasn’t tamed,” Lehmann says. Many were artisans by trade. Some were farmers, she adds, but were accustomed to domesticated land—not the unruly wilds of a newly founded West Virginia.

But the Swiss were resilient. Helvetia’s population peaked at about 300 people. Lively chatter filled the valley, sometimes spoken in a dialect of German called Schweizerdeutsch.

In fact, Lehmann says the local Presybetrian church held two services—one in English and one in Schweizerdeutsch. The community celebrated their homeland’s holidays, like Fasnacht, or “Fasting Night,” a Swiss equivalent of Mardi Gras. “They’d cook lots of fatty foods—donuts, rosettes, things like that—and

drink wine and play music,” Lehmann says.

That is, until two world wars rocked the nation.

Anti-German sentiments quieted traditions.

Not until the 1960s did Helvetia resurrect them, this time with renewed vigor. The first Saturday before Ash Wednesday—2020’s Fasnacht is February 22—locals and visitors alike don elaborate masks, dance, and burn an effigy of Old Man Winter. Afterward, some donate their masks to the Kultur Haus, or Culture House.

Almost every month boasts a festivity: August’s Swiss National Holiday, September’s Helvetia Community Fair, November’s Thanksgiving potluck, December’s Feast of Sankt Nicholaus, and more. This past October, the town celebrated its sesquicentennial with a weekend full of living history demonstrations, a square dance, and a hike on the local Historic Trail.

Helvetia is now fewer than 60 people strong, but each lives their history wholeheartedly. Like the Swiss immigrants, they’re self-reliant, many running their own businesses in a place where cell service is spotty at best and the nearest grocery is dozens of miles away. Something about Helvetia resonates with people, beckons them to the place they call home. “You have to do a little more planning for groceries and dayto-day things, but you’re also able to live more richly,” says Lehmann, who now gets to watch her twin daughters grow up in her hometown.

“There’s a nice balance to living here. It’s not for everyone, but we feel very lucky.” written by jess

walker

NIKKI BOWMAN MILLS

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BO OK

Pure Heart

Rajia Hassib’s latest novel is a stirring portrait of two Egyptian sisters and what it means to be human. most of us can remember a big moment in our lives—a single something that altered everything. At first glance, that moment looks like an artist’s painting, a seemingly unified picture complete unto itself. But a closer inspection reveals each delicate brushstroke, every layer of paint, and even the almost invisible pockmarks of past mistakes. It’s then when we realize that that big moment was really a cumulation of all the little moments. Alter a single stroke here, a touch of color there and, in the end, you would get a very different picture.

This mindset is how readers of Rajia Hassib’s A Pure Heart meet Rose. She sits in her New York City apartment, surrounded by the possessions of her recently deceased 18 wvl • winter 2019

sister, Gameela, attempting to piece together where everything went wrong. Was Gameela’s presence near the sucide bomber that fateful day in Egypt just one terrible coincidence, or was it the inevitable consequence of a thousand smaller actions that preceded it?

In telling the sisters’ story, Hassib blends together themes of politics and religion, family and guilt, in a way that’s utterly relatable yet undeniably unique. But perhaps the most powerful message is about the nuances of our own identities.

Rose, for her part, feels an ache of foreignness in both her homeland of Egypt and current home of America.

Meanwhile, her journalist husband, Mark, finds a bit of familiarity in every place: the untouched wilderness of West Virginia, the bustling streets of New York City, and the complex excitement of a post-2011 revolution Cairo. Then there’s Gameela: the compassionate, devoted Muslim who is both a rule-follower and secret-keeper. Even the suicide bomber is humanized without excusing his decisions.

What makes them all so engaging is Hassib’s ability to write beyond the stereotypes, labels, and black and white boxes in which people tend to categorize each other—and themselves. The characters’ hearts all hold the best intentions. They love passionately. They care deeply. They seek to do what they believe is right. But they also make mistakes, and those mistakes carry weight.

The novel weaves together these characters’ voices as it switches between before and after the terrorist attack. In the hands of a skilled craftswoman like Hassib, doing so forms a seamless narrative that’s more rich than any one character or timeline could generate. It all unfolds on a colorful backdrop spanning cities and countries. The descriptions of Egypt paint a particularly intricate picture.

Dusty, crowded city slums contrast vividly with tranquil farms dotted with guava trees.

The author herself was born and raised in Egypt before moving to America in her twenties. She currently lives in West Virginia.

A Pure Heart is one work of art that will have you leaning closer to tease apart every masterful stroke. written by jess

walker

‹‹ discover

Up & Coming with dave

lavender

S OU ND

Sierra Rising

COURTESY OF SIERRA FERRELL

This native Charleston singer is poised for a breakout year.

things are going swimmingly for Charleston native and Nashville resident Sierra Ferrell. She signed a record deal in 2019 with Rounder Records. After spending years as the front woman for the former Charleston band 600 Lbs of Sin, she has long gone solo creating her own fresh parlor country cabaret sound, like the musical love child of Loretta Lynn and Django Reinhardt. Ferrell, who is also making her debut at Merlefest in April 2020, is booked to tour in late February with Trampled by Turtles. Ferrell and TBT are slated for a couple of shows in North Carolina and Georgia before flying to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, where they are scheduled to play the sold out Avett Brothers On The Beach festival that runs February 27 through March 1 at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Punta Cana.

Playing that fest is no accident, as Ferrell is managed by the Dolphus Ramseur, the North Carolina music man who founded, developed, and still manages the famed Avett Brothers—maybe you were lucky enough to catch them at West Virginia University’s Coliseum last fall. Ramseur has rolled through West Virginia many times with the Avetts—including early stops at

the V Club and 123 Pleasant Street—and called Ferrell’s voice one that “encompasses West Virginia.”

“When she sings, it’s impossible not to listen and envision the beautiful mountains and luscious valleys of that wild and wonderful state,” Ramseur says. “Listen closely and you’ll hear the roaring rivers and haunting hollers of wild creatures and timeless characters. If you are within earshot of Sierra, her singing commands and dares you to listen.”

Nashville music scene veteran Keith Levy of Paradigm Talent Agency handles booking for Ferrell and says he was blown away by Sierra’s talent when they first met.

“Her once-in-ageneration voice and the feeling that, when you are with her, truly anything can happen keeps us super excited to be working with Sierra,” Levy says. “It will be a wild ride!”

If you manage a Mountain State festival or music venue, you should go ahead and book now because Ferrell should be one of the next big things to roll out of Music City via West Virginia. newsouthmedia.com 19

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‹‹ discover

SHO P

Straight from the Underground Noelle Horsfield’s Full Circle Gifts and Goods is keeping Huntington hip and sassy.

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it is hard to make a living as a mom and pop shop, but Noelle and Scott Horsfield have been doing just that as the only below-street retail shop in downtown Huntington. Tucked under Heritage Station’s rustic brick sidewalks, Full Circle celebrates its four-year anniversary in May 2020 at the historical B&O train station that is now home to nearly 20 businesses and the Huntington Area Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Full Circle’s unique flavor attracts both locals and visitors to take the stairs down beside the rainbow flag and pass through the door that cautions, “Warning: Profanity in Use.” Through that door, thanks to a 2019 expansion, is nearly 2,000 square feet showcasing what Noelle Horsfield calls her "amazing handmade pottery, above-average greeting cards, cool stickers, edgy T-shirts, and other awesome stuff."

It is here that Horsfield, a Marshall University College of Fine Arts graduate whose studies emphasized painting, and her husband, 22 wvl • winter 2019

and patches along with Horsfield’s mugs, steins, and other handmade pottery bearing spiritfilled slogans such as “Sometimes You Need Some Crazy” and “West Virginia Weird and Wonderful”—along with some earthier ones that Horsfield laughingly calls “positive profanity.” Full Circle also carries sassy greeting cards, chocolates, jewelry, and other handcrafted items from hip, likeminded artists.

The new space is a reflection of the growth at Heritage Station as well as the couple’s personal growth. Although she was reluctant at first, Horsfield teaches a popular monthly Arts Night Out tile-carving class—and that led them to add new space for workshops. “A lot of people want to learn how to do something and to have an experience,” she says. “We expanded the shop substantially but also added an open room for workshops for Arts Night Out and for other artists, be it knitting or painting or tarot card reading. We know a lot of artists, and this is going to be an outlet for them to share their talents and do that in a space where people are always welcome.”

Horsfield, who lives with Crohn’s disease, creates art that is inspirational to many.

When Marshall University’s Senate Faculty President Paige Muellerleile died in 2019 from metastatic breast cancer wearing one of Horsfield’s “positive profanity” shirts, she created a Marshall-green run of those shirts with proceeds going to metastatic breast cancer research. She also designed the official logo and Scott, have carved out a niche in a place that T-shirt for Huntington’s 2019 Pride Festival. feels like home. “We called it Full Circle because we actually had our wedding reception “We’re trying to be more progressive culture ambassadors and show people that we are more in the main building at Heritage Station in than we used to be,” she says.

1997. We are both from here but moved away The art and the community are feeding for a while. When we came back to town and off of each other in a way that Horsfield is thought about a name, Full Circle felt right, really enjoying. “Heritage Station has become like we were coming back to where we began something totally different, with a much to create something new,” Horsfield says of opening the shop in June 2016. “It felt like there younger vibe,” she says. “As a maker or an artist, it is super isolating to work in a studio alone—it was a lot going on in Huntington and people were pushing things forward. We wanted to be is a completely different way of working and a part of that. When the space became available interacting, seeing people actually touch pieces here, we didn’t even know if we could pay rent, and being able to vibe off of that. I am so much happier and I feel like the work is so much but it felt like the right time.”

They have done more than just pay rent. They better and I just love the community and I love being a part of it.” 210 11th Street Shop #12, have grown every year. They started out in a 700-square-foot space then moved next door into Huntington, 207.522.7868, fullcircleceramic.com a 1,200-foot-space in 2018. After knocking out a written by dave lavender wall in 2019, they combined the spaces, adding a photographed by nikki bowman mills workshop to their studio with two kilns.

The shop is filled with T-shirts, stickers

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SHOP

SHOP

Strolling Through THOMASYARD A unique Thomas boutique offers a place for regional artisans to sell their wares.

24 wvl • winter 2019

shelagh sitterson spends most weekends driving to the tiny town of Thomas from her home in the Washington, D.C., area.

She and her husband, Franz Harb, own THOMASYARD, a charming flower and gift shop nestled in Thomas’s main shopping district. They enjoy their frequent visits. The local bank still requires them to write paper checks when it’s time for employees to be paid, further ensuring the couple never stays away for long.

THOMASYARD itself almost feels like it belongs in a different time, but in the best possible way. Walking through the shop’s eclectic assortment of locally sourced gifts, flowers, foods, art, and antiques, you might feel like you’re embarking on a treasure hunt. Rows of jams, wines, candles, and soaps, all handmade by

residents of West Virginia or nearby states, neatly line the shelves. Hand-knit scarves, shiny pottery displays, and intricate woodworking projects sit in every corner, further evidence of talented artisans in the region. Photo albums feature custom THOMASYARD wedding bouquets, and vintage typewriters adorn the back wall.

Coffee, roasted right here in West Virginia, is for sale at the front counter. And that’s just scratching the surface.

“We’re a little bit of something for everyone,” says Lauren Paslawsky, who began working at THOMASYARD earlier this year. The staff speak of their vendors like family. They’re proud of the work that surrounds them, and it’s easy to see why. “We have a lot of local talent,” says Tyler Elliott, another employee. “So we try to provide a space for them.”

‹‹ discover

Sitterson and Harb aren’t West Virginia natives. She spent most of her childhood in Wisconsin, and he’s originally from Bolivia.

They met in Reston, Virginia, in 1993, where Harb was a real estate appraiser and Sitterson worked at a bank he regularly visited. They first put down West Virginia roots in 1999, when they bought a house with friends in Davis, just a couple miles from Thomas. Then, in 2001, they purchased a home in Thomas itself, immersing themselves in its small, tight-knit population.

Thanks in no small part to THOMASYARD, that connection to the town endures even though their time is split between Thomas and Washington, D.C. Harb and Sitterson have operated THOMASYARD since 2015, when they bought it from a friend who was moving away.

Back then, it was strictly a flower shop. It’s changed names, expanded its stock, and moved a few doors down the street, but the couple’s goal for it is as clear as ever—cultivating a community.

It’s the people who lovingly craft the goods they

sell and those who spend their time gleefully sifting through their inventory who matter most to the owners. Sitterson loves the “appreciation of people who get excited about what they find in the store,” she says. “And then my vendors, who get so excited that somebody liked what they made—that's been the most rewarding thing.”

A “typical” find doesn’t really exist at THOMASYARD, and the shop’s clientele is similar. Patrons come from near and far, and for different reasons, Sitterson says. She estimates about half of their customers are tourists looking for a memory or keepsake, and half are loyal locals who can’t stay away. Sitterson hopes to expand the THOMASYARD brand with more new, in-house products eventually, but they’ll never stop offering a home to the vendors they’ve grown so close to.

Sitterson’s passion for THOMASYARD is undeniable, but it’s when she offers to give a tour of the rest of the town that the spirit of her mission shines through most. As she happily strolls through the drizzling rain, she speaks less of her own shop and more of its neighbors.

She points to each of the inviting stores flanking her own, and runs through the names of their owners. She knows whether the owners are likely to be working today themselves, and what they might be doing if they’re not. She knows how each came to own their properties and what future plans they’re working toward. She says how kind each owner is, or how talented, or how a visitor simply must stop and browse their products before leaving town.

That sense of community—of former strangers embracing each other and cobbling together something remarkable and unique from seemingly mismatched pieces—is definitive of Thomas. It’s also the very essence of THOMASYARD, and what makes the shop an experience that can’t be missed. 284 State Hwy 32, Thomas, 304.463.4999, thomasyard.com written by taylor

maple bowman mills

photographed by nikki

newsouthmedia.com 25

discover ››

FOLK

Sail Away

Americana artist Tony Harrah is fixing up his sailboat for a spring Gulf Coast tour. nitro-based country blues singer Tony Harrah will soon be touring in a way that would make Jimmy Buffett proud. In September, he bought Virgie Mae, a 26-foot sailboat, in Gulfport, Mississippi. Come March he plans to migrate south, touring along the Gulf of Mexico with bassist Anders Bush. Talk about changes in latitudes and attitudes.

Harrah plans to start the tour March 16 with stops in the port cities of Pensacola and Perdido Key, Florida; Mobile, Alabama; Pascagoula, Ocean Springs, and Biloxi, Mississippi; and New Orleans, Louisiana. “Touring can seem like the same old guys wearing the same hats and boots and playing the same songs,” says Harrah, who played Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe in November. “I felt like there’s no way for an artist to stand out, so my drummer ‘Wood’ Roberts said, ‘Why not tour by sailboat?”

Harrah has experience fixing up sailboats, so he didn’t hesitate when the Virgie Mae, which he named after his paternal grandmother, was offered up for a deal. The boat, which had been damaged in a storm, has a new life thanks to Harrah. “It was really just damaged on the rail, so I fixed that,” Harrah says. “It has two beds, a kitchen, and bathroom. I’m putting in a hardwood floor, 26 wvl • winter 2019

sonar, navigation, and netting to store stuff.

I’ve bought new sails. I’m rigging and rewiring, and I bought a motor.”

He and Bush plan to capture GoPro footage— like a video version of a captain’s log— for a documentary film about their “Sad Songs on a Sailboat” tour.

Harrah said it is a dream that can’t wait.

His last album, Unicorns, deals with the pain and void he experienced after his wife died unexpectedly. “I have been obsessed with the sea since I was a kid and I always wanted a sailboat, but I resigned myself to wait until I retired. My dad died at age 61 after eight months of cancer. He never did the stuff he wanted to do. Then, three years later, my wife died. I don’t want to say YOLO, and I have kids, but at the same time I know I can’t wait to do things.”

You can see Harrah and Bush with Great Peacock at 8 p.m. January 24 in Charleston as part of the Clay Center’s Sound Checks series. Harrah and Bush perform in Memphis January 28– February 1 at the International Blues Challenge.

Follow Tony Harrah at tonyharrah.com. written by dave

lavender

Pat Guthrie Jr. and Jess Bright This Huntington power couple is doing big things in Mountain State food, beer, and music. written by dave

lavender

TORIL LAVENDER PHOTOGRAPHY

P OW E R PAR TN E R S

‹‹ discover

patrick guthrie jr. and jess bright are bringing exciting things to some of the hippest joints in the Mountain State.

The pair own Black Sheep Burritos and Brew in Charleston and Huntington, Bad Shepherd Brewing Co. in Charleston, Bahnhof WVrsthaus and Biergarten in Huntington, and the V Club—a Huntington live music venue that Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan told Playboy magazine he considers “one of the best music venues of its size anywhere.” WV Living caught up with Guthrie and Bright to talk about everything they’re up to in Huntington and Charleston.

With Black Sheep Burritos and Brew, how did you know West Virginia was ready for craft beers?

PATRICK GUTHRIE: We started off in the beverage side of the business. It was hard to get good beers back in 2006 when we first started the V Club. When we opened Black Sheep in 2011, the craft craze hadn’t hit fullimpact, and a lot of the distributors wanted us to put in Budweiser and Miller Lite. But from the beginning we decided we were just going to go with craft beer. It worked. Magic Hat had just come onto the market and, in those first weeks, we were going through 25 sixth-barrel kegs in a week. It was insane. I felt like that was the start of the craft beer scene in Huntington.

JESS BRIGHT: Sometimes people get caught up in the idea that in order to compete you have to be the same, and that is the beauty of Black Sheep—it couldn’t be more different.

We set out to not be a Mexican restaurant. We wanted to be more like street food—and tacos are a great way to try a different food that you wouldn’t necessarily try—but in Huntington, where street food and different food haven’t always been a thing at all.

NIKKI BOWMAN MILLS

Where do your ideas come from and how do you make them happen?

JB: Crazy ideas come at all hours. You’re lying in bed and it’s like, “Oh yeah, I know the next thing we need to do.” I guess the brewery was probably the craziest for me to wrap my head around. We both worked in the food industry for quite some time. We know art, we learned

food, and we know beer, but combining them to create a new business was uncharted territory. I was like, “Oh boy, I better start reading.”

That’s what’s great about doing this with Pat. Some people just have an idea and never do anything with it. He is a facilitator that makes sure things really get going.

Tell us how you’ve handled so much growth in such a short period of time.

JB: There was a three-year growth period at Black Sheep in Huntington. Then we added Bahnhof on top of that. We really just went for it and things worked out OK. But it was kind of a blur. We did just work, work, and work to get it done.

PG: We took a vacation right before we opened Bahnhof, then we didn’t take another one for a few years. We just pushed. We had a time frame as to when things should work out, opening, and moving, and putting a new concept into play. So I guess we just did it and we supported each other the whole way.

Tell us about the importance of your team and key players.

JB: It comes down to finding the best team you can get. We obviously can’t do this by ourselves, and we feel lucky to have found such a great team, like-minded people who are interested in artistically expressing themselves through flavors, food, and beer.

Just a few of the people we count on each day include our brewer Ross Williams, who came back to West Virginia from Charleston, South Carolina, to run Bad Shepherd

Brewing Co.; Jeremiah Bowen, who’s our head chef and partner in the restaurants; Kevin Madison, who runs the Charleston Black Sheep; and Dathan Holley, who had managed large-scale chain restaurants before jumping in to run Bahnhof and the Huntington Black Sheep location. We couldn’t do it without these people and so many others.

How do you see your role in raising the community food IQ with a German Appalachian fusion restaurant like Bahnhof WVrsthaus and Biergarten?

PG: I lived in Germany for 16 years and I really wanted to bring some of those foods to West Virginia. Schnitzels were a main dish on our menu when we first started. Nobody knew what a schnitzel was back then, but I guarantee they do now. That feels good to be a part of.

JB: We want to stay here. And we want to make it so you don’t have to leave to have these kinds of experiences. We want to bring things from places where we travel and where our friends travel into the area.

Any advice for a young couple thinking of going into business together?

PG: Be patient.

JB: Just do it. Don’t be afraid to go outside the norm. And don’t try to copy what someone else is doing—just create your own thing and have your own voice. newsouthmedia.com 29

discover ›› H A NGO U T S

Chef’s Choice Where the chefs eat. written by pam

kasey

who experiences restaurants with the most discerning eye? Owners of other restaurants, of course. They critique or admire the dishes and the decor, like any of us, but sometimes what they notice just as much is the happiness of the waitstaff or the layout of the kitchen.

We asked six of our favorite West Virginia chef–restaurant owners where they most like to go for casual and fine dining in the state. Limiting them to one of each is almost unfair, but they played along.

Matt Welsch

Frank Gonzales III

Dale Hawkins

Damian Heath

Marion Ohlinger

Jeffrey Toth

CHARLESTON

BUCKHANNON

BERKELEY SPRINGS

MORGANTOWN

FAYETTEVILLE

WHEELING

Frank Gonzales III’s grandfather and father were restaurateurs in Tucson, Arizona. Now he’s owner and chef at two unique Charleston restaurants. Gonzales describes Mi Cocino de Amor, opened in 2012, as “an authentic Sonoran-style Mexican restaurant—a lot of West Coast influences and Mexican seafood.”

Beyond the fresh, creative dishes, people love the margaritas and sangria and the patio dining. Gonzales opened Gonzoburger as “an upscale craft burger, craft beer place” in 2017.

Dale Hawkins first made a name for himself as executive chef at Stonewall Resort before becoming owner and operator of the celebrated Fish Hawk Acres farm in Rock Cave. Now, with business partner Teresa Lipp, he runs the popular Fish Hawk Market in downtown Buckhannon.

Fish Hawk holds monthly farm-to-table buffet dinners at the farm and plated winter dinners at the market, and also operates a catering business that’s in demand across West Virginia and all the way to Pittsburgh.

After training in Europe and cooking in South and North Carolina, Berkeley Springs native Damian Heath founded Lot 12 Public House with his wife, Betsy, in a house built on Berkeley Springs’ original Lot #12. “We do new American cuisine—upscale comfort-y food,” Heath says of a menu that works locally sourced ingredients into dishes that reflect his Italian heritage.

“We’re not looking to reinvent the wheel—just trying to make everything taste better with better ingredients and better techniques.”

The couple celebrated the popular restaurant’s 20th year this year.

A 12th-generation West Virginian, Ohlinger has cooked on five continents and helmed kitchens in the American Southwest, Seattle, and backcountry Alaska. The modern Appalachian cuisine at his Hill & Hollow restaurant in Morgantown, managed with his wife and business partner, Alegria, embraces the dishes of immigrants from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Hill & Hollow’s artistic and business aesthetic is defined by farm to table, Ohlinger says. He sees it as “aggressively progresive”: “We don’t do popular dishes; we invent our own.”

Pennsylvania native Jeffrey Toth has been cooking for three decades and made his West Virginia debut in 2016 as executive chef at The Station in Fayetteville. Then, in 2018, he went down the street and opened Wood Iron Eatery. “We are an approachable, full-service espresso bar serving lunch and breakfast five days a week,” he says. “We run about a 15-item menu, with specials that we change out every few days. We put a lot of love into it, and that shows on the plate.”

Traveling got this Wheeling-born, motorcycle-riding restaurateur interested in food. It also taught him about the history and culture of his home state.

He returned to Wheeling after 13,000 miles astride his motorcycle and, in 2014, opened Vagabond Kitchen. He once called the dishes at his restaurant “world food through the filter of the Appalachian biker guy.” Welsch’s eclectic menu ranges from catfish to Irish stew via all kinds of other must-order dishes—but what fans say you really must order is his chili.

Casual Thyme Bistro

125 Main Avenue, Weston, 304.269.7177, @thymebistro on Facebook

Owners: Geoffrey Kraus and Dwayne Metz Chef: Geoffrey Kraus; Pastry chef: Dwayne Metz Thyme Bistro offers a lunch menu of salads and sandwiches with daily special dishes and kettle of the day that range widely; the restaurant adds burgers, mac ’n’ cheese, and entrees to that for dinner. Many ingredients are sourced locally and dishes are made from scratch and served up in a stylish and cozy atmosphere.

“They recently moved, in the last couple of years, so now they’re on Main Avenue in a 30 wvl • winter 2019

building that has some nice historic character.

I think Geoff’s just a really, really, really good cook. His soups are always good and always his specials. Anything, he’s so creative. You can order from the menu but I kind of say Geoff, what do you want to make tonight?

Dwayne makes the desserts and they’re always great.”

North End Tavern & Brewery

3500 Emerson Avenue, Parkersburg, 304.428.5854, netbrewery.com

Owner: Joe Roedersheimer North End Tavern & Brewery opened as a neighborhood pub in 1899. That’s not a typo—120 years ago. Brookston Beer Bulletin

currently has it pegged as the 125th-oldest bar in the U.S. Its beers, brewed on-site, can be found in restaurants across the state.

But its menu of appetizers, salads, and sandwiches also satisfies—Facebook users regularly compliment the food and service, with special love for the NET Burger and Roedy’s Reuben.

“North End Tavern was part of that first wave of brewers, before there were over two dozen breweries in the state,” says Welsch.

“It’s a cool, kitschy place—it has all these different levels, kind of a labyrinth feel to it.

They have quarter-pound burgers, a diner burger but a good diner burger, along with stuff like liverwurst that you never see. Good quality, original, simple.”

‹‹ discover Blue Moon Cafe

Corner of Princess and High streets, Shepherdstown, 304.876.1920, bluemooncafeshepherdstown.com

Owner: Gregory King This eclectic restaurant with a relaxing creekside patio has been a Shepherdstown favorite for two decades. Its big menu of appetizers, salads, and sandwiches favors local ingredients and has something for everyone, and its list of craft beverages includes a draft kombucha brewed locally.

“I’ve been to Blue Moon Cafe a couple times this past year to hang out in the outside area,” Damian says. “It’s the coolest little outdoor dining area. And everybody loves the food. It’s simple and nice and good.”

Pizzas and Cream

133 Nebo Walker Road, Nebo, 304.286.2985, “Pizzas & Cream” on Facebook

Owners: The Miller Family This may be the smallest pizzeria in the state.

Ed Miller, along with his son Stephen, built an outdoor wood-fired oven after a trip to Italy. It started as a surprise for Miller’s wife, Joy, but crafting the perfect pizza became a dogged pursuit. By 2015, they’d enclosed the brick oven in a building and opened a business.

Homemade Italian ice, gelato, and ice cream make up the rest of short and sweet menu.

“Pizzas & Cream is right up there with some of the best pizza,” says Toth, who has lived, worked, and eaten all over in Los Angeles and other top culinary cities. “A lot of people think of pizza and they think Dominos, but a good, handbuilt pie that’s cooked properly at a really high temperature, like an 800-degree wood-burning oven, it’s the best. Don’t get it in a box and take it home—you gotta eat it right when it comes out of the oven.”

Best of Crete

816 Beech Avenue, Charleston, 304.343.3292, bestofcrete.net

Owner: Mike Birurakis Originally started in the Charleston Town Center mall in 1983, this family-run restaurant has been operating on a residential street on the city’s West Side since 2015. The seating is cozy—just a handful of tables, plus a few more outside—and the place does a brisk take-out business and has a fanatical following.

“They have amazing fresh Greek food. The owner, Mike, is there every day, and he cooks himself,” says Gonzales. “He does a lot of salads, real Greek-type specialties—the gyros are really good, souvlaki, Greek salad, orzo, of course hummus. He’s really big into the stuffed grape leaves, they make it all there. Their daily specials are diner-style, a dinner with a couple

sides, every day different traditional things.

The low counter is the only thing between you and the entire kitchen. It’s small, it’s quaint, it’s out of the way—a real hidden gem.”

Yann's Hot Dog Stand

300 Washington Street, Fairmont, 304.366.8660

Owner: Russell Yann Since at least the early 1970s, Russell Yann has been serving up hot dogs on his own terms: when he wants to be open, with white or chocolate milk, and with mustard, onions, and his signature spicy sauce. It’s a cantankerous formula that folks stand in line for at his eight-seat shop.

“Walk-up counter, it’s the size of a closet, if you ask for ketchup he’ll kick you out,” Ohlinger says of one of his favorite casual spots in the state. “It’s century-ago style, and it’s not contrived—it’s real.”

Fine Dining Cafe Cimino

616 Main Street, Sutton, 1.877.924.6466, cafeciminocountryinn.com

Owners: Melody and Tim Urbanic Chef de cuisine: Tim Urbanic. Executive chef: Oscar Aguilar The little Italian restaurant the Urbanics opened in the middle of the state in 1999 became such a destination that they were able to spin it up into a 10-room inn in 2007.

“I’ve known Tim and Melody for a long time, and I like Italian food,” says Hawkins.

“Tim just does a really good job. I really like his meatballs—I’ll order a single meatball as an appetizer. He uses high-quality ingredients and I think that makes all the difference.”

Cafe Cimino gets it, says Ohlinger. “The food is very good. The decor is very good. The service is very good. Everything on the menu is done incredibly well. It’s all old-school—all the classics done as they were meant to be.”

The Station

312 North Court Street, Fayetteville, 304.900.5516, thestationwv.com

Owners: Amy Summerford and Kirk Mulcahy Chef: Brandon Holliday Friends Amy Summerford and Kirk Mulcahy opened The Station in 2016 to dish up fresh, local, seasonal, hand-crafted dishes—both to serve their community, and to support the region’s farms “The Station is a classy establishment, and it has a sort of Prohibition vibe that keeps it breathing,” says Welsch. “They’ve got a cool

kitchen. As a line cook, the worst thing you can have is an open kitchen, because all the customers can hear you cuss. At the same time, customers love to see you cooking. The kitchen there is walled in with windows, so you can see in but not hear—best of both worlds.”

The Livery Tavern

217 E. Washington Street Lewisburg, 304.645.9836, liverytavern.com

Owners: John and Dawn Hirt Executive chef: Dustin Hamrick Constructed on the site of a former livery stable—a place where out-of-towners could board their horses—Livery Tavern evokes a mid-1800’s inn, with an open-beamed ceiling and generous use of natural materials and earth tones. The Livery has a full bar, privacy booths, and outdoor patio seating. Dishes including grilled venison, quail, lamb, and local beef cuts—enjoy your meal with pairings from the extensive wine and port list.

Two of the chefs we consulted had Livery Tavern at the top of their lists.

“Just getting the first cocktail at The Livery, I was like, ‘These guys are putting care into making a good drink, and it shows,’” says Toth. “The food was the same way.”

The Livery reminds Gonzales of places he’s eaten out West. “The food is tremendous. They have a menu and specials that, if you’re with several friends, you can order one of everything and have just the perfect range of options.”

The Press Room

129 West German Street, Shepherdstown, 304.876.8777, pressroomrestaurant.com

Owners: Mike and Deborah Luksa Head chef: Mike Luksa Opened in a former newspaper building in 2006, The Press Room has earned a loyal following with its rustic decor and its menu of Mediterranean and Italian favorites. Make dinner reservations well in advance for this well-loved Shepherdstown institution. You’ll find an extensive offering of seafood dishes like calamari, scallops, soft shell crab, and oysters on the half shell. The steaks and lamb are equally divine.

Heath says. “We always know we’re going to get a great meal at The Press Room, and they have the best oysters.. I usually go for one of the many specials.” He notes a good work environment. “They’ve had about the same core of waitresses and front-of-house staff as long as they’ve been open, and they have a lot of the same cooks they’ve had, too.

It’s reassurance.” newsouthmedia.com 31

discover ›› INNOVAT ION

Where Science and Beauty Meet in West Virginia Serucell, a new skin care company, celebrates its roots in the Mountain State. lavender

located in huntington’s quiet southside neighborhood sits a solid white building easily lost in plain sight. It’s definitely not the kind of place where you might expect to find some of the latest innovations in the skin care industry. But it is.

After five years of research, development, and pilot testing, Serucell Corporation was formed with four founders: Dr. Walter Neto, Dr. Brett Jarrell, Dr. Tom McClellan, and Cortland Bohacek. Today the team has expanded to include Jennifer Hessel, president and CEO, to bring Serucell, the world’s only dual-cell serum, to the burgeoning luxury skin care market. Serucell organically rolled out over the last year at The Greenbrier’s spas and in the offices of Huntington dermatologist Amy Vaughan, Huntington plastic surgeon Peter Ray, and Morgantown plastic surgeon Tom McClellan. It launched online with Neiman Marcus in September and continues to expand distribution with luxury retailers and on the company’s website.

What is Serucell

Named as a combination of “serum” and “cell,” this advanced skin care product is a result of Neto’s work as a doctor and biomedical researcher.

The Brazilian native came to Huntington as an exchange student and stayed. He received multiple patents for the breakthrough processes that facilitate the production of KFS—Keratinocyte Fibroblast Serum—a patented fusion of more than 1,500 super proteins, collagens, peptides, and signaling factors that support optimal communication within the cellular makeup of your skin. The product is also enhanced with Hyaluronic, and vitamins A, C, and E. The result: Serucell serum boosts the skin’s natural ability to support new collagen and elastin, strengthen the connection between the epidermis and dermis, and reveals plumper, smoother, firmer, and more radiant skin.

The outer layer, or epidermis, is primarily made of keratinocyte cells and the lower layer, or dermis, is made of fibroblasts. While each layer has its own functions, their cells must work together to produce the proteins and compounds necessary for optimal skin. “What Walter discovered is that 32 wvl • winter 2019

upper and lower layers of your skin really have to work together to rejuvenate your skin from the inside out,” says Hessel, who was at L’Oréal USA for more than 16 years. KFS cellular protein complex hydrates deeply allowing those layers to communicate and rebuild. The bond between the layers grows stronger, helping your skin look healthy and resilient, which Hessel says adds to Serucell’s unique position in the marketplace.

The competitive products in this space now are single-cell technology, based on fibroblasts, which is only half of the story. Signaling between the two layers is critical to making a difference in your overall skin health. KFS is their patented secret ingredient, and that is where it really delivers cellular skin care, or “under skin care,” to support the communication reboot between the upper and lower levels of your skin. The research and the hard work that got them to where they are today here have other implications for the future.

One of the company’s founders, Cortland Bohacek, who married a West Virginian, equates taking care of your skin using Serucell KFS serum to “going to the gym to take care of your body.” To get the $225 per ounce product on shelves has taken a lot of work at Serucell’s lab and manufacturing facility. “There are 147 different steps to make the product and it took six months to figure out how to scale up production due to very strict quality control,” Bohacek says. “It is about four weeks to create the serum.” Add another two weeks of preparation before the bottles are officially ready for market.

Serucell has consumer testimonials from Hollywood to New York City. There are also many people in West Virginia using the product.

Huntington City Councilwoman Jennifer Wheeler is a big fan of the start-up company and its product. “Serucell and the people behind it are impressive on every level. In my role on council, I’m especially grateful for the company’s conscious effort to stay and grow in our city. As a consumer, I have an appreciation for the quality of the product and the results I’ve seen using it. It has been transformative for my skin, and seems like its success will be transformative for our city as well.”

Making It in the Mountain State

With this first Serucell product now heading out to market, and with the company holding multiple patents, Hessel and her all-star beauty team are focused on getting a foothold in the global skin care market, in an industry which is expected to reach $180 billion by 2024.

With three of the four founders native West Virginians and the fourth a Mountaineer by marriage, Serucell, which is currently looking for a larger facility as it scales up, is happy to be in the Mountain State and is committed to growing here. New products are in the works to hit the market in the spring and summer of 2020.

McClellan says he is excited to be a part of this innovative West Virginia start-up. “We are more than just a skin care company. We are a biotech start-up that is starting with a skin care line, but we have much more in store,” McClellan says. “It is a great West Virginia story. It is innovative and it is West Virginia–made and West Virginia–funded.”

Bohacek agrees and is eager to see the impact the company can have in West Virginia. “We are doing some really exciting things in the state with products that we think are more efficacious and more beneficial than a lot of other products in the marketplace,” Bohacek says. “This is something that was created, conceived, and hopefully will grow here and have an impact. This is where science meets beauty in West Virginia.”

To learn more about Serucell, go to serucell.com

COURTESY OF SERUCELL CORPORATION

written by dave

NO MEAL IS COMPLE TE WITHOUT A GOOD STORY

Taste

Merry and Bright

NIKKI BOWMAN MILLS

From festive appetizers to hearty main courses to libations for toasting one delicious meal, these tastemakers have your whole holiday feast covered.

PICTURED: STILL HOLLOW DISTILLERY, PAGE 40.

newsouthmedia.com 35

COURTESY J.Q. DICKINSON SALT-WORKS

taste ›› makers

makers ‹‹ taste

Salt of the Earth The seventh-generation makers at J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works shake up palates and plates in Kanawha County. interviewed by jess

walker

an ancient sea once flowed over what is now west virginia. The Iapetus Ocean—the Atlantic’s father, you might say—disappeared under the rising Appalachian Mountains millennia ago. But it left its salty traces tucked away, just waiting for 19th century entrepreneurs such as William Dickinson to drill down deep. Salt shaped the region’s economy and, at the 1851 London World’s Fair, Kanawha Valley salt even earned bragging rights as “The Best Salt in the World.” A century later, however, business shuddered to a stop.

Today’s home chefs and food connoisseurs can now enjoy bottles of that briny ocean magic, all thanks to Dickinson descendants and sister-and-brother duo Nancy Bruns and Lewis Payne. Their company, J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works, is on the forefront of the artisanal salt and local farm-to-table movements. Here’s Bruns, a former chef, with the dish on the salty stuff.

4797 Midland Drive, Malden, 304.925.7918, jqdsalt.com, @jqdsalt on Facebook We are a seventh-generation saltmaking family. My brother and I revived the business in 2013 on the same land where our ancestors made salt, starting in 1817.

We pump the brine to the surface and solar-evaporate it in big sun-houses, crystalize it, and then hand harvest it—an all-natural, mineral-rich salt. It’s a bright, bold salt, so it actually finishes with just a touch of sweetness. It elevates food to a level you haven’t experienced before.

One story I love is that a mom made muffins for her kids every morning. The kids ate them and never really commented on them. She decided to use J.Q. Dickinson salt one day, and all of her kids said, “Mom, these are the best muffins you’ve ever made.”

And the salt was the only difference. I think when children notice something, even when they don’t know what it is, it says a lot.

We had an extraordinary salt-making season this year because it was so hot for so long. It would take us, from the time we draw it from the well to the time we get it in a jar, about four and a half weeks. This time of year where it’s cooling off, it takes longer to evaporate, closer to six or seven weeks. But we’re nearing the end of our saltmaking season. We start in March and then wrap it all up in November.

This year, our goal was to get to 20,000 pounds. We’re probably not quite going to

hit that, but we’re at about 18,000 pounds, which will be a record.

My ancestors made salt on an industrial scale. They boiled the brine down using first timber and then coal. It would just take them probably a few days to go through the process, whereas with us it’s at least four weeks. So they were making thousands of pounds of salt a day. That’s before refrigeration—people needed to have salt on hand to survive. They had to cure their meats and pickle their vegetables.

You have people who say, “What? What are you doing making salt?” But then they taste it and say, “Wow, that really does make a difference.” They see the care we take when we make it to capture those natural minerals. It’s not processed in any way.

We saw an opportunity to highlight chefs using our salt as well as other West Virginia products. We call it our Celebrating the Seasons Dinner Series. I love it because I get to work with different chefs. You get to see their creativity and how they’re using local seasonal food as well as how they’re using our salt.

You do feel the weight of the history and legacy of the family on your shoulders, in a good way. It motivates me to do better every day, to make them proud, and to be able to pass this on to future generations. newsouthmedia.com 37

taste ›› libations Still Hollow’s gin and corn, rye, and cranberry-flavored whiskeys have attracted legions of fans. You’ll want to try their Bourbon Barrel Aged Maple Syrup, too.

Whiskey Our Way Still Hollow Distillery offers whiskey made with local ingredients and traditions. written by kate

T

mishkin bowman mills

photographed by nikki

he journey to Still Hollow Spirits is almost as much of an experience as the whiskey itself. The long, windy gravel road that leads to the Harmon distillery feels like someone’s driveway—several patrons have confessed to the staff that they were worried they were lost. But they always eventually found it, sitting atop the Allegheny Mountains, surrounded by bucolic pastures.

“You kind of feel like you’re going into the backwoods to get the moonshine,” says Athey Lutz, distiller and owner of Still Hollow Spirits, and that’s exactly the type of distillery he set out to create with his wife, Maggie, and their friend Tyler Waldo two years ago: one that feels comfortable and celebrates West Virginia. “We wanted to do something that would combine agriculture and tourism

40 wvl • winter 2019

and moonshine, and celebrate all those things in West Virginia. Everything we do is really West Virginia–centric. We’re proud of being from West Virginia,” Lutz says.

Celebrating agriculture, tourism, and moonshine is exactly what they do every day at Still Hollow. Everything is steeped in history and rooted in sustainability.

Ingredients that go into the whiskey are pretty much all found right there on Job Farm, in Job. The star of the show is the Bloody Butcher corn, which is sourced from the farm as well as another family farm that has grown the corn from the same seed for more than 200 years, Lutz says.

On a recent afternoon, Lutz was shelling and harvesting corn. He’d stop and chat with visitors who came by. He says the rural location to which he welcomes visitors is

relaxing, and that he loves talking to people and hearing their stories. He spends as much time with them as they want to spend with him, he adds.

Though Still Hollow is just approaching its second anniversary, the idea for the distillery has been with Lutz for a while. He grew up in the Canaan Valley, and his dad worked in the ski industry. Lutz noticed how many tourists who came in and out of the area wanted to learn about moonshine. For 10 or 15 years, he saw friends and acquaintances open successful craft breweries. He and his wife, Maggie, decided to take a class in distilling in Vermont.

“After that we had a little time to think and kind of process information,” Lutz says.

“We went to another class in Chicago with the same training program, and then drove from Chicago to Colorado for my brother’s wedding.” All that time in the car became fertile ground for ideas and planning and, by the time they got home from the trip, their decision to open Still Hollow was made.

Lutz likes being in business with his wife and friend. “I guess it makes things easy in a way,” he says. “You don’t have to work with someone you pretend to like or annoys you—not that you can’t annoy your friends or spouse, but it’s nice to spend time with someone you already enjoy spending around.”

Making whiskey is an intricate process anchored by time. A distiller starts by shelling and grinding corn, then boiling it into a beer.

The beer goes into a still, which is “where the magic happens,” Lutz says. After that, the whiskey is barrel-aged to become bourbon or infused with a flavor, like cranberry.

The entire process can take about two weeks, and Still Hollow is on pace to make roughly 1,200 gallons of whiskey this year.

Lutz’s favorite is a clear, corn whiskey that “has a really interesting corn-butterscotch flavor,” he says. It’s fiery, but it’s smooth right out of the still.

Business is good, the couple reports.

“If you enjoy a beautiful drive and seeing the West Virginia countryside, it’s a good excuse to take a drive and see one of the prettier parts of state,” Lutz says. “And if you’re interested in hearing about the process of making whiskey and seeing firsthand and asking questions, that would be another reason to come down.”

128 Stink Run Road, Harman, 304.227.4692, stillhollowspirits.com

W histle Punk Grill & Taphouse ‚‚ taste

Whistle for Your Dinner

Whistle Punk Grill & Taphouse has put Richwood on the map as a dining destination. written and photographed by nikki

bowman mills

taste ›› W histle Punk Grill & Taphouse

W

hen you bite into a burger, do you think about where it came from? How many locals are you helping by eating it? Do you think about the origins of the restaurant? You should. The story of the food we eat matters. Our locally owned restaurants are the economic engines for our communities. Think about it—not only do they employ locals and buy food from local farmers, but they are community builders. They are often the supporters of little leagues and community fundraisers. And, quite honestly, food just tastes better when there is a story attached.

And there’s no better story than that of Whistle Punk Grill & Taphouse in Richwood.

Lance and Stacy Raffo are no strangers to the restaurant business. Before opening Whistle Punk, Lance was the managing partner at Buffalo Wild Wings and had worked in food and beverage at high-end resorts, including Snowshoe Resort, The Greenbrier, and The Ritz-Carlton Tysons Corner in Virginia. And although Lance had always dreamed of owning his own restaurant, his wife was less enamored with the idea. Stacy says, “I’m not a risk-taker. Any time Lance has wanted to open his own restaurant, I would always say, ‘Well, I want our kids to eat all three meals of the day. So I don't think we’re gonna do that.’”

And then the flood of 2016 devastated Richwood. Many thought the town would just wither up and die—but not the Raffos. “When we made the decision to purchase the building for a restaurant, we didn’t know if it would work,” Stacy recalls. “So many people told us we were crazy and that no one would come to Richwood. But we knew the traffic is here—people are always traveling through here to cabins in Pocahontas County or The Greenbrier or to Snowshoe. We just needed to give them a reason to stop in Richwood.”

So Stacy and Lance set out to be the change they wished to see in their town. They bought a building on Main Street in 2017 and worked on it for 10 months before opening. “I had one criterion. If we did this, we weren't going to do it with any debt, because I didn’t want to worry about how we were going to make a payment in January,” says Stacy. So they bought all of their equipment used at an auction and replaced it as they were able to afford it.

And people didn’t just stop in Richwood—they stopped in droves. And they are still coming. Because once you eat one thing off the menu, you are already planning your return trip because there are 10 more things you want to try.

Whistle Punk’s Chesapeake Bay Crab Dip and its Crab Cake entree are epic. Lance is a native of Maryland, where having a perfect crab cake recipe is a requirement. The crab dip is downright decadent, and the classic lump crab cake is the perfect concoction of lemon, parsley, Old Bay seasoning, and fresh crab meat. “The crab dip and the crab cake entree are two of our top sellers,” says Stacy. “The dip very quickly developed a cult following. When we first opened, we sold over 30 crab dips in two hours.”

Another entree that has legions of fans is the Gnocchi with Grilled Pork. The pan-fried gnocchi is topped with a rich and tangy Gorgonzola cream sauce. It’s through 42 wvl • winter 2019

W histle Punk Grill & Taphouse ‹‹ taste Everything on Whistle Punk Grill & Taphouse’s menu is delicious, but three of the most popular dishes are the Chesapeake Bay Crab Dip (shown on previous page), the Gnocchi

dishes like this that Lance and Stacy bring unexpected flavors to their tiny town. “I really get a lot more joy out of this than anything I ever did, because we’re making really great food here in Richwood,” Lance says. “We aren’t providing cookie cutter–type dishes that you get at every other restaurant.”

The menu offers many things that you wouldn’t expect to find in a small town: kale chips can be substituted for fries, spaghetti squash instead of pasta, and gluten-free bread.

“Our older daughter is gluten-free and has been for about five years. It was so hard for us to go out to eat, so we just decided that we were going to accommodate people that have gluten allergies,” says Stacy.

The menu also features salads, flatbreads, paninis, sandwiches, wraps, and burgers.

If you are in the mood for a salad, try the Quinoa and Kale Salad. It is made with locally grown kale, roasted peppers, sliced avocados, and spinach and topped with craisins and a delicious homemade thyme and lemon vinaigrette. If you are looking for a good burger, the Jim Comstock burger pays homage to the infamous Richwood native with a beef patty topped with bacon, cheddar cheese, garlic aioli, and avocado. Or try the Sterling Spencer—a blackened burger topped with balsamic onions, blue cheese crumbles, and jalapeño jelly. All of the beef is sourced from West Virginia farms.

with Grilled Pork, and the Crab Cakes. Lance and Stacy Raffo are grateful for how the community and non local patrons have supported them.

An important member of the Whistle Punk team is Chef Libby Nolle. Libby had worked with Lance at Snowshoe and jumped at the opportunity to create a creative menu for the restaurant. She says, “Lance and Stacy trusted me enough to let me loose and be inventive, which I really appreciate.”

Patrons appreciate it, too, and take pride in their hometown restaurant that’s become a culinary destination for out-of-towners.

With live music on weekends, displays of rotating local art, and a small gift shop that sells T-shirts, sweatshirts, baseball hats, and coffee for nearby Cherry River Roasting Company, Whistle Punk has also become a community center of sorts. Stacy is proud of how enthusiastically her community has embraced the restaurant. Each week during the school year, the restaurant designates a local student for extraordinary academic, athletic, or volunteer work and honors the student as a “Legendary Lumberjack of the Week” by creating a special item that is featured Tuesday through Thursday. “We ask them their three favorite foods and three foods they don’t like, and then Lance and Libby create a special for that kid,” explains Stacy. “The kid gets their meal for free. It’s a great way to encourage kids to do well and to keep the community involved.”

The Raffos hope others see the potential that Richwood offers entrepreneurs. “Chuck Toussieng, a friend who founded Richwood Scientific, says, ‘you can afford to fail in Richwood.’ And he is right. It would be devastating if we wouldn't make it, but we could afford to fail here. We bought a building for $18,000—you can't do that everywhere,” says Stacy. “You can afford to take a chance in Richwood. And that’s what we need other people to do—take a chance here. Richwood is in a great location.

We are an hour to anywhere. Our hope is that Whistle Punk can be a cornerstone and foundation for Richwood’s second life.”

35 E Main St, Richwood whistlepunkwv.com 304.846.2020 newsouthmedia.com 43

# Memorable Meals

taste ›› memorable meals

written, photographed, and eaten by

nikki bowman mills

I

’m obsessed with Brussels sprouts. I don’t know why. I never liked them as a kid. They were boiled, bitter, and stinky. But now, I eat them three times a week. What is wrong with me? Apparently I’m not the only one who is craving these cruciferous morsels. For the last couple of years, they’ve been popping up on menus everywhere. So for this issue’s Memorable Meals column, I’m going to share with you three of my favorite Brussels sprout dishes from Morgantown-area restaurants.

Bacon, Bourbon & Beer Bacon, Bourbon & Beer opened in Morgantown in 2019. While it is known for its extensive varieties of bourbon, national and local craft beer selection, and menu items incorporating bacon in every way imaginable, it’s the Brussels sprouts, $5, that have won me over. Deep fried, topped with bacon, and tossed with lemon zest and parmesan cheese, they make french fries seem passé. I order them with a side of the restaurant’s delectable bacon vinaigrette, which complements the nutty sweetness of Brussels sprouts well. If I get a midweek craving, I’ll get a to-go order, sheepishly sauntering up to the bar, hoping the bartender won’t judge me for just ordering Brussels sprouts. W 368 Suncrest Towne Centre Drive, Morgantown, baconbourbonandbeer.com

Table 9 Perched on the Monongahela River, Table 9 is a casual yet upscale restaurant where you’ll enjoy ever-changing specials and drinks menu—and one of my favorite small dishes: the Brussels sprouts. Even though the Brussels sprouts, $6, are on the dinner menu, they’ve gladly prepared them for me when requested at lunch. They are perfectly crisp and crunchy and topped with creamy hollandaise sauce. Although the dish is meant to be shareable, I don’t share mine. W 40 Donley Street, Morgantown, dinetable9.com

Iron Horse, with Morgantown locations at Granville Square and on High Street, first put Brussels sprouts on its menu in June 2014 and since then has seen them become increasingly popular. The Brussels sprouts, $10.50, are sauteed with garlic and caramelized onion and topped with bacon, parmesan cheese, and a balsamic glaze. Order them as an appetizer and watch everyone’s opinion of this much-maligned vegetable change W 140 High Street, Morgantown; 525 Granville Square, Morgantown; ironhorsetvrn.com

44 wvl • winter 2019

COURTESY OF IRON HORSE TAVERN

Iron Horse Tavern

taste ›› local f lavor

Deli, Italian Style

lettuce. Toppings and condiments include many that are house-made according to old family recipes, like a sweet Carolina or hot pepper slaw, hot pepper mustard, and vinegar pepper rings.

High-quality sandwiches keep ’em coming to this longtime The ranch and Italian dressings for sandwiches and on the full salad bar are house-made, too. family market in Fairmont.

Hermosilla’s chicken salad is a community written by pam kasey favorite. “We roast our chicken breasts and thighs for six hours, so the meat is really tender photographed by carla witt ford and has tons of flavor,” Gross says. “It’s the same way my dad always did it. We probably make family and food are any find in the area—imported canned tomatoes 40-plus pounds of it a week, and sometimes we indication, Italian heritage and olive oil, gourmet dipping oils, biscotti. It have to make more.” is still going strong in north gets those through weekly deliveries from the Meats and cheeses are available for bulk central West Virginia. Just much-loved Pennsylvania Macaroni Company purchase—10 percent off on Saturdays. It’s visit Hermosilla’s Deli Market in Pittsburgh’s Strip District. The deli also offers part of a rotating schedule of daily specials. For in Fairmont for a taste. an extensive olive and antipasto bar. a family dinner, pick up homemade meatballs “My dad’s grandfather opened the original But Hermosilla’s may be best known for and sauce: eight meatballs frozen in a 32-ounce Hermosilla’s Market downtown,” says Deli its high-quality deli meats—and its hefty container. Feeding a crowd? Hermosilla’s also Manager Ali Hermosilla Gross. That was sandwiches. “Our Italian meats and cheeses all prepares deli trays for pickup or delivery. almost a century ago, on Jackson Street. The come from Penn Mac,” Gross says. “We also Gross’s dad passed away in 2015, and market sold Italian specialties and freshcarry Amish meats and cheeses from Troyer the family works together to continue his butchered meats. “Then it moved to the corner Cheese Company in Sugarcreek, Ohio. My dad dream: Gross along with her mother, Patty of Adams and Quincy streets. My dad and his did a lot of research, and they offer a lot of lunch Hermosilla, her sister, Dominica West, and cousins grew up with that, and it was open until meats that don’t have nitrates or nitrites. We like her brother, Nick Hermosilla. about 1980.” to eat healthy as a family, so they aligned with us Even six years in, Gross says, “We get people Fairmont was without Hermosilla’s for more and we like to offer that to people.” all the time that ask, ‘Is that the same family? than 30 years. But when Gross’s father, Dennis Signature sandwiches, like the best-selling I remember Hermosilla’s Market!’” It’s the Hermosilla, retired from teaching, he decided to Kickin’ Roast Beef with green onion cheese and same family indeed, keeping Italian heritage bring it back. horseradish sauce and the Homemade Salad alive in north-central West Virginia. 919 Opened in 2013, Hermosilla’s Deli Market Sandwich of chicken, ham, or tuna salad, are Morgantown Avenue, Fairmont, 304.366.4376, carries specialty Italian items that are hard to piled high on diner’s choice of bread or a bed of hermosillasdelimarket.com

If

46 wvl • winter 2019

this ‹‹ taste

Appy Holidays!

Kitchens everywhere will soon be heating up to prep the Christmas ham and bake the gingerbread men. With all the

hustle and bustle, appetizers are easy to forget. Until the doorbell rings, that is.

Put that bland box of crackers and dusty old cheese board back into your pantry.

We’ve collected some of our favorite easy-to-make recipes for appetizers that are actually appetizing. And if you find yourself stuffed before the main course?

Hey, we won’t judge. written by jess

walker

food styled and photographed by carla witt ford

taste ›› this

Pickled Shrimp brine 4 bay leaves ¼ cup flat leaf parsley 2 teaspoons garlic ½ cup lemon juice ½ teaspoon celery seeds, crushed ½ teaspoon coriander seeds, crushed ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes 1 tablespoon J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works salt 1 cup olive oil ½ cup white wine vinegar shrimp 1 pound cooked medium shrimp, peeled and deveined 1 lemon, thinly sliced ½ onion, thinly sliced ½ cup caperberries 1. Combine ingredients for pickling brine into a bowl.

2. Layer cooked shrimp, lemons, onions, and caperberries in a large glass jar or trifle bowl.

3. Pour picking brine over the layers. Cover and refrigerate overnight before serving. yield: 10 servings

50 wvl • winter 2019

this ‹‹ taste

Cucumber and Smoked Salmon Stackers lemon dill cream cheese ¾ cup cream cheese 2 tablespoons sour cream Zest from 1 lemon 1 tablespoon fresh dill, minced 1 small garlic clove, grated on a

microplane or very finely minced Pinch of J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works salt stackers 3 mini cucumbers, sliced 5 ounces cold smoked salmon Fresh dill and fresh cracked pepper, to garnish 1. Using a mixer, blend cream cheese, sour cream, lemon zest, dill, garlic, and salt together in a medium-sized bowl. Transfer the cream cheese mixture into a piping bag fitted with a star attachment or use a small resealable plastic bag and cut off the tip.

2. Lay the cucumber slices on a serving tray. Add a small dollop of cream cheese mixture on top of slice to keep salmon in place. Roll the smoked salmon into small strips. Place a strip of salmon on top of each cucumber slice.

3. Pipe the cream cheese mixture on top of the salmon. Garnish with a sprig of fresh dill and fresh cracked pepper. yield: 12 servings

Holiday Bundles with Citrus Tarragon Dip dip 1 cup whole milk Greek yogurt 2 tablespoons fresh tarragon 2 teaspoons lemon zest 1 tablespoon lemon juice 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil ½ teaspoon J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works salt bundles 1 English cucumber 1 red bell pepper 2 medium carrots 1 bunch of chives

1. Mix together dip ingredients in a bowl.

Let the dip sit in the refrigerator for at least one hour to allow flavors to meld.

2. Cut fresh produce into matchsticks about 3 inches long.

3. Tie three pieces of vegetables together with a long chive. Cut the ends off of the chive to desired length.

4. Arrange bundles around the dip and serve.

newsouthmedia.com 51

taste ›› this

Apple Chutney Chicken Salad 1 cup mayonnaise ½ cup Major Grey’s chutney 8 chicken breast halves, cooked and shredded 4 green onions, chopped 1 Granny Smith apple, peeled and chopped ½ cup red seedless grapes, sliced ½ cup sliced almonds, toasted 1 package Uncle Ben’s Ready Medley Quinoa and Brown Rice 4 red delicious apples, thinly sliced

1. Blend mayonnaise and chutney.

2. Combine remaining ingredients and refrigerate until ready to eat. Just before serving, spoon chilled chicken salad on top of thin slices of apple. yield: 24 Servings

this ‹‹ taste

Beer Cheese Bread Bowl 8 ounces Gouda cheese 8 ounces Swiss cheese 2 tablespoons cornstarch 1 12-ounce lager beer 2 tablespoons lemon juice 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works salt, to taste Green apples, cut into wedges Ripe pears, cut into wedges 1 loaf of crusty bread, cut into bite-sized chunks 1 bread bowl 1. Grate the Gouda and Swiss cheeses into a bowl.

Add the cornstarch to the cheese and mix to coat.

2. In a medium-sized saucepan, add beer and one tablespoon of lemon juice. Warm to steam over low heat, but do not allow it to simmer.

3. Add the coated cheese to the beer mix by the handful.

Whisk the ingredients together over low heat.

4. Once the cheese is fully incorporated and the mixture has thickened, add one more tablespoon of lemon juice and one teaspoon of Dijon mustard.

Add J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works salt to taste.

Mini BLT Cups with Chipotle Mayo

5. Pour prepared beer cheese into bread bowl.

Arrange bread chunks and apple and pear wedges around the dip.

blt cups 5 strips of bacon 24 cherry tomatoes 24 pieces baby arugula chipotle mayo 3 tablespoons real mayonnaise 2 teaspoons chipotle powder 1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lime juice ¼ teaspoon soy sauce Pinch of J.Q.Dickinson Salt-Works salt 1. Cook bacon in a large pan over medium-high heat until crispy. Remove from heat and cool slightly. When the bacon is cool enough to handle, break off 24 small pieces for the topping and crumble the rest.

2. While the bacon is cooking, hollow out the cherry tomatoes. Cut the bottoms off of the tomatoes (they will sit on their tops). Carefully scoop out the insides with a small, pointed spoon.

3. Whisk all the mayo ingredients together in a small bowl. Transfer the mayo to a small resealable plastic bag. Cut off the tip of the bag, making the hole very small.

4. Tuck a piece of arugula into each cherry tomato. Spoon a little of the crumbled bacon inside. Fill with chipotle mayo and top with a piece of bacon. yield: 24 bites newsouthmedia.com 53

taste ›› this

Salted Bourbon Caramel Cookie Bars 1 cup unsalted butter, softened 1 cup packed light brown sugar ½ cup granulated sugar 2 large eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 teaspoon J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works coarse salt 1 teaspoon baking soda 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips 1 jar J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works Bourbon Caramel Sauce 1 teaspoon J.Q. Dickinson Salt-

Works Bourbon Barrel Smoked Salt 1. Preheat oven to 350°. Line a 9x13-inch baking dish with foil and coat with nonstick cooking spray.

2. Using a mixer, beat the softened butter with both sugars until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add eggs, vanilla, salt, and baking soda. Mix well.

3. Turn mixer speed to low and add flour.

Beat to combine. Fold in chocolate chips until fully incorporated.

4. Press half of the cookie dough into the bottom of the prepared baking dish.

5. Heat the jar of J.Q. Dickinson SaltWorks Bourbon Caramel Sauce in a microwave for 30 seconds, until it pours easily. Pour the caramel sauce over the cookie dough base.

6. Drop the remaining cookie dough over the caramel filing in teaspoon-sized dollops.

7. Bake 25–30 minutes, or until the center is set. Sprinkle with salt and allow to cool completely before enjoying. yield: 30 servings 54 wvl • winter 2019

EAT + DRINK + BE LO CA L |

newsouthmedia.com 55

taste ›› vittles

Bistro in a Box Who knew something so delicious could start with a box?

C

written by holly

56 wvl • winter 2019

leleux-thubron

harleston residents have fallen in love with Bridge Road Bistro since its opening in 2004, and the eatery continues to elicit regional and national attention for its delicious fare. It’s a gem of a place, minutes from the capital city’s downtown, that supports and celebrates the community, local farmers, and regional producers.

Sandy Call came on board as general manager in 2011 before taking over ownership of the establishment earlier this year. Her outof-the-box thinking has led to a unique retail product—a soup base in a box that’s the starter for several of the Bistro’s many beloved soups. The soup base mix builds the foundation for making any number of recipes, including a few favorites you’ll find on the Bistro’s menu—like pumpkin bisque, roasted red pepper bisque, cream of mushroom, loaded potato, jalapeno bacon, and tomato bisque.

“This is a 100 percent West Virginia product,” Call says of the boxed soup base. Chris Gosses of Charleston photographed the packaging, Amanda Eater, from Charleston-based Inside Out Creative, designed the packaging, and Call, originally from St. Albans, partnered with Tasty Blend Foods in Fraziers Bottom for distribution of the restaurant’s first retail product.

Call says sales are growing since she launched the product line in September.

Check out new mouth-watering recipes each week on the Bridge Road Bistro blog at thebrigeroadbistro.com. Pick up your own box of Bistro Soup Mix at West Virginia Marketplace at Capitol Market, Bridge Road Bistro, the Bistro Cafe at Columbia Gas, Tamarack, and amazon.com.

Live

E XPLORING THIS E X TRAORDINARY PL ACE WE CALL HOME

NIKKI BOWMAN MILLS

Hearth and Home

Enjoy the comforts of home from a majestic castle to a historic inn to your own backyard.

Josh’s own creation PICTURED: LIGHT HORSE INN, HARPERS FERRY, PAGE 61. newsouthmedia.com 57

Cross Country Canaan

for gear needs, and even take lessons offered for visitors new to the sport. Ski and snowshoe rentals are also available from the pro shop and, if you’re staying at the resort, a shuttle can take you Canaan Valley Resort shifts gears from the lodge directly during winter, opening its 18-hole to the golf course. Canaan Valley Resort has made it easy golf course to cross country skiers. for visitors to experience the written by kate mishkin stunning, wide-open spaces of a region that has lured ven blanketed with feet of snow, adventure seekers for more than 70 years. the golf course at Canaan Valley The story of Canaan Valley Resort dates Resort sees a lot of action in the back to the early 1950s, when the Washington winter. Visitors during these Ski Club would visit. Airplane pilots working months are likely wearing more in the area told anyone who would listen that layers of clothing, golf shoes definitely aren’t the place was special—from their vantage required, and the scenery is breathtaking no point, they could see that it stays white longer matter when you’re there. Winter has offered than anywhere else around. something extra special since the resort opted The club developed it and called it Cabin to transform the golf course into cross country Mountain Ski Area, and skiers would use a ski trails in the off-season. rope as a towline up the hill. “They basically During the winter months, visitors can founded the Canaan Valley through that,” cruise the more than 20 miles of cross country says Justin Harris, media liaison for Canaan trails, visit the on-site cross country pro shop Valley Resort.

E

58 wvl • winter 2019

In 1971, the Canaan Valley became a state park. Through the years, West Virginia has gathered more land to grow its state park, and the resort has grown in both size and popularity. The next year, the resort built the golf course beloved by cross country skiers in winter. It boasts skiing, ice skating, tubing, and snowboarding—and that’s just during the winter season.

Some things haven’t changed: Canaan Valley’s storybook views and picturesque mountains still draw visitors looking to explore the Mountain State’s natural beauty.

“Any weekend during ski season it’s just bustling with people,” Harris says.

With a valley floor about 3,200 feet above sea level, the Canaan Valley is the highest valley east of the Mississippi River, with mountains that reach about 4,300 feet. It bodes well for wintertime, when thick snow blankets the 60,000-acre valley.

This year, the winter season officially starts December 14. The ski areas see between 150 and 180 inches of snow each year, about

COURTESY WEST VIRGINIA TOURISM OFFICE

live ›› outdoors

outdoors ‹‹ live

a quarter of which is natural. The rest is made on-site. In fact, the resort just increased the water supply from the Blackwater River and got a new pump for snowmaking. Now, it has nine snow guns—four tower guns and five moveable guns.

Downhill skiers and snowboarders enjoy an 850-foot vertical drop, with about 90 acres of skiable terrain over 47 trails designed for all experience levels.

Cross-country skiers can do their thing on the golf course’s marked and unmarked trails for free.

The resort is gearing up for a busy season. Part of that is due to some recent sprucing up, according to Harris. “We had a $34 million dollar renovation in 2013, a state-funded renovation, which is why we have this beautiful hotel now,” he says.

“It’s pretty stunning.” The resort also opened two more ticket sale windows to shorten wait times.

The 160-room hotel sits on the opposite side of the road from the ski mountain, with balconies that overlook the valley. In the wintertime, it looks like a snow globe. There are also 23 cabins and cottages on the resort property. “I like that because it gives the ski mountain its own natural appeal,” Harris says. “So when you’re skiing you don’t have houses or a hotel—you’re in the forest, which is really cool.”

The resort is in a prime location; people visit to ski and snowboard, but they also like to wander into nearby Thomas and Davis, where they can hear live music and try craft beer.

People go next door to Blackwater Falls State Park and to the Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge.

“You’re not just coming here for skiing, you’re coming here for an overall winter experience,” Harris says.

“The state of West Virginia is realizing there’s a lot of money to be made on tourism here,” he adds.

“They’re putting money in marketing.

They’ve been shooting more and more commercials. And I think all of that has an impact on bringing people to the area.” 230 Main Lodge Road, Davis, 800.622.4121, canaanresort.com

newsouthmedia.com 59

away ‹‹ live

History Inn the Making A look inside the past and present of Harpers Ferry’s Light Horse Inn. written by jess photographed by nikki

walker

bowman mills

live ›› away

families can visit and see the history of their ancestors,” says Sarah Gordon, the business manager of Harpers Ferry Getaways. Gauthier agrees. “It’s fun to watch people come in and see their eyes light up,” he says.

Having a town like Harpers Ferry full of landmarks that speak of America’s past is rare, and Civil War buffs revere it as a hub to decisive battlegrounds. “People tend to make a stop through here. They’ll take a day to Gettysburg, a day to Antietam, a day to Manassas,” Gordon says. All the while, they rest their heads in a building that actually saw the men marching off to war.

Modern Charm

C

arrie and Chad Gauthier were already running a bed and breakfast in Harpers Ferry when they chanced upon the Light Horse Inn. The grand brick building sat vacant on Washington Street, a piece of history just waiting for life and laughter to fill its halls again. “We hemmed and hawed about it a little bit, but then took the steps to purchase it from the owner,” Chad Gauthier says. That was in 2014, and the power couple hasn’t looked back.

One Inn, Many Keepers

The Light Horse Inn may now be a cozy B&B where travelers from nearby Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., can experience true Appalachian wonders, but its story began long before West Virginia was founded. During the American Revolution era, Gersham Keyes built his home and tavern on Washington Street. Overnighters in the 1780s could sleep at The Keyes Inn for 7¢. Boarding your four-hoofed ride? That was an extra 10¢.

Around the turn of the 19th century, General Harry “Light Horse” Lee purchased the property. His current claim to fame is as father of Confederate Commander Robert E. Lee, but Light Horse was a patriot in his own right. He served as a cavalry officer in the American Revolutionary War—earning him his nickname—and later as governor of Virginia. His bravado in political affairs, 62 wvl • winter 2019

however, didn’t translate well into financial ones; he soon found himself in debtors’ prison.

In the 1840s, the lodge was called Graham’s Brick Tavern. Harpers Ferry changed hands throughout the Civil War, but the inn endured among the click of soldiers’ boots and clack of horses’ hooves. Yet the 20th century was not kind to it. Singer Amanda Goudie, known as Amanda Lane, hoped to restore the building, but plans fell through when her contractor ran off.

And so, more than two centuries after the inn’s construction, the Gauthiers added their names alongside those of its storied owners.

Past Treasures

Even today, guests can feel the history in the walls and throughout the beautifully appointed rooms. One suite was once public sleeping quarters. Another was a private suite for wellto-do ladies and gentlemen. The Gauthiers also recently bought a neighboring historical property to create four additional suites, all part of the Light Horse Inn complex. “They’re entirely different structures, but they go well together,” says Chad Gauthier. Gauthier doesn’t mind the maintenance. “It always needs work, but you have to look at it from a standpoint of preservation.”

Keeping the feel of yesteryear alive is especially important when descendants of Harpers Ferry notables visit, including the Keyes and the Grahams. “That alone makes it important to preserve the building so those

Besides historical significance, the Light Horse Inn provides a small-town atmosphere with access to big-time adventures. Water lovers canoe, kayak, and whitewater raft, and hikers traverse the Appalachian Trail. In the evening, they tour nearby vineyards or dine in town at watering holes like The Barn of Harpers Ferry, another of the Gauthiers’ properties a short jaunt from the inn.

Harpers Ferry, Gordon adds, is a gateway to West Virginia for many folks traveling from bustling eastern cities. It’s a place proud of its history, radiant in its natural beauty, and inviting in its culture. No matter guests’ planned adventures, days at the inn all start with a hot plated breakfast. Two talented innkeepers dish up hearty meals with fare like Eggs Benedict and homemade Belgian waffles. “A lot of it comes down to showing travelers that West Virginian hospitality,” she says.

That hospitality is even cheerier when the Light Horse Inn decks its halls. “The month of December, Harpers Ferry turns into a Hallmark Christmas movie,” Gordon laughs.

The merriment is for the Olde Tyme Christmas Festival, which takes place the first two weekends of the month.

From historical grandeur to present-day charm, the Light Horse Inn is a timeless muststay in Harpers Ferry.

The Light Horse Inn would like to extend a warm welcome to readers of WV Living Magazine by offering a discounted Harpers Ferry Winter Getaway. Use discount code WVLIVING when booking online at harpersferrygetaways.com to receive 20% off your nightly rate for any night now through March 20th.

1084 Washington Street, Harpers Ferry, 877.468.4236, lighthorseinn.com

home marketplace

66 wvl • winter 2019

in lovely spaces ‹‹ live

Be the King or Queen of Your Own Castle

One of the Mountain State’s most unique homes is on the market. written by dave photograped by

lavender

nikki bowman mills newsouthmedia.com 67

live ›› in lovely spaces

T

eresa White has 50 listings as a real estate agent for Perry Realty in Morgan County, and none have drawn the level of interest of a particular “summer cottage” built in 1886. They sure don’t build summer cottages like they used to.

The 9,300-square-foot cottage is located at 276 Cacapon Road overlooking a historic spa town and Berkeley Springs State Park. The home was built by the late Maryland Senator, railroad, and liquor business magnate Samuel Taylor Suit as a summer cottage for his young fiance, Alabama debutante Rosa Pelham. Pelham told him she would marry him if he built her a castle.

Suit obliged.

Thought to be the only Norman-style castle in the United States, Berkeley Castle, which shares the same name as a larger, even more famous 11th century castle in Gloucestershire, U.K., has drawn a constant flow of interest and rumors since its construction on Warm Spring Ridge as part of the original Fruit Hill Farm. White says the home, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, offers the best of both worlds: historical integrity and modern updates by previous owner Andrew Gosline. Gosline died in December 2014 at the age of 74 and had lived

68 wvl • winter 2019

in the home since 2002. His heirs are now selling it.

The castle offers far more than a standard five-bedroom residence. It has two kitchens, eight bathrooms, and eight stone fireplaces.

There’s a solarium, a billiard room, and a butler pantry. The exterior features a viewing deck and stone patios and even a waterfall, all on just about 7 acres. The kitchens have been modernized, according to White, and other updates include new plumbing, new HVAC including six heat pumps, and a hot tub. The home has been on the market for a little more than a year, and the price has since come down to $1.3 million. “The main interest has been for a bed and breakfast or an event center. It would make a wonderful venue for weddings and other parties and that kind of thing.”

Such a use would seem fitting, since the castle has long been associated with large gatherings. Suit moved his new wife and their three young children into the home in August 1887. He died a year later after a short illness. After he passed, Rosa, who was 22 when she married, lit the castle up with numerous large parties until she ran into financial trouble and began renting it out

in lovely spaces ‹‹ live

in 1898. One notable summer renter was New York millionaire Howard Gould.

The castle was opened for tours in the early 1950s, and many residents have long thought the property was owned by the town. “I have lived here my whole life, and when I was a child you could pay to have a tour of the castle,” White says. “It’s in better shape now, since Mr. Gosline really fixed it up.”

With rumors and colorful history flowing faster than the springs below the property, the city’s wellknown resident historian, author, and vice president of Travel Berkeley Springs, Jeanne Mozier, wrote a book, The Story of Berkeley Castle: What’s True and What’s Not in 2016.

In recent years, all was quiet on the castle front, as it was merely a home for a man and his dog. Gosline told Goldenseal magazine in 2002 he found the castle sale in the real estate section of The Wall Street Journal and decided to come up from Florida and check it out. He and his doberman, Duke, lived in the castle, splitting time between the castle and his home in Florida. Although he rented the venue for weddings and events, the castle was closed to tours. White, who worked for Gosline, says his legacy is in having helped preserve one of the most unique homes not only in West Virginia but in the U.S. newsouthmedia.com 69

live ›› local

An End to the Bluefield Blues

Bluefield is looking for a return to glory days through economic development and a focus on tourism. written by buddy

If

butler

you are a Bruce Springsteen fan, you probably know the song “Glory Days.” As the rocker notes, “Glory days, they will pass you by.” The city of Bluefield certainly had its fair share of glory days in the past. City officials and local entrepreneurs are determined that there will be plenty more in the future, too.

Two Scotch-Irish families originally settled Bluefield. The Davidson and Bailey clans claimed it as their new home shortly after the Revolutionary War. It is rumored the name “Bluefield" came from the fields of blue chicory that grow in abundance. The area was a rural farming community for many years, but everything changed in the late 1800s when the with the discovery of the Pocahontas Coalfield—one of the largest and richest deposits of bituminous coal in the world.

Coal’s big push

of work. Bluefield’s economy grew quickly, and the city became a hub of commerce when the Norfolk and Western Railway chose Bluefield for its headquarters and repair station, building a huge switching yard there. Around the railroad’s offices, rail yard, and shops gathered banks and utilities as well as the wholesale warehouses that stocked coal company stores serving the booming Pocahontas Coalfield.

In the one-year period from 1887 to 1888, passenger travel along the railroad quadrupuled. Bluefield seemed to spring up overnight, was incorporated in 1889, and boasted a skyline with high-rises that rivaled those in New York and Chicago.

Money flooded into the area as a result of the coal industry. At one time, Bluefield even achieved the highest per capita automobile ownership in the country.

The Great Depression’s impact

These were the early glory days of Bluefield.

The growth and development of the coal industry But they did not last. The Great Depression took a heavy toll on the country and didn’t created a local economic boom and attracted spare Bluefield. The economic impact of the new people to the area. European workers and Depression, coupled with a series of devastating black migrant workers from the Deep South fires in the downtown center, nearly destroyed came to the mountains of Appalachia in search the once-vibrant town.

World War II reignited the coal industry, and the town rebounded for a short time. The population of Bluefield topped 21,000 residents in 1950. However, as the nation’s dependence on the coal industry waned and the highway system’s advance into the mountains of West Virginia reduced reliance on the railroad, the town suffered the same fate as many other small towns in America. In 2014, the population of Bluefield was half its 1950 peak, and many downtown buildings were vacant.

New sense of optimism

Today, there is optimism that many more glory days are on the horizon. The city has taken an aggressive approach to revitalizing 70 wvl • winter 2019

its urban core. In 2014, Bluefield created a Community and Economic Development Department and hired a director who set the foundation for new programs to stimulate economic growth. The town received a $2 million grant to set up small business incubators to support sectors including manufacturing, technology, food, and destination retail.

In 2015, the city celebrated the opening of 15 new businesses.

Bluefield also partnered with neighboring Princeton to become a West Virginia Certified Arts Community with plans to promote the region’s theaters, art galleries, and performing arts venues. Over the past few years, the regional resurgence of interest in the arts has created a cultural renaissance, from the painting of community murals to arts walks, fairs, and festivals.

The people behind the push

Skip Crane believes that if you restore it, they will come. Crane serves as the treasurer for

local ‹‹ live

town to accommodate the additional employees, future businesses, and visitors to the city.

In addition to the new Intuit facility, a $2.5 million project called the “Commercialization Station” is under construction. It will be a mixeduse, manufacturing-focused incubator.

Love of the locals

The Bluefield Yarn Company proves that niche retail is important to revitalizing small towns. It’s a special gathering place—a place where people come together not only to knit and crochet, but to unwind, connect, and build friendships. Owner Karen Rideout has knitted herself and her shop into the fabric of the town. “I just love Bluefield,” she says. “I love the mountains, the seasons, and especially the people. Everybody is very giving and always trying to make things better for others. It is a beautiful, beautiful place to live.”

The Blue Spoon Cafe is a darling dining destination in the heart of downtown Bluefield.

Originally opened by The Bluefield Preservation Society in efforts to revitalize downtown, the cafe is now owned and operated by Nicole Coeburn with a love for small business and the Bluefield Community. “We focus on fresh food and ingredients. Using homemade recipes and offering weekly specials with specialties in doughnuts, desserts, soups, salads, and sandwiches,” says Coeburn. the Bluefield Preservation Society, which oversees the ongoing restorations at The Granada Theater—a Spanish Moor–style auditorium, constructed in 1928 as a vaudeville theater for live performances. The Granada Theater’s restoration is one among the many ongoing projects and initiatives to preserve and promote the local arts.

“In the 1920s and 1930s, the theater was in its heyday,” Crane says, noting the pristine conditions of the “rich velvet red and gold” ornate detailing throughout the auditorium. In the theater’s prime, traveling acts and entertainers such as the Three Stooges performed on its stage, drawing major crowds. “In the 1950s, the Lone Ranger came and gave the kids silver bullets,” he says. “Greer Garson came in 1941 and urged people to buy war bonds during World War II. There were some very famous people that visited.”

Big things on the horizon

In 2017, Economic Development Director Jim Spencer set his sights on bringing a major player to downtown Bluefield when he applied to the business and software company Intuit to be considered as a location for its next prosperity hub.

And in March 2018, the software giant announced Bluefield had been chosen from among more than 900 communities. The company plans to create between 200 and 500 jobs in downtown Bluefield in the former First National Bank building on Federal Street.

The planned hub will include a customer success center and an innovation lab for entrepreneurs and start-up businesses. The jobs created by Intuit will nearly triple the number of employees who currently work in downtown Bluefield. The indirect benefits will be substantial for local restaurants, retail shops, and service providers, and the area’s real estate market.

In anticipation of the new growth, the city is working to create 750 new parking spaces down-

Tourism opportunities

As Bluefield grows and provides more opportunities for local residents, it also is becoming a more attractive destination for tourists. “I have always felt that Bluefield is a bit mysterious in her story,” says Jamie Null, executive director of the Mercer County Convention and Visitors Bureau.

“There are so many unique stories that surround her history. What other city had five theaters, a hidden speakeasy, a southern city skyline, and tons of coal rolling through the rail yard? As leaders and citizens, our focus is to pour meaning back into our downtown. For a CVB director, revitalization is an important role for travel tourism. It breathes life into our marketing campaigns and gives us a product to share with folks outside of our area.”

Null says she already sees more visitors coming for brunch on Sundays, staying in local inns, coming to shows at the Bluefield arts centers, and attending community events and festivals.

There is still more work to be done, but Bluefield is definitely a town with many, many glory days ahead. newsouthmedia.com 71

live ›› out loud

Funnier with Age

“They were always really funny, but we never had iPhones to record it before,” Sheila says. She How a 105-year-old and a 100-year-old became internet taped short clips to send to sensations and stole the hearts of millions. family, and Frank posted some on his personal Facebook. His page written by jess walker exploded. “He said, ‘You know, I can’t do this undreds of thousands have “They are exactly the way they are in the on my Facebook anymore. We’re just going to watched their YouTube videos. videos,” says Gramma’s granddaughter Sheila have to get them their own Facebook.’” The Television stars Steve Harvey Liljenquist who, along with her brothers rest is viral history. and Jimmy Kimmel have hosted Frank Fumich and Paul Romano, brought the Usually a YouTube clip has to be sensational them as guests on their shows. ladies onto the digital scene. “Gramma is the to get the views Gramma and Ginga do. But More than a million people have liked their planner. She doesn’t do anything dangerous. that’s part of their charm. They banter, gossip, Facebook page. And these superstars don’t even She did everything she thought she was and swear like the rest of us in a way that know what Facebook is. supposed to do.” And Ginga? “She’s carefree, reveals comedy in the everyday humdrum. “A They’re Gramma and Ginga, the she likes to have fun, and she likes to be out lot of people say, ‘I love watching Gramma centenarians whose tell-it-like-it-is humor and about, talking to people.” and Ginga because they remind me of my made them beloved around the world.

The two have always bantered, but their grandmother or aunt that we lost,’” Sheila Genevieve Musci, known as Gramma, was videos only started about five years ago. It was says. She’s also gotten messages from people born in 1914 and her sister Arlene Cody a complete accident, as most good ideas are. worldwide in the hospital after chemotherapy Bashnett, or Ginga, in 1919. The West Virginia Sheila, Frank, and Paul’s mother—Gramma’s or surgery, and seeing the videos livened their natives grew up in Clarksburg and couldn’t be daughter—had passed away. Sheila began spirits, just like they did for Gramma and more different from one another, which their making trips from her home in Virginia to Ginga’s own family. fans know all too well. Gramma and Ginga West Virginia, often driving Gramma and The grandkids knew they were onto lovingly bicker back and forth as only true Ginga out to lunch. Gramma and Ginga can something big when Frank received emails sisters can, sprinkled with colorful phrases usually be heard yelling “Sheila!” and other from Steve Harvey’s Little Big Shots: Forever that are rip-roaring hilarious—but can’t be choice words in videos when Sheila takes a Young and Jimmy Kimmel Live! “I thought it printed here. wrong turn. was a joke, and Frank thought it was a joke 72 wvl • winter 2019

COURTESY OF GRAMMAANDGINGA.COM

H

out loud ‹‹ live

too,” Sheila laughs. “We both thought, ‘Now, who is trying to scam us?’”

Gramma and Ginga met Steve Harvey in person, but traveling at a hundred years young is difficult. For the Jimmy Kimmel clip, producers arranged to send computer equipment to Gramma’s house so the ladies could video chat instead. They even hooked up internet, since Gramma didn’t have it. Sheila says she and her brothers thought the whole affair would be almost impossible—Gramma and Ginga also have hearing issues—but the television folks assured them, “Don’t worry. We’ll handle everything.”

That they did. Gramma and Ginga heard Jimmy Kimmel’s questions and answered them, much to the audience’s laughter. At the end of the clip, Gramma insisted Kimmel shave his beard. He’s too young to have one, she said. Meanwhile Ginga chirped up, “You look handsome, with or without!”

Even still, the sisters don’t quite get the internet. “People would come up to them and say, ‘Oh we saw you on Facebook.’ But they never got the ‘face’ part,” Sheila says.

Ginga would tell her, “Everybody says they see me on the book.”

The ladies do understand one thing: love from fans. Sheila says they adore when people say hi in the grocery store and ask to snap a picture. “Usually when people are in their elder years, no one pays much attention to them. This added so much to their lives, because everyone recognizes them. They want to say hello, and they treat them like celebrities.”

Gramma and Ginga’s YouTube career has slowed down a bit, now that they live hours apart. Gramma, who is 105, lives with Sheila in Virginia, and the 100-yearold Ginga lives with her son in West Virginia. They chat over the phone though, and fans can still check out new videos regularly.

Of course, this story wouldn’t be complete without asking for the secret to such long lives. But if you’re looking for a clear-cut recipe, you won’t find it with these two. “I just think they have longevity in their blood. Gramma attributes it to not taking any medication, not drinking, not smoking, and being married to one man,” Sheila says. “Ginga would tell you it’s eating chocolate and having fun.” grammaandginga.com, @grammaandginga on Facebook newsouthmedia.com 73

74 wvl • fall 2019

Snow Better

Snowshoe Mountain Resort’s female leadership is propelling the resort to new heights. written by

dave lavender

photographed by

carla witt ford

newsouthmedia.com 75

ruth backman EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT

Ruth Bachman, a native of Valley Head, started working for the resort on the weekends in the housekeeping department at age 16. She said the resort allowed her the opportunity to find her passion and where she really belonged. Her job titles have included postmaster, sales agent, lift attendant, dispatcher, waitress, and finally now executive assistant to the president. “When I first started to work at Snowshoe in the executive offices in the early 1990s, there were no women in charge,” Bachman says. “I’ve seen a lot of changes during my time here.”

patti duncan

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER

It has been a year since Alterra Mountain Company promoted longtime Snowshoe Mountain Resort employee and West Virginia native Patti Duncan as its president and chief operating officer. She is the first female leader in the resort’s 45-year history. In her 19 years as a resort employee, Duncan has served as vice president of resort operations and director of retail and has worked in rentals, outdoor adventures, and in the spa. She’s now using her expertise in financial management, leadership, personal development, strategic planning, and team building as well as the stakeholder trust she’s earned to launch the resort into the future.

jen shannon SKI SCHOOL DIRECTOR

Jen Shannon joined the Snowshoe Mountain Resort ski school as a snowboarding instructor fresh out of college. The experience segued to a supervisor position in 2004, and she bounced from Outdoor Adventure to the golf course and events, depending on the season. She took over management of the ski school and ultimately was named its director—her current title. She says she derives deep satisfaction from coaching and guiding her instructors and management team, and that she’s proud of the way Snowshoe has helped carve out a special place for women to excel at winter sports.

kandy ramos VP OF FINANCE AND FACILITIES

Kandy Ramos moved to Snowshoe with her husband Marc in 2001, permanently relocating from Charleston, South Carolina, motivated by their shared love of this special place.

Her career with the resort started in cash accounting. She was quickly promoted to staff accountant, then became the food and beverage controller, then food and beverage group manager. She went back to accounting in 2010 as the finance manager and, in 2019, was named the vice president of finance and facilities. She says she loves the challenges of her position and working with all divisions of the resort.

sarah guyette VP FOR MARKETING AND SALES

Sarah Guyette grew up on Snowshoe Mountain, and her first job was in the resort coffee shop. She left for college, lived out West for a spell, then returned to where her working life had begun. She was hired for a video editor and producer position and jumped at the chance to pursue her passion in her own backyard. She’s worked in multiple roles within the department to immerse herself and learn all facets of the marketing world. She now has the best job in the world, she says, as vice president of marketing and sales for “an amazing slice of the world.”

malea gum DIRECTOR OF SALES

Malea Gum grew up 10 miles from Snowshoe Mountain Resort and worked there in housekeeping as a teenager. She moved on to the call center and there developed a love for business systems and information technology.

She worked her way up to director of sales, her current title, and appreciates being surrounded by amazing women every day. “They have helped mentor, shape, and guide me to where I am now,” Gum says of her female colleagues. “I can look around and see how far we have come and what an amazing female leadership team we have here.”

erica roth

DIRECTOR OF RETAIL AND MERCHANDISING

Erica Roth has been at Snowshoe Mountain Resort since 2004. Her love for the outdoors and winter sports took her there, and her professional success working for the resort has kept her there. She is the director of retail and merchandising, and she gets a special rush seeing new products that haven’t hit shelves yet. “I knew I wanted to be a part of the Snowshoe team because we share the same values. We work well as a team. Regardless of the position you hold, we come together as one mountain when things need to get done.”

coby brown

HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR

Coby Brown is a Pocahontas County native who first worked for Snowshoe Mountain Resort as part of the ski patrol and in the ski clinic in the mid-’80s. She followed other career paths, and ultimately returned to the resort in 2002 to charter the Snowshoe Foundation, and she launched the first public–private partnership with WorkForce West Virginia, establishing the Snowshoe Career Center in Marlinton. She was named the human resources director after that and has never looked back. She offers this piece of advice to young women in West Virginia—“Get your education and stay in our state. Put your skills to work locally to grow and positively impact your communities, our cities, and our state.”

Mary Hunt tours Grafton, a Turn This Town Around town that was a grant recipient of the Benedum Foundation.

WEST VIRGINIAN OF THE

YEAR ✯ ✯ ✯

COURTESY OF THE HUB

MARY HUNT

For the past 38 years, Mary Hunt has worked tirelessly to sow community development seeds around the Mountain State—and West Virginia is better for it. written by Dave Lavender

Mary Hunt grew up in Clarksburg, where she still lives today.

From a young age,

Sowing Seeds of Growth at Home

Hunt was born into one of those families who always seemed to be helping out someone, somewhere. “My family has always been community-minded,” she says. “My dad was a union officer, and my late brother was also in the union. Mom was head of the church ladies’ society, and my brother Jim was a city councilperson.”

The example Hunt’s family provided would serve as clear inspiration for her work in the decades to come. In fact, when she received the 2015 Jean Ambrose Champion of Community Development Award from the West Virginia Community Development Hub—a group she helped birth—she dedicated the award to her father, Rex Hunt, “who planted so many trees that he knew he would never see grow,” she said at the time.

Hunt’s own career in community development began in the late 1970s, while she was still a student at Fairmont State University.

84 wvl • winter 2019

It was then when she began working at an earlier incarnation of today’s Clarksburg-Harrison Regional Housing Authority. By 1981, she was its director. “My first job coming out of college was helping with housing and that led to all things community,” Hunt recalls. “That’s how my career took its track.”

She learned at the housing authority how to ask for help, then execute a plan. “My boss was really dynamic and was always developing projects, and I was learning from her. We applied for three block grants for a community center, sidewalks through Stonewood, and then a water and sewer project in Summer Park.

We got all three, and that taught me many things—how to market, plan, and implement a project,” she says. “I learned, if you do good work, resources come. The next thing you know you are putting sidewalks through an entire town.”

Called to Help in Charleston

It wasn’t long before Hunt’s services were called on in the capital city. She worked for the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Community Development in Charleston throughout the late ’80s and early ’90s before going to the West Virginia Department of Commerce. During that time, she also completed a master’s degree in public administration at WVU. Hunt was in Charleston at a pivotal time, when major development projects were coming to fruition. It is hard to imagine a Charleston today without such iconic spaces as Haddad Riverfront Park and Capitol Market, but Hunt was there when the ideas were conceived. “The riverfront park was our main project, along with a Charleston farmers market and numerous homeless shelters,” she says. “We had a lot of grants that came about. We developed a men’s and women’s homeless shelter and a domestic violence shelter—a lot of really powerful work that helped address some big problems for people in need.” For Hunt, the projects provided affirmation that her efforts and those of other hardworking individuals could create true community assets, ones that folks could reap from for years to come.

COURTESY OF JIM HUNT

In

folklore, Johnny Appleseed walked around the region spreading apple seeds scattershot as random acts of generosity.

But in reality, Johnny Chapman was an orchardist who planted strategically near hundreds of communities, praying that those trees and those communities would grow together and that he would then be able to provide fresh fruit to folks in bustling towns.

Like a Mountain State Johnny Appleseed planting strategic orchards of growth and prosperity, Mary Hunt, who is currently a program director for The Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, has spent the past 38 years working in community development, and the seeds she’s helped plant have taken root all over West Virginia.

her family instilled in her the importance of being involved in the community.

As a program director with the Benedum Foundation, Hunt works closely with grant recipients. Friends Judy Sjostedt, Hunt, Marlo Long, and Monica Miller often take road

trips around the state together. As a community development leader, Hunt is a regular contributor to conferences around the state.

Hunt made her mark in state government, too. In the early 1990s, during Gaston Caperton’s administration, she worked as executive assistant to the cabinet secretary for the West Virginia Department of Commerce for two years and then as the chief of administration for the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection for five years, through 1997.

One of her longtime friends and colleagues Monica Miller, who recently retired from the West Virginia Development Office, has known Hunt since the early 1990s. Miller is now a consultant and has collaborated with Hunt countless times, on heritage tourism and Main Street projects early on and, most recently, providing coaches for Appalachian Regional Commission POWER (Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitalization) grantees through the West Virginia Community Development Hub. Miller says Hunt’s years of working in community development from almost every angle possible has served her—and her home state—well.

“She knows everybody,” Miller says. “She is a great connector. When she is giving someone advice or helping coach someone through a project, she is able to pull from all of her experiences and connections she’s created over the years. She has a perspective that a lot of folks don’t have.”

COURTESY OF JUDY SJOSTEDT, THE HUB

From Grant Writer to Grant Giver

Then, 20 years ago, Hunt found a way to make the most of her skills and connections by landing a pivotal programing director position with the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation.

Established by Bridgeport native and oil and gas industry businessman Michael L. Benedum in 1944, the Benedum Foundation celebrated 75 years of strategic communitybuilding in 2019. The foundation provides grant funding throughout West Virginia and Pittsburgh, two places Benedum and his wife, Sarah, a Blacksville native, called home during their lifetime together. It supports work in the areas of education, economic development, health and human services, community development, and civic engagement. Since 1944 the organization has given more than 8,300 grants and $473 million to foster education, health, and community development in West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania.

During Hunt’s lengthy tenure, she has helped distribute grants in almost all 55 of West Virginia’s counties, supporting nearly 650 grant projects and touching roughly 200 organizations, according to Benedum Foundation records. One is hard pressed to find a foundation that has worked as hard and extensively in West Virginia as the Benedum Foundation.

Hunt says, “Because of my previous work, I was able to see things from the perspective of people trying to make major changes. As a funder, I try to keep abreast of all of that. I understand the challenges.”

Bruce Decker has known Hunt for more than 20 years. He is the founder and owner of Collective Impact, a Pennsylvanianewsouthmedia.com 85

“Mary Hunt is the single most important pioneering and passionate person in community development in West Virginia.”

- bruce e. decker

based capacity-building team that helps organizations in 14 states and Washington, D.C. make the most of grant dollars. He calls Hunt a visionary who is “the single most important pioneering and passionate person in community development in West Virginia.“ Decker is also a past board president with Create Huntington, Inc., a grassroots organization that empowers residents to make positive change in their community. He says having Hunt and her passion and knowledge at Benedum has been a perfect storm for good in West Virginia. With Hunt’s guidance, Create Huntington was birthed from a Benedum Foundation grant in 2008. Since then, Create Huntington has started a grassroots revolution in the Jewel City and implemented dozens of projects, such as reviving the Shops at Heritage Station and building a new creative class with a focus on arts, music, and shops that has been instrumental in reviving the downtown.

“When Mary moved into her role with The Benedum Foundation, it gave her an opportunity to not only lead the charge but to provide more resources. Mary’s leadership and the projects she has been involved with, like The Hub, has helped us all to become more strategic in our intention,” Decker says. “When you work with Mary you realize not only can we do it, but we absolutely have to do it. Nobody else is going to come and change our state for good. I think her love for the state and her ability to motivate and mobilize communities has been very, very important in how we think about ourselves and how we do things in our state.”

Hunt says being a cheerleader for positive change is indeed a role she loves. “I think being a cheerleader was the best training for this job,” Hunt says. “There is so much good work going on. It’s important for us to cheerlead for those folks who are in the trenches, who feel like they are struggling. Then we cheer them on again when they’ve achieved their goals. I have the best job in the world.”

Mary Hunt is a visionary who has helped organizations from around the state by connecting them to resources. Hunt with Brandon Dennison, CEO of Coalfield Development Corp.

By many accounts, one of Hunt’s greatest visions and contributions has been the 2008 establishment of the West Virginia Community Development Hub. Before The Hub was born, West Virginia had two statewide community development groups—The Community Development Partnership of West Virginia and the Community Collaborative, Inc. Kent Spellman, who was president of The Community Development Partnership, became The Hub’s first executive director and served until 2016. “The two things that make Mary very special is that she has great vision and she thinks strategically,” says Spellman.

“Mary saw that these two organizations were not working as 86 wvl • winter 2019

COURTESY OF MARY HUNT, THE HUB COURTESY OF THE HUB

Re-Shaping Community Development Into The Hub

Hunt is highly respected in the community development world. She enjoys traveling to the state’s small towns that have been recipients of Benedum grant funding.

challenges and successes along the way. Farmers markets were established, a rail trail program funded, a grocery store in a food desert sprouted, small businesses launched, and beautification projects painted the towns in a new light—and the effects are still being felt today.

Another community development project that Hunt and the Benedum Foundation helped support is Princeton’s downtown revitalization efforts, led by Lori McKinney and her husband Robert Blankenship. They founded the Create Your State initiative that promotes using arts and music to help inspire town renaissances, and through Benedum Foundation grants, have been able to take their “Create Your State” arts-based empowerment program on the road to other towns. “It’s clear when you talk to Mary that she understands folks who are driven to make change.

She gets the depth and humanity of it all, because she is coming from that place herself; she strives as an individual to bring all she can to the table to make the world a better place,” says McKinney.

“She is a warm soul, and you can feel that when you are near her.

She cares about people, and she cares about the world we are creating for future generations.”

Hunt understands that an important component of sustainable community development is the training of younger generations.

She has always believed and invested in the next generation. “Mary sees that the future lies in the hands of our young people, and so Benedum and The Hub invested a lot in bringing young people into positions where they could make a difference and empower them to make decisions on their own,” Spellman says.

COURTESY OF THE HUB

Community Building For The Future efficiently as they could be,” Spellman continues. “These groups came together and developed a model for what community development should look like. Mary was instrumental in all of that.” Although merging the two groups was not easy, Spellman says initiatives started under his tenure and many others under current director Stephanie Tyree have proved Hunt’s vision for The Hub has been a great success.

One project that the Benedum Foundation and The Hub worked closely on was the Turn This Town Around initiative, created by this magazine’s parent company, New South Media.

“When I had this crazy idea as a media company to create an economic development initiative called Turn This Town Around, the first person I called was Mary Hunt,” recalls Nikki Bowman Mills, founder, publisher, and editor of New South Media. “She came to my office and we sat around the table.

She listened intently and said, ‘I love this idea. Let’s get Kent Spellman and The Hub involved in our conversations.’ She’s great at brainstorming, anticipating challenges, and making the connections so that projects are completed.” Through Turn This Town Around and The Hub’s oversight and training and grant funding provided by the Benedum Foundation, small communities like Grafton, Matewan, Whitesville, and Ripley became reenergized; New South Media documented the

No matter who you speak to, if they’ve worked with Mary Hunt, they will say that the guidance she has provided is priceless and that she has been instrumental in keeping community development in West Virginia moving forward. “We think of community development as very linear and that it continues to move forward but that is not the case,” Decker says. “It’s two steps forward, five steps back, and three sideways. Mary’s consistent leadership has helped move the momentum forward in a way that would not typically happen. She is a solid rock for our region.”

Hunt believes in action. She is excited about community development and education projects that are results driven. “Mary is such an incredible thinker and an idea person, but she’s also a doer. She is able to implement and help people implement things,” Miller says. “She brings such good energy to the room. Our state has some overwhelming issues to deal with right now, but that doesn’t deter Mary. She always shows up with a can-do attitude.”

For her part, Hunt says she is inspired daily by the work people are doing in small communities and cities around the state to make positive changes in the places they call home. “The seeds that we are planting now we may never live to see grow, but we know it is important for the next generations,” she says.

“Despite the challenges we are facing, I am enthusiastic about West Virginia’s future.” newsouthmedia.com 87

f o BEST

WEST VIRGINIA Life can’t get much better than living in Almost Heaven.

But how does one go about finding the best pieces of paradise?

That’s why we started the Best of West Virginia awards six years ago.

Our readers cast their ballots for everything from favorite bakeries and breweries to bookstores and boutiques.

We tally the thousands of votes in dozens of categories, and we feature the results all right here.

This year’s list includes a few familiar faces but it has plenty of first--time winners, too. One thing is always certain, though— —Almost Heaven gets more divine every time.

Food & Drink BAKERY

SPRING HILL PASTRY SHOP FIVE-TIME WINNER

APPALACHIAN CUISINE

FISH HAWK ACRES MARKET

This homegrown business dishes up madeto-order breakfasts, daily lunch and dinner specials, and decadent desserts in downtown Buckhannon. The menu is filled with hearty Appalachian favorites, including made-fromscratch biscuits with country sausage gravy and a ramp burger topped with crispy bacon and caramelized onions. Whether soup, stew, or sandwich, everything tastes like a 5-star meal but keeps the frills to a minimum—just how Appalachian cuisine is meant to be.

5 West Main Street, Buckhannon, 304.473.7741, fishhawkacreswv.com, @fishhawkacreswv on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

HILL & HOLLOW

709 Beechurst Avenue, Suite 10, Morgantown, 304.241.4551, hillandhollowwv.com, @hillandhollowwv on Facebook

WHISTLE PUNK GRILL & TAPHOUSE 35 East Main Street, Richwood, 304.846.2020, whistlepunkwv.com, @whistle.punk.richwood on Facebook

This family-owned bakery has been making mouths water for more than 70 years—and regularly winning the votes of WV Living readers. Satisfy any sweet tooth with a flaky Danish, coconut-dusted snowball, silky cream pie, or the original “hot dog,” a donut-like pastry filled with rich buttercream and drizzled in chocolate.

Talented bakers also craft stunning, edible masterpieces for custom-ordered birthday or wedding cakes. 600 Chestnut Street, South Charleston, 304.768.7397, springhillpastry.com, @shpbakery on Facebook BBQ

TRAIL 12 BBQ

RUNNERS-UP

WARDENSVILLE GARDEN MARKET

28813 State Route 55, Wardensville, 304.897.2083, wardensvillegardenmarket.org, @wardensvillegardenmarket on Facebook

APPLE ANNIE’S

6120 Mid-Atlantic Drive, Morgantown, 304.322.2859, apple-annies.com, @appleanniescafe on Facebook

For more than three years, this barbecue joint has been filling the stomachs of hungry campers and hikers alike at the Twin Hollow Campground and Cabins. Sandwiches come piled high with hickory smoked pulled pork or mesquite smoked chicken. The restaurant’s “we stole the pig” motto certainly proves true since its tender ribs, juicy burgers, and even thick-cut bologna come slow smoked and seasoned with a super-secret, homemade dry rub. 703 Twin Hollow Branch Road, Gilbert, 304.664.5050, @trail12bbq on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

SMOKE ON THE WATER 1455 Allegheny Highway, Elkins, 304.636.9669, smokewaterbbq.com, @smokewaterbbq on Facebook

DEM 2 BROTHERS & A GRILL

423 Virginia Street West, Charleston, 304.400.4977, dem2brosgrill.com, @dem2brothers on Facebook newsouthmedia.com 89

BRUNCH

RUNNERS-UP

TWO-TIME WINNER

290 Lafayette Street, Lewisburg, 304.647.1052, thefrenchgoat.com, @thefrenchgoat on Facebook

IRON HORSE TAVERN

THE FRENCH GOAT

A Morgantown favorite, Iron Horse now has two locations and double the reasons to love brunch. Buckwheat donut holes with vanilla-kahlua creme and Capt’n Crunch French Toast Sticks dunked in bourbon-maple syrup make for one sweet Sunday morning. Fill up with any of the omelets that come stuffed with roasted veggies, melted cheese, or spicy andouille sausage. Wash it all down with a Bloody Mary with a bacon swizzle or a liter of mimosa to share. 140 High Street, Morgantown, 304.296.6230; 525 Granville Square, Granville, 304.451.1330; ironhorsetvrn.com, @ironhorsetvrn on Facebook

BLACK SHEEP BURRITO AND BREWS

702 Quarrier Street, Charleston, 304.343.2739; 279 9th Street, Huntington, 304.523.1555; blacksheepwv.com, @blacksheepwv on Facebook

BUTCHER

FARMER’S DAUGHTER MARKET & BUTCHER THREE-TIME WINNER Founded by husband-and-wife duo Pete and Kate Pacelli, this little Capon Bridge store and butcher shop is taking home two big titles this year—Best Butcher and Best Burger.

Tuesday through Sunday, the shop slices and dices up local, pasture-raised meats.

Fill a cart with tasty ground sausages, cured bacon, and freshly cut steaks to bring this farm-fresh flavor to your dinner table. 2908 Northwestern Pike, Capon Bridge, 304.856.2550, farmersdaughterwv.com, @farmersdaughterwv on Facebook BURGER

FARMER’S DAUGHTER MARKET & BUTCHER TWO-TIME WINNER At first glance, this dry-aged beef burger looks unassuming with its patty, melted American cheese, crunchy lettuce, and pickled red onion all packed between a bun. But one bite, and the difference that the ultra-fresh ingredients make is clear—and for good reason. Farmer’s Daughter is a whole animal butchery—winning Best Butcher this year too—in addition to a shop that serves locally and sustainably sourced meats, produce, dairy, and dry goods. Just don’t forget to add the House Burger to your grocery list. 2908 Northwestern Pike, Capon Bridge, 304.856.2550, farmersdaughterwv.com, @farmersdaughterwv on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

SECRET SANDWICH SOCIETY 103 Keller Avenue, Fayetteville, 304.574.4777, secretsandwichsociety.com, @secretsandwichwv on Facebook

TAILPIPES

417 High Street, Morgantown, 304.225.2535, tailpipesburgers.com, @tailpipeswv on Facebook 90 wvl • winter 2019

RUNNERS-UP

SWIFT LEVEL FINE MEATS

836 Maplewood Avenue, Lewisburg, 304.645.1020, swiftlevelfinemeats.com, @swiftlevelfinemeats on Facebook

WORKING H MEATS AND MARKET

200 Fort Pierpont Road, Morgantown, 304.241.1222, workinghmeats.com

CHEF

OSCAR AGUILAR Cafe Cimino Country Inn TWO-TIME WINNER The original Cafe Cimino kitchen, opened by Melody and Tim Urbanic two decades ago, may have added a charming bed & breakfast over the years, but the cuisine has continued to shine in its own right. Chef Oscar Aguilar transforms local, farmraised ingredients into flavorful Mediterranean-inspired dinners. From decadent pastas to savory seafood, every meal is a memorable one. 616 Main Street, Sutton, 304.765.2913, cafeciminocountryinn.com, @cafeciminocountryinn on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

KARIE ELLIS Trail 12 BBQ

703 Twin Hollow Branch Road, Gilbert, 304.664.5050, @trail12bbq on Facebook

STEPHAN GUSTARD The French Goat

290 Lafayette Street, Lewisburg, 304.647.1052, thefrenchgoat.com, @thefrenchgoat on Facebook

DONUT SHOP

THE DONUT SHOP TWO-TIME WINNER Whether chocolate glazed or coated in rainbow sprinkles, filled with sweet cream or left pillowy plain, nothing beats a donut. The Donut Shop has offered fresh daily confections for four decades with flavors like peanut butter, strawberry shortcake, maple, and vanilla. This Buckhannon favorite upholds for a second year in a row its title as the readers-voted Best Donut, but perhaps the best way to judge for yourself is to pick up a dozen.

51 North Locust Street, Buckhannon, 304.472.9328, @thedonutshopbuckhannon on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

JOLLY PIRATE DONUTS

4526 East US Highway 60, Huntington, 304.736.6885, @jollypiratewv on Facebook

JR’S DONUT CASTLE

3318 Emerson Avenue, Parkersburg, 304.428.9097, jrsdonutcastle.com, @jrsdonutcastle on Facebook DRIVE-IN

JIM’S DRIVE-IN

This retro drive-in has brought lunch curbside since the 1950s.

So relax in your car, wait for one of the friendly folks to greet you, and order from a menu filled with traditional American fare: burgers, hotdogs, barbecue, chili, fried green tomatoes, onion rings, and French fries. Don’t forget to polish it all off with a milkshake or softserve cone. 479 West Washington Street, Lewisburg, 304.645.2590, @jimsdrivein on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

KING TUT DRIVE-IN

301 North Eisenhower Drive, Beckley, 304.252.6353, kingtutdrivein.com, “King Tut Drive-In” on Facebook

FROSTOP DRIVE-IN

1449 Hal Greer Boulevard, Huntington, 304.523.6851, “Frostop Drive-In” on Facebook newsouthmedia.com 91

★

BEST OF WV LIVING REGIONAL WINNERS

FARM-TO-TABLE ★

Eastern Panhandle BAKERY

SHEPHERDSTOWN SWEET SHOP BAKERY

Shepherdstown, 304.876.2432 wvbakery.com CASUAL DINING RESTAURANT

TARIS

Berkeley Springs, 304.258.1196 tariscafe.com FAIR/FESTIVAL/EVENT

MOUNTAIN HERITAGE ARTS & CRAFTS FESTIVAL

Charles Town, 304.725.2055 mhacfestival.org FINE DINING

THE PRESS ROOM

Shepherdstown, 304.876.8777 @thepressroom on Facebook RECREATION VENUE

HOLLYWOOD CASINO at CHARLES TOWN RACES

Charles Town, 1.800.795.7001 hollywoodcasinocharlestown.com PLACE TO SHOP

THE VINTAGE LADY

Harpers Ferry, 304.535.1313 thevintagelady.net PLACE TO STAY

THE BAVARIAN INN

Shepherdstown, 304.876.2551 bavarianinnwv.com UNIQUE ATTRACTION

BERKELEY SPRINGS STATE PARK

Berkeley Springs, 1.833.WV.PARKS wvstateparks.com WATERING HOLE

BLACK DRAFT DISTILLERY

Martinsburg, 540.686.0100 blackdraftdistillery.com COMMUNITY CHAMPION

CHRISTIAN ASAM

Presenting West Virginia to the world as a tourist destination runs in Christian Asam’s blood.

Beyond his role as general manager of the Bavarian Inn in Shepherdstown, any free time he has is spent bettering the world around him.

92 wvl • winter 2019

STARDUST CAFE

Dining at the Stardust Cafe is heavenly. Sandwiches, salads, soups, and seafood are all dished up with stellar service. The quality ingredients that go into these simply elegant meals are sustainably and locally sourced whenever possible, all leading to some of the best farm-to-table eating in the state. 1023 Washington Street East, Lewisburg, 304.647.3663, stardustcafewv.com, @stardustcafewv on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

WHISTLE PUNK GRILL & TAPHOUSE

35 East Main Street, Richwood, 304.846.2020, whistlepunkwv.com, @whistle.punk.richwood on Facebook

TIN 202

202 High Street, Morgantown, 304.212.5863, tin202.com, @tin202wv on Facebook FINE DINING

CAFE CIMINO COUNTRY INN SEVEN-TIME WINNER This Sutton treasure tops the fine dining category for the seventh time this year. Opened in 1999, Cafe Cimino started as a storefront where the Urbanics tested out Italian family recipes. Now, it’s nestled within a cozy inn by the banks of the Elk River. The white tablecloth dinners continue to be a favorite for high-scale eats in a comfortable atmosphere. 616 Main Street, Sutton, 304.765.2913, cafeciminocountryinn.com, @cafeciminocountryinn on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

THE FRENCH GOAT

290 Lafayette Street, Lewisburg, 304.647.1052, thefrenchgoat.com, @thefrenchgoat on Facebook

SARGASSO

215 Don Knotts Boulevard, Morgantown, 304.554.0100, sargassomorgantown.com, @sargassomorgantown on Facebook HOT DOG

HILLBILLY HOT DOGS SIX-TIME WINNER Just call them top dog. Hillbilly Hot Dogs hits a home run once again. These aren’t your typical ballpark franks smashed between a bun and coated in ketchup. Bite into the deep-fried Mothman Dog with 1,000 Island dressing and onion rings. Or, if you dare, order the Homewrecker: a 15-inch, one-pound weenie topped with, well, almost everything. 6951 Ohio River Road, Lesage, 304.762.2458, hillbillyhotdogs.com, @hillbillyhotdogs on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

YANN’S HOT DOG STAND

300 Washington Street, Fairmont, 304.366.8660, “Yann’s Hot Dog Stand” on Facebook

MORRISON’S DRIVE-INN

126 Stollings Avenue, Logan, 304.752.9872, “Morrison’s Drive Inn Official Site” on Facebook

ICE CREAM

ELLEN’S HOMEMADE ICE CREAM SEVEN-TIME WINNER This Charleston hangout scoops up the rest of the competition for a seventh time.

Go classic with a vanilla or chocolate cone, or get nutty with butter pecan or mocha almond. Ellen’s always has a robust menu of all-natural ice creams, gelatos, and sorbets. 225 Capitol Street, Charleston, 304.343.6488, ellensicecream.com, @ellenshomemadeicecream on Facebook

ITALIAN RESTAURANT

MURIALE’S ITALIAN KITCHEN

MAPLE SYRUP

SEVEN-TIME WINNER

Pancakes, waffles, eggs, even spaghetti à la Buddy the Elf—whatever you pour syrup on, we won’t judge. Just make sure you get the good stuff. MoonStruck Maple is an upand-coming gem tucked in the mountains of Summers County. The Segars family taps local trees and churns out sweet flavors like bourbon barrel–aged and coffee-infused.

You can find them at local markets and festivals across the state. 2470 Brooks Mountain Road, Brooks, 703.624.5757, @moonstruckwv on Facebook

MOONSTRUCK MAPLE

An evening at Muriale’s provides all the comfort of an Italian grandmother’s dining room with the delicious aromas and tastes to match. The menu features entrees like manicotti and gnocchi, but you also can’t go wrong with a plate of spaghetti and meatballs smothered in the signature red sauce. A fantastic wine list makes dinner complete. Mangiamo! 1742 Fairmont Avenue, Fairmont, 304.363.3190, murialesrestaurant.com, @muriales on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

RUNNERS-UP

DAIRY CREME CORNER

187 Homewood Avenue, Fairmont, 304.366.6809, “Dairy Creme Corner” on Facebook

OLIVERIO’S RISTORANTE DANIEL’S MAPLE SYRUP 507 East Main Street, Bridgeport, 304.842.7388; 52 Clay Street, Morgantown, 304.296.2565; oliveriosristorante.com, @oliverioswv on Facebook

FAZIO’S ITALIAN AUSTIN’S HOMEMADE RESTAURANT ICE CREAM 1103 C Street, Ceredo, 304.453.2071, @austinsicecream on Facebook

RUNNERS-UP

1008 Bullitt Street, Charleston, 304.344.3071, faziosrestaurante.com, “Fazios” on Facebook

PEPPERONI ROLL

COUNTRY CLUB BAKERY

The pepperoni roll is a revered West Virginia fare with humble beginnings harkening back to when coal miners took the one-hand meals down into the mines. In the 1920s, Italian immigrant and coal minor Giuseppe Argiro decided to make his own. His soft Italian bread and spicy pepperoni were such a hit, he left the mines to open Country Club Bakery in 1927. We’ve been feasting on his pepperoni rolls by the handful ever since. 1211 Country Club Road, Fairmont, 304.363.5690, countryclubbakery. net, @countryclubbakery on Facebook

1747 Morris Branch Road, Dawson, 304.252.7770, danielsmaple.com, “Daniels Maple Syrup” on Facebook

FROSTMORE FARM 14141 Frost Road, Dunmore, 304.456.4331, @frostmorefarm on Facebook

RUNNERS-UP

THE DONUT SHOP

51 North Locust Street, Buckhannon, 304.472.9328, @thedonutshopbuckhannon on Facebook

A STEP IN TIME BAKE SHOP 432 West 2nd Avenue, Ranson, 877.949.7655, wvpepperonirolls.com, @astepintimebakeshop on Facebook

newsouthmedia.com 93

SANDWICH

SECRET SANDWICH SOCIETY THREE-TIME WINNER It’s no secret that sandwich-aficionados love this Fayetteville eatery. History buffs will appreciate it, too, since the toasted sandwiches feature former presidents’ names. The Roosevelt is a baguette loaded with pastrami, bacon, and horseradish mayo. The Kennedy tosses slow-roasted pork shoulder, ham, and pickles on a buttery brioche bun. The Lincoln? That appropriately gives you the freedom to choose your own spread. 103 Keller Avenue, Fayetteville, 304.574.4777, secretsandwichsociety.com, @secretsandwichwv on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

FARMER’S DAUGHTER MARKET & BUTCHER 2908 Northwestern Pike, Capon Bridge, 304.856.2550, farmersdaughterwv.com, @farmersdaughterwv on Facebook

THE MARKET ON COURTHOUSE SQUARE

200 Ballengee Street, Hinton, 304.466.6626, themarketwv.com, @themarketwv on Facebook

PIZZA

PIES & PINTS SEVEN-TIME WINNER Originally founded as a hip pizza joint in Fayetteville, Pints & Pints now boasts 15 locations across six states that all serve a wide selection of craft beers and specialty pies. Unique options include Thai with shrimp and toasted coconut or Cuban Pork with slow-roasted pulled pork and caramelized onions. One of our favorites is the Grape & Gorgonzola, which features sliced red grapes, salty gorgonzola cheese, and fresh rosemary. But no matter whether you go classic or creative, you can be sure it will be one good pizza. 219 West Maple Avenue, Fayetteville, 304.574.2200, piesandpints.net, @piesandpints on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

PIZZAS & CREAM

133 Nebo Walker Road, Nebo, 304.286.2985, pizzasandcream.com, “Pizzas & Cream” on Facebook

PIZZA AL’S

2952 University Avenue, Morgantown, 304.599.4040, pizzaals.com, @pizzaalsevansdale on Facebook

BREWERY

SCREECH OWL BREWING

Our readers did not make this category an easy one. Voting results were almost too close to call, but ultimately this Preston County small batch brewery took the title. Try the full-bodied Bold Blonde Ale, the German-style Threshing Floor Wheat beer with notes of orange and coriander seed, or the rich Buckwheat Honey Porter. If you visit, sip on a pint with a burger at The Spent Grain Cafe, which is located on the same property. 2323 Ralph Livengood Road, Bruceton Mills, 304.379.4777, screechowlbrewing.com, “Screech Owl Brewing” on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

GREENBRIER VALLEY BREWING COMPANY 862 Industrial Park Road, Suite A, Maxwelton, 304.520.4669, gvbc.beer, @greenbriervalleybrewingcompany on Facebook

BIG TIMBER BREWING COMPANY

1210 South Davis Avenue, Elkins, 304.637.5008, bigtimberbrewing.com, @bigtimberbrewing on Facebook 94 wvl • winter 2019

WINERY

CHESTNUT RIDGE WINERY

Escape to the flavors of Italy without leaving West Virginia. Spend an afternoon relaxing and unwinding with a glass of wine that’s red or white, semi-sweet or dry at the Chestnut Ridge Winery.

There are also fruity flavors like apple, black cherry, peach, and pomegranate—all served on the winery’s deck overlooking the woods. Guests can also snack on complimentary cheese, crackers, and fruit. 15 Chestnut Ridge, Spencer, 304.377.5721, chestnutridgewinery.com, @chestnutridgewinery on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

KIRKWOOD WINERY

45 Winery Lane, Summersville, 304.872.7332, kirkwood-wine.com, @kirwoodwinerywv on Facebook

FORKS OF CHEAT WINERY

2811 Stewartstown Road, Morgantown, 304.598.2019, wvwines.com, @forksofcheatwinery on Facebook COFFEEHOUSE

THE WILD BEAN

The freshly brewed coffee at The Wild Bean is as warm as its friendly atmosphere. Since 2006, this hip community hangout has poured cappuccinos, espressos, and lattes alongside its baked goods and breakfast sandwiches. Hunker down in one of the cozy seats with your caffeinated beverage of choice, and check out the occasional live music for even more good vibes. 119 East Washington Street, Lewisburg, 304.645.3738, thewildbrew.com, @wildbean on Facebook

CIDERY

HAWK KNOB HARD CIDER AND MEAD THREE-TIME WINNER Josh Bennett and Will Lewis brought authentic, old-school cider to the Greenbrier Valley. West Virginia–grown apples give the traditional ciders a crisp finish, and regionally produced wildflower honey makes three beautiful mead flavors. Look for Hawk Knob at your favorite wine store and watering hole, or swing by the Lewisburg tasting room to make it a whole afternoon experience. 2245 Blue Sulphur Pike, Lewisburg, 304.651.4413, hawkknob.com, @hawkknob on Facebook RUNNER-UP

SWILLED DOG HARD CIDER 28 Pendleton County Industrial Park Road, Upper Tract, 304.358.0604, swilleddog.com, @swilleddog on Facebook

RUNNERS-UP

TIPTOP

216 East Avenue, Thomas, 304.463.4455, @tiptopthomas on Facebook

THE RIVER HOUSE

24 Rickie Davy Lane, Capon Bridge, 304.856.2440, theriverhousewv.org, @theriverhousewv on Facebook

newsouthmedia.com 95

DISTILLERY ★

BEST OF WV LIVING REGIONAL WINNERS

★

Hatfield-McCoy Mountains BAKERY

NU-ERA BAKERY

Logan, 304.752.2033 nu-era-bakery.myshopify.com CASUAL DINING RESTAURANT

34:ATE

Williamson, 304.235.3488 @34ate on Facebook FAIR/FESTIVAL/EVENT

NATIONAL TRAILFEST

Gilbert, 304.664.3477 trailsheaven.com/trailfest FINE DINING

317 THE STEAKHOUSE

Logan, 304.752.2580 317thesteakhouse.com RECREATION VENUE

HATFIELD-McCOY TRAILS

Lyburn, 1.800.592.2217, trailsheaven.com PLACE TO SHOP

FOUR SEASONS COUNTRY STORE

Logan, 304.752.7566 @4seasonscountrystore on Facebook PLACE TO STAY

THE MOUNTAINEER HOTEL Williamson, 304.235.2222 mountaineerhotel.com UNIQUE ATTRACTION

HATFIELD & McCOY AIRBOAT TOURS Matewan, 304.235.9090 hatfieldmccoyairboattours.com WATERING HOLE

STARTERS BAR & RESTAURANT Williamson, 304.235, 8600 starterssportbar.com COMMUNITY CHAMPION

JEFFREY LUSK

Jeffrey Lusk is the current executive director of the Hatfield McCoy Regional Recreation Authority—the managing body of more than 730 miles of world-class, professionally groomed off-road and ATV trails in the Mountain State. Promoting the trail system and the entire southern region of the state is a cause Lusk pursues tirelessly and without wavering.

96 wvl • winter 2019

SMOOTH AMBLER SPIRITS THREE-TIME WINNER TAG Galyean and John Little started making artisan spirits with Appalachian craftsmanship in 2009. Since then, Smooth Ambler has earned worldwide recognition for its bourbon. The whiskeys come from fine grains, clean natural water, and time-trusted barrels for a smooth sip every time. You can find bottles on shelves across the country or visit their tasting room in Greenbrier County. 745 Industrial Park Road, Maxwelton, 304.497.3123, smoothambler.com, @smoothambler on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

HATFIELD & McCOY MOONSHINE

297 James Avenue, Gilbert, 304.664.2821, drinkofthedevilmoonshine.com, @hatfieldmccoymoonshine on Facebook

STILL HOLLOW SPIRITS

128 Stink Run Road, Harman, 304.227.4692, stillhollowspirits.com, @stillhollowspirits on Facebook LOCAL WATERING HOLE

GENE’S BEER GARDEN

TWO WAY

THE RED CARPET LOUNGE

TWO WAY

TIE

When Morgantown locals want to kick back with a beer, they go to Gene’s Beer Garden.

The Perilli family opened this neighborhood hangout in 1944, and it’s been serving up frothy glasses and tasty hotdogs ever since. Regulars and first-time visitors alike flock to live music nights and game day watches, and they keep coming back for the friendly service. 461 Wilson Avenue, Morgantown, 304.292.1147, genesbeergarden.com, @genes1944 on Facebook

TIE

Come fall, Charleston folks cheer on their favorite football teams on The Red Carpet Lounge’s outdoor patio with game-day favorites like burgers, chili dogs, wings, and tacos.

Thursday nights feature dinners of ever-changing specials, so no need to heat up the oven after a long day at work. And let’s not forget to mention the beers on tap that make this Capital City pub a tie for best in the state. 308 Elizabeth Street, Charleston, 304.342.9977, @redcarpetloungewv on Facebook

shopping ART GALLERY

ART EMPORIUM

This frame shop in the heart of Charleston fills its 2,000-squarefoot gallery with the colorful designs of talented artists, including those from West Virginia. The walls always feature new and exciting exhibits of paintings, photography, pottery, and more. Art Emporium is a regular participant in downtown Charleston arts walks. Follow their Facebook page to stay updated on more gallery show events. 823 Quarrier Street, Charleston, 304.345.2787, artemporium.net, @artemporiumwv on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

THE WHITE ROOM

168 East Avenue, Thomas, 304.621.2008, thewhiteroomofthomas. com, @thewhiteroomartgallery on Facebook

CREATURE

232 East Avenue, Thomas, 304.851.6371, theartofseth.com, @creaturesofseth on Facebook

ANTIQUE/VINTAGE SHOP

ARTS & ANTIQUES MARKETPLACE

Shopping in an antique store has all the excitement of digging for buried treasure. You’ll never quite know exactly what you’ll find, but it will always be a gem. This charming Fairmont marketplace holds three floors filled with a community of artists and vendors offering a wide array of artwork, housewares, jewelry, vintage clothing, furniture, toys, and more. This one-of-a-kind antique mecca also hosts art classes and workshops. 205 Adams Street, Fairmont, 304.534.8980, artsandantiqueswv.com, @artsantiqueswv on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

STRAY DOG ANTIQUES

BRIDAL SHOP

THE VOW BOUTIQUE

Every bride wants to feel and look her best on her wedding day, and the dress shopping process should be enjoyable.

This Morgantown boutique gives each beautiful bride the exceptional service she deserves with a personal stylist to assist her throughout the entire appointment. For a truly intimate evening, The Vow offers bridal party packages held outside of normal business hours so the bride can relax, shop, and make memories with loved ones. 4 Suburban Court, Morgantown, 304.291.7333, thevowwv.com, @thevowboutique on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

THE BOUTIQUE

BY B.BELLE EVENTS

219 Hale Street, Charleston, 304.346.1534, straydogantiques.com, @straydogantiques on Facebook

602 Virginia Street East Suite 101, Charleston, 304.400.4979, bbelleevents.com, @boutiquebybbe on Facebook

ANDERSON’S CORNER

CONI & FRANC

8 West Main Street, Romney, 304.822.4285, andersonscorner.com, @andersonscorneronline

422 High Street, Morgantown, 304.296.9466, coniandfranc.net, @conifranc on Facebook newsouthmedia.com 97

FLORAL SHOP

YOUNG FLORAL COMPANY

INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE

TAYLOR BOOKS SIX-TIME WINNER

This family-owned florist shop has helped customers celebrate milestones since 1947. Throughout the decades, brides have clutched their custom-designed bouquets in hand, nervous teenagers have slid their beautiful corsages on their prom dates’ wrists, and unsuspecting spouses have been surprised by delightful “just because” arrangements. Young Floral also features gifts such as food baskets, tapestry throws, and wind chimes to make any occasion a special one. 215 Pennsylvania Avenue, Charleston, 304.346.5384, youngfloral.com, @youngfloralco on Facebook

The rich aroma of coffee, the crinkle of pages yet to be read, and the clacking of keyboards writing the next bestseller— nothing beats a bookstore. And, in Charleston, that means Taylor Books.

Spend hours searching shelves packed with novels and magazines, enjoy baked scones and free Wi-Fi at the cafe, or peruse the Annex Gallery featuring local paintings and pottery. There’s even live music weekends to make you really feel at home. 226 Capitol Street, Charleston, 304.342.1461, taylorbooks.com, @taybooks on Facebook

RUNNERS-UP

RUNNERS-UP

GILLESPIE’S FLOWERS & PRODUCTIONS

377 West Main Street, White Sulphur Springs, 304.536.1881, gillespiesflowers.com, @gillespiesflowers on Facebook

FLOWERS UNLIMITED 144 North Queen Street, Martinsburg, 304.260.5770, flowersunlimitedwv.com, @flowersunlimiteddesigns on Facebook

A NEW CHAPTER BOOKSTORE

INDEPENDENT JEWELRY STORE

CALVIN BROYLES JEWELERS

Founded in 1947 by Calvin Broyles, this jewelry shop is now a third-generation, family-owned business with three locations throughout the state. The friendly staff has assisted generations of folks in commemorating special moments with engagement rings and wedding bands. They’ve outfitted customers with stunning earrings, stylish necklaces, and handsome watches, which are kept in tip-top shape with their jewelry cleaning and repair services. 4708 MacCorkle Avenue Southwest, South Charleston, 304.768.8821; 4144 State Route 34, Hurricane, 304.202.4006; 1042 North Eisenhower Drive, Beckley, 304.803.2133; calvinbroyles.com, @broylesjewelers on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

LEWISBURG DIAMOND AND GOLD

922 West Washington Street, Lewisburg, 681.318.3501, newchapterbookswv.com

2079 Jefferson Street North, Lewisburg, 304.645.4020, lewisburgdiamondandgold.com, @lewisburgdiamondandgold on Facebook

CICADA BOOKS AND COFFEE

JAQUELINE’S FINE JEWELRY

604 14th Street West, Huntington, 681.378.3463, @cicadabooks on Facebook

1070 Suncrest Towne Centre Drive, Morgantown, 304.599.6981, jacquelinesfinejewelry.com, @jacquelineswv on Facebook

LOCAL FURNITURE STORE

WELLS HOME FURNISHINGS THREE-TIME WINNER With almost 100 years and five generations of furniture industry experience, this family now operates its own showrooms in both Charleston and Morgantown. Wells carries quality furnishings to deck the whole house, from dining room to living room and home office to bedroom. Much of the brands it carries are manufactured in the United States, including Amish handcrafted pieces. Wells also offers design services to ensure you truly get the home of your dreams. 101 Bowers Road, Charleston, 304.343.3600; 1040 Fairmont Road, Morgantown, 304.322.2129; wellshome.com, @wellshomefurnishings on Facebook

CHUCK’S FURNITURE AND MATTRESS

77 Lawless Road, Morgantown, 304.292.7621, chucksfurniture.com, @chucksfurniturewvu on Facebook

STAR FURNITURE & MATTRESS

610 Emily Drive, Clarksburg, 304.626.3700, starfurniturewv.com, @starfurniturewv on Facebook 98 wvl • winter 2019

LOCAL PLACE TO BUY MEN’S APPAREL TWO WAY

TIE

DANIEL’S OF MORGANTOWN

When gentlemen in Morgantown want to look dapper, they go to Daniel’s. Since 1963, the store’s mission has been simple: Make sure every man has at least one tailored suit in his wardrobe. The knowledgeable staff do their part to help customers find a classic yet comfortable fit for any event—job interviews, proms, weddings, and more. Daniel’s also carries WVU apparel so that, even if the Mountaineers don’t score, your outfit is a touchdown. 2908 University Avenue, Morgantown, 304.296.7202, danielsofmorgantown.com, @danielsofmorgantown on Facebook TWO WAY

TIE

TONY THE TAILOR

When you look like a million bucks, the confidence you feel is priceless.

Master tailor Anthony Paranzino carefully creates a collection of exceptional men’s apparel from brands like Bruno Magli, Hickey Freeman, Oxxford Clothes, Samuelsohn, and beyond. Find the perfect fit right off the rack, or get a bespoke suit custom-tailored to you. Don’t forget to complete your new look with a new dress shirt, leather wallet, or patterned bow tie. 822 Virginia Street East, Charleston, 304.833.9403, bestmastertailor.com, @tonythetailorwv LOCAL PLACE TO BUY WOMEN’S APPAREL

GERANIUMS BOUTIQUE

This Charleston boutique has you covered for every season. The colorful racks feature cozy coats for winter, cute boots for spring, flared skirts for summer, and plaid pants for autumn. Finish off any look with one of the statement necklaces or funky pairs of earrings. No matter your style, Geraniums has a unique piece unlike anything found in a bigbox store, and wonderful customer service to match.

1011 Bridge Road, Charleston, 304.344.1350, shopgeraniums.com, @geraniumsinc on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

WOLF CREEK GALLERY

967 West Washington Street, Lewisburg, 304.645.5270, wolfcreeklewisburg.com, @downtownlewisburgwv on Facebook

IVOR’S TRUNK

819 Lee Street East, Charleston, 304.342.5867, charlestonwv.com, @ivorstrunk on Facebook

★

BEST OF WV LIVING REGIONAL WINNERS

★

Metro Valley BAKERY

SPRING HILL PASTRY SHOP

South Charleston, 304.768, 7397 springhillpastry.com CASUAL DINING RESTAURANT

BAHNHOF

Huntington, 681.204.3837 bahnhofwv.com FAIR/FESTIVAL/EVENT

FESTIVALL

Charleston, 304.470.0489 festivallcharleston.com FINE DINING

BISTRO ON THE BARGE

Charleston, 304.744.2628 @bistrowv on Facebook RECREATION VENUE

BEECH FORK STATE PARK

Barboursville, 1.833.WV.PARKS wvstateparks.com/park/beech-fork-state-park PLACE TO SHOP

CAPITOL MARKET

Charleston, 304.344.1905 capitolmarket.net PLACE TO STAY

CHARLESTON MARRIOTT TOWN CENTER

Charleston, 304.345.6500 mariott.com/hotels/travel/crwwv-charleston UNIQUE ATTRACTION

HERITAGE FARM MUSEUM & VILLAGE

304.522.1244, heritagefarmmuseum.com WATERING HOLE

RED CARPET LOUNGE

Charleston, 304.342.9977 @redcarpetloungewv on Facebook COMMUNITY CHAMPION

TIGHE BULLOCK

Tighe Bullock is a familiar face in Charleston’s West Side revitalization efforts, which are transforming tired pockets of the capital city into dynamic neighborhoods where residents will want to live, work, and play. A lawyer– turned–real estate re-developer and president of Crawford Holdings LLC, Bullock takes as his main mission restoring and preserving the historic buildings of the city while increasing opportunities for the local economy. newsouthmedia.com 99

PLACE TO BUY WV-MADE PRODUCTS ★

BEST OF WV LIVING REGIONAL WINNERS

★

Mid-Ohio Valley BAKERY

CHRISSY’S BAKESHOP

Spencer, 303.746.7804 chrissysbakeshop.com

CASUAL DINING RESTAURANT

CHAMS LEBANESE CUISINE

Parkersburg, 304.428.2730 @chamslebanesecuisine on Facebook FAIR/FESTIVAL/EVENT

RIPLEY’S FOURTH OF JULY

Ripley, 304.532.0548 @ripley4thofjuly on Facebook FINE DINING

BRUNELLO RESTAURANT & BAR at THE BLENNERHASSETT HOTEL

Parkersburg, 304.865.8686 theblennerhassett.com/eat-and-drink RECREATION VENUE

BLENNERHASSETT ISLAND HISTORICAL STATE PARK

Parkersburg, 304.420.4800, wvstateparks. com/park/blennerhassett-island-historicalstate-park PLACE TO SHOP

TWO EIGHTEEN

TAMARACK

SEVEN-TIME WINNER Tamarack was the first staterun artisan center and gallery in the nation. The iconic red roof continues to beckon interstate travelers to step through the doors and see for themselves.

The center showcases West Virginia–made products of just about every variety, from jewelry and pottery to apparel and homemade specialty food items. Guests can grab a bite to eat or watch Tamarack’s resident artists create their next masterpieces. 1 Tamarack Park, Beckley, 304.256.6843, tamarackwv.com, @tamarackwv on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

WEST VIRGINIA MARKETPLACE

800 Smith Street, Charleston, capitolmarket.net/vendor/wv-marketplace, @westvirginiaproducts on Facebook

HOOT & HOWL

245 Walnut Street, Morgantown, 540.533.0189, shophootandhowl.com, @shophootandhowl on Facebook

Ripley, 304.786.1221, two-eighteen.com PLACE TO STAY

THE BLENNERHASSETT HOTEL Parkersburg, 304.422.3131 theblennerhassett.com UNIQUE ATTRACTION

BLENNERHASSETT ISLAND HISTORICAL STATE PARK

Parkersburg, 304.420.4800, wvstateparks. com/park/blennerhassett-island-historicalstate-park WATERING HOLE

NORTH END TAVERN & BREWERY

Parkersburg, 304.428.5854, netbrewery.com COMMUNITY CHAMPION

CAROLYN RADER

Carolyn Rader has lived in Ripley her entire life, and the community would be a different place without her. She serves as the town’s mayor, and continues her focus on helping others, and improving services for Ripley residents.

100 wvl • winter 2019

UNIQUE BOUTIQUE

EGGPLANT

For more than 25 years, Eggplant has been a destination for customers seeking one-of-a-kind accessories, bath and body products, gifts, and home decor. The shop also carries adorable baby items for your own little bundle of joy or for an expecting friend. Put a bow on it with complimentary gift wrapping services, perfect for the holiday season. Need birthday party invitations or wedding save the dates? Eggplant carries gorgeous stationary befitting any occasion. 1011 Bridge Road Suite A, Charleston, 304.346.3525, eggplantshop.com, @eggplantshop on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

KIN SHIP GOODS

613 Tennessee Avenue, Charleston, 304.346.0326, kinshipgoods.com, @kinshipgoods on Facebook

HOOT & HOWL

245 Walnut Street, Morgantown, 540.533.0189, shophootandhowl.com, @shophootandhowl on Facebook

travel ADVENTURE OUTFITTER

BED & BREAKFAST/INN

FIVE-TIME WINNER

SIX-TIME WINNER

Sitting on the rim of the New River Gorge with a million-dollar upstream view of the world-famous bridge, visitors to this outfitter can dive into a smorgasbord of adventures on the New and Gauley rivers and Summersville Lake including canopy tours, ziplines, horseback riding, rock climbing, laser tag, mountain biking, a swimming pool, cabins, and camping.

219 Chestnutburg Road, Lansing, 855.420.9952. adventuresonthegorge.com

Cafe Cimino Country Inn is stunning. It is surrounded by mountains and sits on the banks of the tranquil Elk River, and guests have their pick of four luxurious rooms in the main house, four in the carriage house, and two more in the cottage house.

The bed and breakfast is open every day with dinner served by request, and a full three-course gourmet breakfast is included in the room rate. After breakfast enjoy fishing and kayaking, or explore historic downtown Sutton. 616 Main St., Sutton, 304.765.2913, cafeciminocountryinn.com, @cafeciminocountryinn on Facebook

ADVENTURES ON THE GORGE (AOTG)

RUNNERS-UP

ACE

Every year, this is one of the closest categories. Coming in at a close second, ACE is nipping at AOTG’s heels. 1 Concho Road, Minden, 800.787.3982, aceraft.com

MOUNTAINTOP ADVENTURES

703 Twin Hollow, Gilbert, 304.664.8864, @mountaintopadventures on Facebook

CAFE CIMINO COUNTRY INN

RUNNERS-UP

BLUEFIELD INN

2109 Jefferson Street, Bluefield, 304.323.2200, bluefieldinn.com, @bluefieldinn on Facebook

GUEST HOUSE INN

Courthouse Square at 419 2nd Avenue, Hinton, 304.466.8100, @guesthousewv on Facebook

CAMPGROUND

RUNNERS-UP

West Virginia’s largest lake—Summersville Lake—has more than 60 miles of shoreline and boasts some amazing campgrounds. Mountain Lake Campgrounds is the most amazing of them all according to readers of WV Living magazine.

Here you’ll find campsites, cabins, and yurts from which you can enjoy the campground’s many activities including: a swimming beach, pool, mini golf, outdoor movies, theme nights, hiking, playgrounds, and more. 1898 Summersville Airport Road, Summersville, 304.872.6222, mountainlakecampground.com

703 Twin Hollow, Gilbert, 304.664.8864, twinhollowcampground.com, @twinhollowcampgroundandcabins on Facebook

MOUNTAIN LAKE CAMPGROUND

TWIN HOLLOW CAMPGROUNDS

BLACKWATER FALLS CAMPGROUND

1584 Blackwater Lodge Road, Davis, 304.259.5216, wvstateparks.com/park/ blackwater-falls-state-park

BOUTIQUE HOTEL

THE BLENNERHASSETT HOTEL FOUR-TIME WINNER Opened in 1889, this Queen Anne–style Parkersburg hotel reflects the exquisite European tastes of former Parkersburg mayor and businessman Colonel William Nelson Chancellor. He built the hotel for the millionaires of the day, and the property has remained a symbol of opulence and luxury ever since. Pamper yourself at this full-service hotel with some rooms featuring four-poster beds, marble showers, and whirlpool tubs. All guests receive a free box of chocolates and can enjoy on-site dining at Brunello Restaurant & Bar. The hotel is a short walk to the Blennerhassett Museum and the Julia-Ann Square Historic District. 329 Market Street, Parkersburg, 304.422.3131, theblennerhassett.com, @theblennerhassett on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

THE BAVARIAN INN

164 Shepherd Grade Road, Shepherdstown, 304.876.2551, bavarianinnwv.com, @thebavarianinn on Facebook

THE BILLY MOTEL

1080 William Avenue, Davis, 304.851.6125, thebillymotel.com, @thebillymotel on Facebook newsouthmedia.com 101

★

BEST OF WV LIVING REGIONAL WINNERS

★

Mountain Lakes Region BAKERY

DOUGH RE MI

Buckhannon, 304.439.2230 @doughremi on Facebook CASUAL DINING RESTAURANT

WHISTLE PUNK GRILL AND TAPHOUSE Richwood, 304.846.2020 whistlepunkwv.com FAIR/FESTIVAL/EVENT

WEST VIRGINIA STRAWBERRY FESTIVAL Buckhannon, 304.472.9036 wvstrawberryfestival.com FINE DINING

CAFE CIMINO COUNTRY INN Sutton, 304.765.2913 cafeciminocountryinn.com RECREATION VENUE

SUMMERSVILLE LAKE

Summersville, 304.872.1211 summersvillewv.org/summersville-lake PLACE TO SHOP

ARTISTRY ON MAIN

Buckhannon, 304.460.2505 artistryonmain.com PLACE TO STAY

STONEWALL RESORT

CASINO

FAMILY VACATION SPOT

THREE-TIME WINNER

TWO-TIME WINNER

It’s no gamble betting on a good time at the Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races.

Located just outside of Charles Town, the Hollywood Casino offers a Vegas-themed gaming atmosphere with poker rooms, table games, and 2,500 slots. There’s also yearround live thoroughbred horse racing, a 150room resort, and six restaurants on site. 750 Hollywood Drive, Charles Town, 800.795.7001, hollywoodcasinocharlestown.com, @hollywoodcctr on Facebook

Stay and play together at Capon Springs & Farms, the best family vacation spot according to readers of WV Living. Here you’ll find a place where you can unplug and recharge. Stay in one of the unique 19th century cottages on the property that are perfect for families. Drink in the healing mountain spring water that flows throughout the resort—including in their pure Capon Springs water pool. 1 Main Street, Capon Springs, 304.874.3695, caponsprings.net, @caponspringsandfarms on Facebook

HOLLYWOOD CASINO at CHARLES TOWN RACES

RUNNERS-UP

MARDI GRAS CASINO AND RESORT

1 Greyhound Drive, Cross Lanes, 304.776.1000, mardigrascasinowv.com, @mardigrascasinohotelwestvirginia on Facebook

CASINO CLUB at THE GREENBRIER

300 West Main Street, White Sulphur Springs, 855.453.4858, greenbrier.com, @thegreenbrier on Facebook

CAPON SPRINGS AND FARMS

RUNNERS-UP

PIPESTEM RESORT STATE PARK

3405 Pipestem Drive, Pipestem, 304.466.1800, wvstateparks.com/ park/pipestem-resort-state-park

SUMMERSVILLE LAKE 2981 Summersville Lake Road, 304.872.3459, summersvillelakewv.com

Roanoke, 304.269.7400 stonewallresort.com UNIQUE ATTRACTION

BUFFALO CREEK RECREATIONAL TRAIL

Clay, 304.618.7992, buffalocreektrail.com WATERING HOLE

THE 88

Buckhannon, 304.473.1988 88restaurant.com COMMUNITY CHAMPION

DALE HAWKINS

Dale Hawkins continues to be one of the state’s biggest cheerleaders for Appalachian cuisine and West Virginia–made products.

His Buckhannon store, Fish Hawk Market, is a successful endeavor capturing the very best the West Virginia culinary scene has to offer, and his seasonal farm dinners, put on by his catering company Fish Hawk Acres, have become one of the hottest tickets in town for an authentic Appalachian food experience.

102 wvl • winter 2019

GOLF COURSE

THE GREENBRIER

When you think of golf in the Mountain State, there are few courses better than those at The Greenbrier. Here you’ll find not one but five exceptional golf courses. Of note is the Old White TPC, completely restored and re-opened for the 2017 Greenbrier Classic. There’s also a Greenbrier Golf Academy, a golfer spa and fitness facility, indoor winter golf options, and more. 101 Main Street West, White Sulphur Springs, 855.453.4858, greenbrier.com/golf RUNNERS-UP

PETE DYE GOLF CLUB

801 Aaron Smith Drive, Bridgeport, 304.842.2801 ext. 110, petedye.com, @petedyegolfclub on Facebook

THE RESORT at GLADE SPRINGS

255 Resort Drive, Daniels, 304.763.2000, gladesprings.com, @gladespringswvon Facebook

RESORT

THE GREENBRIER SEVEN-TIME WINNER The Greenbrier first opened to guests in 1778 and remains a favorite of visitors from West Virginia and beyond. The resort is situated on 11,000 acres and offers more than 55 indoor and outdoor activities including five golf courses, lawn games like croquet and tennis, carriage and horseback rides, ziplines, and falconry, 19 restaurants and lounges, a spa, casino, a bowling alley, a new escape room, and the world-famous Greenbrier Bunker.

300 West Main Street, White Sulphur Springs, 855.453.4858, greenbrier.com, @thegreenbrier on Facebook

SKI RESORT

SPA

SEVEN-TIME WINNER

THREE-TIME WINNER

Snowshoe Mountain Resort is a premier Mid-Atlantic ski resort perched at 4,848 feet above sea level. The 180 inches of natural snow per year and mountain-wide snowmaking efforts carve 257 acres of terrain on 60 trails suitable for all skill levels.

The resort offers ski-in/ski-out condos and hotels, 20 restaurants and pubs, pools, a teen center, and its very own brewery—Old Spruce Brewing. 10 Snowshoe Drive, Snowshoe, 304.572.4636, snowshoemtn.com

Readers of WV Living voted Tuscan Sun Spa & Salon the best spa in the Mountain State for the third year in a row. It’s so popular that you can now choose from multiple locations throughout the state for an array of holistic health and beauty services. Try out the hair salon, weight loss clinic, CoolSculpting, laser hair removal, a wide range of spa treatments including more than a dozen types of massage, cold stone migraine relief, cupping therapy, salt mousse body melts, or even a power nap. 482 Emily Drive, Clarksburg, 304.326.2204; 1013 Fairmont Avenue, Fairmont, 304.333.0281; 401 Boyers Avenue, Morgantown, 304.296.1325; tuscanspaandsalon.com, @tuscansunspa on Facebook

SNOWSHOE MOUNTAIN RESORT

RUNNERS-UP RUNNERS-UP

OGLEBAY

465 Lodge Drive, Wheeling, 304.243.4000, oglebay.com, @oglebay on Facebook

STONEWALL RESORT 940 Resort Drive, Roanoke, 304.269.7400, stonewallresort.com, @stonewallresort on Facebook

CANAAN VALLEY RESORT STATE PARK

230 Main Lodge Road, Davis, 304.866.4121, canaanresort.com, @canaanvalleyresort on Facebook

WINTERPLACE SKI RESORT

100 Old Flat Top Mountain Road, Ghent, 800.607.7669, winterplace.com, @winterplaceskiresort on Facebook

TUSCAN SUN SPA & SALON

RUNNERS-UP

THE SALT CAVE AND SPA

6705 Pocahontas Trail, White Sulphur Springs, 304.536.2222, thesaltcaveandspa.com

CAPON SPRINGS SPA

1 Main Street, Capon Springs, 304.874.3695, caponsprings.net, @caponspringsandfarms on Facebook

STATE PARK/FOREST

BLACKWATER FALLS STATE PARK SEVEN-TIME WINNER Blackwater Falls State Park is quintessentially West Virginian and has attracted visitors since 1937 who come to view its famous 57-foot cascade where the Blackwater River enters the rugged Blackwater Canyon. The park boasts countless most-photographed spots including Elakala Falls, Lindy Point, and Pendleton Point Overlook. Visitors can extend their stay in cabins, the lodge, or campgrounds. 1584 Blackwater Lodge Road, Davis, 304.259.5216, blackwaterfalls.com RUNNERS-UP

PIPESTEM RESORT STATE PARK

3405 Pipestem Drive, Pipestem, 304.466.1800, wvstateparks.com/park/pipestem-resort-state-park

WATOGA STATE PARK

4800 Watoga Park Road, Marlinton, 304.799.4087, wvstateparks.com/park/watoga-state-park newsouthmedia.com 103

★

BEST OF WV LIVING REGIONAL WINNERS

★

Mountaineer Country BAKERY

ALMOST HEAVEN DESSERTS & COFFEE SHOP Bridgeport, 304.848.2500 almostheavendessertsandcoffeeshop.com CASUAL DINING RESTAURANT

MURIALE’S ITALIAN KITCHEN Fairmont, 304.363.3190 murialesrestaurant.com FAIR/FESTIVAL/EVENT

WEST VIRGINIA ITALIAN HERITAGE FESTIVAL Clarksburg, 304.622.7314, wvihf.com FINE DINING

JULIO’S CAFE

Clarksburg, 304.622.2592 @julioscafewv on Facebook RECREATION VENUE

WEST VIRGINIA BOTANIC GARDEN

Morgantown, 304.322.2093, wvbg.org PLACE TO SHOP

WHIPPOORWILL WOODS & WATERS Morgantown, 304.704.6636 @whipporwill22 on Facebook PLACE TO STAY

MORGANTOWN MARRIOTT at WATERFRONT PLACE

Morgantown, 304.296.1700, marriott.com UNIQUE ATTRACTION

COOPERS ROCK STATE FOREST Bruceton Mills, 304.594.1561 wvstateparks.com/park/ coppers-rock-state-forest WATERING HOLE

SCREECH OWL BREWING

Bruceton Mills, 304.379.4777 screechowlbrewing.com COMMUNITY CHAMPION

DOMINICK CLAUDIO

Dominick Claudio is probably coming soon to a town near you. This young business dynamo and founder of several small businesses, and he has successfully segued into the world of real estate redevelopment.

His goal is to redevelop historic buildings and to repurpose prime locations to increase livability and economic development opportunities in these communities.

104 wvl • winter 2019

UNIQUE ATTRACTION

WILD BLUE ADVENTURES

If you’re looking for a unique vantage point the famous New River Gorge, look no further than Wild Blue Adventures. Flight nurse and pilot Bill Chouinard keeps this New decades-old tourist tradition alive giving folks a ride, one person at a time, in his blue and yellow open cockpit 1940-built Boeing Stearman Biplane. Riders can choose from four trips and daredevil passengers can request aerobatics including barrel rolls, cravats, hammerheads, and s-turns.

282 Hinkle Road, Fayetteville, 304.574.1150, wildblueadventurecompany.com, @wildblueadventurecompany on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

NEW RIVER GORGE

104 Main Street, Glen Jean, 304.465.0508, nps.gov/neri/index.htm

MYSTERY HOLE

16724 Midland Trail, Ansted, 304.658.9101, mysteryhole.com

MOST UNIQUE PLACE TO SPEND THE NIGHT

WEST VIRGINIA PENITENTIARY

TWO WAY

TRANS-ALLEGHENY LUNATIC ASYLUM

TWO WAY

TIE

The West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville is one of the most haunted places in the country. If you don’t believe the claim, you can find out for yourself during an overnight stay. Channel your inner ghost hunter with an “Overnight Investigation” that starts with a 90-minute guided tour—and the rest of the night to roam on your own. 818 Jefferson Avenue, Moundsville, 304.845.6200, wvpentours.com

TIE

The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum is the largest hand-cut stone masonry building in North America and full of documented paranormal activity. It’s also one of the most unique places to spend the night in West Virginia. After a brief paranormal tour to start your evening, you can opt to hunt either hunt alone or with an experienced ghost hunting guide. 71 Asylum Drive, Weston, 304.269.5070, trans-alleghenylunaticasylum.com

culture ART MUSEUM

HUNTINGTON MUSEUM OF ART

Located on 52 acres, the Huntington Museum of Art has a permanent art collection of more than 16,000 objects, 10 exhibition spaces for contemporary work, an interactive education gallery, an art reference library of nearly 27,000 volumes, a 287-seat auditorium, and the only tropical and subtropical plant conservatory in West Virginia with a coral reef aquarium, and the Dale Chihuly glass tower. Explore two outdoor sculpture courts, five studio workshops, two miles of trails, and a paved sensory trail for the visually impaired. Their Museum Making Connections program serves 28,000 children in seven counties. 2033 McCoy Road, Huntington, 304.529.2701, hmoa.org, @huntingtonmuseumofart on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

WVU ART MUSEUM

2 Fine Arts Drive, Morgantown, 304.293.2141, artmuseum.wvu.edu, @artmuseumofwvu on Facebook

CLAY CENTER FOR THE ARTS AND SCIENCES

1 Clay Square, Charleston, 304.561.3570, the claycenter.org, @claycenter on Facebook ARTIST

ROSALIE HAIZLETT

Globe-trotting nature illustrator Rosalie Haizlett is an avid hiker with a warm and distinct artistic style. Haizlett draws art maps of revered wild places such as Dolly Sods, Seneca Rocks, the Appalachian Trail, and the New River Gorge. A member of the Smithsonian’s American Ginseng research team, Haizlett shares the grace and beauty of even tiny creatures like the candy darter. “One of my goals is to invite people in to learn alongside me,” Haizlett says. “Maybe together we can get better at protecting this beautiful planet that we have the privilege of sharing with all of these other beings.” See Haizlett’s work at rosaliehaizlett.com and @rosaliehaizlett on Instagram RUNNERS-UP

BRENT WOODARD

AUTHOR

DENISE GIARDINA

One of West Virginia’s most impactful novelists, Denise Giardina is a profilic writer. She has a unique voice from which she tells of West Virginia’s “it’s complicated” relationship with coal, and draws upon her experiences growing up in the Black Wolf mining camp to tell the powerful coal-tattooed history of mining towns in the region. Her acclaimed works include: Storming Heaven, The Unquiet Earth, Good King Harry, and Saints and Villians. Get a copy of her works at penguinrandomhouse.com/ authors/9973/denise-giardina

therockcriesoutstudios.com, @therockcriesoutstudios on Facebook

RUNNER-UP

IAN BODE

rajiahassib.com

RAJIA HASSIB

ianbodeart.com

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★

BEST OF WV LIVING ★ REGIONAL WINNERS

New River/Greenbrier Valley BAKERY

AMY’S CAKES & CONES

Lewisburg, 681.318.3430 amyscakesandcones.com CASUAL DINING RESTAURANT

STARDUST CAFE

Lewisburg, 304.647.3663 stardustcafewv.com FAIR/FESTIVAL/EVENT

BRIDGE DAY

Fayetteville, officialbridgeday.com FINE DINING

THE FRENCH GOAT

Lewisburg, 304.647.1052 thefrenchgoat.com RECREATION VENUE

NEW RIVER GORGE

newrivergorgecvb.com PLACE TO SHOP

HARMONY RIDGE GALLERY

NON PROFIT OR CHARITY

FAIR/FESTIVAL

The Wardensville Garden Market is growing for good. A bakery, market, farm, and soon-to-launch restaurant and production kitchen all provide life experiences for area students and generate income for the nonprofit.

Today, the certified organic farm has 70 employees 40 of whom attend the local high school. 28813 State Route 55, Wardensville, 304.897.2083, wardensvillegardenmarket.org

Summer isn't summer until the best of all things agriculture and entertainment in the Mountain State are displayed and celebrated at the State Fair of West Virginia. Attend next year’s state fair already on the books for August 13–22 in 2020 in Fairlea. Now in its 167th year, the State Fair draws in folks from around the state and region. Festivities include home, arts, and garden contests, carnival rides, fair food, horse racing on the 1921-built track, and nightly grandstand concerts by big name performers.

891 Maplewood Avenue, Ronceverte, 304.645.1090, statefairofwv.com, @statefairofwv on Facebook

WARDENSVILLE GARDEN MARKET

RUNNERS-UP

YWCA CHARLESTON

STATE FAIR OF WEST VIRGINIA

ywcacharleston.org, @ywcacharleston on Facebook

RUNNERS-UP

GREATER KANAWHA VALLEY FOUNDATION

304.927.5616, wvblackwalnutfestival.org, @wv-black-walnut-festival on Facebook

tgkvf.org, @tgkvf on Facebook

BLACK WALNUT FESTIVAL FESTIVALL CHARLESTON 108 1/2 Capitol Street., Suite C, Charleston, 304.470.0489, festivallcharleston.com, @festivallcharleston on Facebook

Lewisburg, 304.645.4333 harmonyridgegallery.com PLACE TO STAY

LAFAYETTE FLATS

Fayetteville, 304.900.3301 lafayetteflats.com UNIQUE ATTRACTION

BECKLEY EXHIBITION COAL MINE

Beckley, 304.256.1747, beckley.org WATERING HOLE

FREE FOLK

Fayetteville, 304.900.5238 freefolkbrew.com COMMUNITY CHAMPION

SHARON CRUIKSHANK

Sharon Cruikshank’s entire resume shows her focus and dedication to promoting the New River/Greenbrier Valley Region and the state as a whole. She was elected in June to be Fayetteville’s first female mayor after a 22-year stint as Fayette County Chamber of Commerce president, New River Gorge Convention and Visitors Bureau executive director, and Bridge Day Commission chair— still one of her favorite events in the state.

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ENVIRONMENTAL ORGANIZATION

WEST VIRGINIA LAND TRUST

In November, the West Virginia Land Trust celebrated 25 years of conservation in West Virginia with a Special Places Celebration at the Clay Center. It is the only statewide non-profit land protection organization that works with landowners and communities to protect lands of scenic, recreational, agricultural, cultural, or ecological importance. The group also focuses on protecting land along streams, creeks, and rivers. 2019 projects included the Tom’s Run Preserve in Morgantown, the “Moon Rocks” campaign, and the openings of the Camp Bartow Historic Site in Pocahontas County, Yellow Creek Preserve in Davis, and Needleseye Park in Oak Hill. PO Box 304, Morgantown, 304.413.0945 and PO Box 11823, Charleston, 304.346.7788, www.wvlandtrust.org, @wvlandtrust on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

FRIENDS OF THE CHEAT

304329.3621, cheat.org, @friendsofthecheat on Facebook

FRIENDS OF DECKERS CREEK

205 Parsons Street, Morgantown, 304.292.3970, deckerscreek.org, @deckerscreek on Facebook

MEDIA PERSONALITY

TIM IRR

Few news anchors are loved like Tim Irr is loved.

An anchor/reporter for nearly 20 years at WSAZTV, the NBC affiliate in Charleston/Huntington, Irr is a friend to many through his endless charity work, giant social media influence, and appreciation of the local live music scene. The Pittsburgh native anchors several shows on the network and calls Huntington home with his wife and two daughters. @wsaztimirr on Facebook and @sazirr on Twitter

RUNNERS-UP

TONY CARIDI wvmetronews.com

HOPPY KERCHEVAL wvmetronews.com

MUSICIAN/BAND

CREEK DON’T RISE

The Appalachian soul and blues rock unit Creek Don’t Rise formed when Marcus Oglesby—vocals, guitar, and harmonica—met guitarist Jerry Lee Brooks at a Huntington Blues Society jam in 2013. The pair formed the group the following year and has since been one of the hardest working indie bands, averaging nearly 20 shows a month around the state and region. The band name was inspired by an Oglesby song about devastating West Virginia floods. creekdontriseband.com, @creekdontrise.band on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

DAVISSON BROTHERS BAND

davissonbrothersband.com, @davissonbros on Facebook

FLETCHER’S GROVE

fletchersgrove.com, @fletchersgrove on Facebook

MUSIC VENUE

123 PLEASANT STREET

123 Pleasant Street, located in Morgantown, has been a stop for rising national and international touring acts for more than 20 years. Fueled by generations of college-age music fans, 123 has also provided a home and training ground to local and regional acts such as Fletcher’s Grove, Boss Babes, Morgantown Pride, and the ACLU WV. 123 Pleasant Street, Morgantown, 304.292.0800, 123pleasantstreet.com, @123pleasantstreet on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

PURPLE FIDDLE

96 East Avenue, Thomas, 304.463.4040, purplefiddle.com, @thepurplefiddle on Facebook

V CLUB

741 6th Avenue, Huntington, 304.781.0680, vclublive.com, @vclubwv on Facebook newsouthmedia.com 107

RESOURCE FOR ADDICTION RECOVERY ★

BEST OF WV LIVING REGIONAL WINNERS

★

Northern Panhandle BAKERY

QUALITY BAKE SHOPPE

Moundsville, 304.845.3452 @qualitybakeshoppe on Facebook CASUAL DINING RESTAURANT

THE VAGABOND KITCHEN Wheeling, 304.905.6173 thevagabondkitchen.com FAIR/FESTIVAL/EVENT

BACK HOME APPALACHIAN ART AND MUSIC FESTIVAL New Martinsville backhomefestival.com

RECOVERY POINT

Recovery Point West Virginia offers three large, long-term residential recovery programs including 100 beds in Huntington, 92 beds in Charleston, and 62 beds in Bluefield. The organization also operates the HER Place drop-in recovery resource center and a newly-opened recovery residence for women, both in Huntington.

Recovery Point West Virginia’s long-term recovery program graduates maintain a 68 percent sobriety rate one year after completing the program offered at no cost to clients. 900 20th Street, Huntington, 304.523.4673, recoverypointwv.org, @recoverypointwv on Facebook RUNNERS-UP

ASCENSION RECOVERY SERVICES

304.241.4585, ascensionrs.com, @ascensionrecoveryservices on Facebook

BRIAN’S SAFEHOUSE

304.763.7655, brianssafehouse.org, @brianssafehouse on Facebook

FINE DINING

METROPOLITAN CITI GRILL

Wheeling, 304.232.0762 @metropolitancitigrill on Facebook RECREATION VENUE

GRAND VUE PARK

Moundsville, 304.845.9810 grandvuepark.com PLACE TO SHOP

WHEELING ARTISAN CENTER SHOP Wheeling, 304.232.1810 artisancenter.com PLACE TO STAY

OGLEBAY

Wheeling, 877.436.1797 oglebay.com UNIQUE ATTRACTION

PALACE OF GOLD

Moundsville, 304.843.1812 palaceofgold.com

THEATER COMPANY

GREENBRIER VALLEY THEATRE TWO-TIME WINNER Founded in 1967, the Greenbrier Valley Theatre has come a long way from its humble beginnings as a small summer repertory theatre performing in a tent by the scenic Greenbrier River. The year-round Actors Equity Association affiliated professional theater now has a staff of 15 and more than 80 volunteers.

GVT keeps the artistic fires stoked in the region presenting more than 165 nights of theater and events year-round in historic Lewisburg. 1038 Washington Street E, Lewisburg, 304.645.3838, gvtheatre.org, @gvtheatre on Facebook

WATERING HOLE

BARISTAS CAFE AND PUB

New Martinsville, 304.455.5410 baristascafe-pub.com COMMUNITY CHAMPION

SUSAN HADDAD

Susan Haddad is a big part of downtown Wheeling’s rebirth. As the founder of Later Alligator, a cafe that she opened in 2006, she’s known her fair share of business hardships, and she’s also learned how much a community can accomplish when it comes together.

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RUNNERS-UP

CHARLESTON LIGHT OPERA GUILD

411 Tennessee Avenue, Charleston, 304.343.2287, charlestonlightoperaguild.org, @charlestonlightoperaguild on Facebook

THEATRE WEST VIRGINIA

4700 Grandview Road, Beaver, 304.992.9085, theatrewestvirginia.org,@theatrewv on Facebook

town TOWN FOR ADVENTURE

FAYETTEVILLE

FIVE-TIME WINNER This tiny county seat holds big-time charm. Whitewater rafters know Fayetteville as a hub for their intrepid trips down the New River or its wilder sister, the Gauley River. Rock climbers appreciate it as a personal playground for scaling the faces of the New River Gorge. Hikers, mountain bikers, and other outdoor enthusiasts see it as a wilderness paradise that’s almost heavenly. Outfitters and local businesses also offer fishing trips, sightseeing flights, stand-up paddleboarding, and zipline tours. visitfayettevillewv.com RUNNERS-UP

DAVIS

canaanvalley.org

GILBERT

visitgilbertwv.com

TOWN FOR THE ARTS

THOMAS

Unique galleries, regular live music, and charming shops come together to make Thomas one vibrant town. Even if you can’t make it to one of the art walks, a short jaunt down the main street anytime is almost as good. The White Room Art Gallery features a wide array of creative masterpieces from resident artists, Creature showcases the imaginative fine art of Seth Pitt, and Bloom boasts changing exhibitions of artists spanning from painters to printmakers. Artists and art lovers alike can fuel their creativity with coffee at TipTop and get inspired listening to the Purple Fiddle’s live music. canaanvalley.org

TOWN TO EXPERIENCE THE FALL

FAYETTEVILLE TWO-TIME WINNER

Fall means the New River Gorge is full of color and offers even more reasons to love this small town. The New River and Gauley River teem with whitewater rafters and the mountain’s fiery foliage beckons hikers from far and wide. They can all rest their heads in one of Fayetteville’s cozy inns and bed and breakfasts or grab a warm bite to eat at local cafes. Bridge Day, the third Saturday of October, is an especially vibrant shindig where daredevils parachute and rappel from the New River Gorge Bridge. visitfayettevillewv.com RUNNERS-UP

LEWISBURG

DAVIS

CHARLESTON

ELKINS

RUNNERS-UP

greenbrierwv.com

charlestonwv.com

canaanvalley.org

elkinsrandolphwv.com

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TOWN TO EXPERIENCE THE WINTER

DAVIS

This picturesque town provides countless reasons for getting off the couch and out into the snow. Whiz down the slopes at one of the nearby ski resorts, zip through the East Coast’s longest sled run at Blackwater Falls State Park, and snowshoe across a winter wonderland at Canaan Valley Resort State Park. Warm up after a long day at Hellbender Burritos or Sirianni’s Pizza Cafe, and hit the hay at the Bright Morning Inn, which was once a boarding house for lumberjacks. canaanvalley.org RUNNERS-UP

THOMAS

canaanvalley.org

ELKINS

elkinsrandolphwv.com

TOWN FOR FOODIES

LEWISBURG

Food lovers can travel the culinary world, all in one day. They just have to go to Lewisburg. There’s spicy south-of-the-border dishes, flavorful French-style fare, rich Italian pastas and wood-fired pizzas, and, of course, homestyle country cooking to bring it home. No matter the main course, toast to a good meal with an espresso from a hip coffee shop or a glass of handcrafted hard cider. Need more proof? Many of the local joints are listed in this year’s Best of West Virginia food and drink roundup. greenbrierwv.com RUNNERS-UP

MORGANTOWN tourmorgantown.com

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★

BEST OF WV LIVING REGIONAL WINNERS

★

Potomac Highlands BAKERY

THE WARDENSVILLE GARDEN MARKET + BAKERY

Wardensville, 304.897.2083 wardensvillegardenmarket.org CASUAL DINING RESTAURANT

EL GRAN SABOR

Elkins, 304.636.8200, elgransabor.com FAIR/FESTIVAL/EVENT

TOWN FOR HISTORY

MOUNTAIN STATE FOREST FESTIVAL

HARPERS FERRY

Elkins, 304.636.1824, forestfestival.com

SEVEN-TIME WINNER

FINE DINING

Harpers Ferry has seen it all. Ferries shuttled early settlers across the Potomac River before the American Revolutionary War, shots cracked through the air during John Brown’s 1859 raid on a federal armory, and soldiers’ boots clicked on the streets during the Civil War. Harpers Ferry is also home to one of the earliest integrated schools in the nation. Visitors today can still step back in time with sites like the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, John Brown Wax Museum, and Appalachian Trail. discoveritallwv.com

GUESTHOUSE LOST RIVER Lost River, 304.897.5707 guesthouselostriver.com RECREATION VENUE

CANAAN VALLEY RESORT STATE PARK canaanvalley.org PLACE TO SHOP

RUNNERS-UP

LOST RIVER TRADING POST

LEWISBURG

Wardensville, 304.874.3300 lostrivertradingpost.com

greenbrierwv.com

PLACE TO STAY

BILLY MOTEL

MATEWAN

Davis, 304.851.6125, thebillymotel.com

historicmatewan.com

UNIQUE ATTRACTION

GREEN BANK TELESCOPE

MAYOR

AMY GOODWIN

Even before Amy Goodwin was elected Charleston’s first female mayor in November 2018, she was no stranger to the Capitol. She visited when she was younger with her grandmother, who represented Ohio County in the House of Delegates. Goodwin then worked in communications for several politicians before running for a seat herself. Shortly after coming into office, she addressed a $3 million budget deficit, launched a campaign to tackle the city’s dilapidated properties, and established the Charleston Youth Council to engage tomorrow’s young leaders.

RUNNERS-UP

STEVE WILLIAMS, HUNTINGTON CAROLYN RADER, RIPLEY

Green Bank, 304.456.2150 greenbankobservatory.com WATERING HOLE

BIG TIMBER BREWING Elkins, 304.637.5008 bigtimberbrewing.com COMMUNITY CHAMPION

CHIP CHASE

Chip Chase has been a skier almost since he could walk. He’s been founder and operator of White Grass Ski Touring Center for less time, but still for a long time—more than 35 years. This cross country skiers’ paradise near Davis is so much more than a prime ski spot, thanks to Chase and his partners, and you’ll still find him on his skis most days of the week, interacting with visitors and sharing his love of the sport and this magical region in the Mountain State. newsouthmedia.com 111