"Selfishly, we've always lamented that we can't get Bar Botanical for lunch since they're not open," Bluebird & Co. owner Flannery Buchanan told the Crozet Gazette this month, "but now we can."
She was talking about a refrigerator. On August 10, her shop and Bar Botanical announced on social media that a fridge in the bookshop would carry plant-based salads, soups and grain bowls made by the rooftop restaurant on Library Avenue. That restaurant keeps dinner hours only. It's a small change, but it fits a pattern. This year's changes to weekday lunch in downtown Crozet came from businesses that weren't set up as lunch restaurants: a bottle shop with a new lunch menu, a bookshop with a new fridge, and a longtime catering kitchen under new owners. And all three help most in the middle of the week, when lunch downtown has been hardest to find.
The week, laid out
Here is how posted hours line up as of September 2026. The hours come from each business's own website. None of those pages is dated, and a few disagree with each other, so check before you walk over.
| Day | Where weekday lunch is posted downtown |
|---|---|
| Monday | Crozet Pizza, Fardowners, New China |
| Tuesday | New China, CroZeli, Bluebird & Co. fridge |
| Wednesday | New China, CroZeli, Blue Ridge Bottle Shop from noon, Bluebird fridge, Smoked Kitchen & Tap may open |
| Thursday | Crozet Pizza, New China, CroZeli, Smoked, Blue Ridge Bottle Shop, Bluebird fridge |
| Friday | All of the above plus Fardowners, and L'Etoile's preordered Friday meals |
Crozet Pizza at 5794 Three Notch'd Road serves its regular menu from 11:30 a.m. on Monday and Thursday through Sunday. It's closed Tuesday and Wednesday. Fardowners at 5773 The Square opens at 11:30 a.m. on Monday, Friday and Saturday. Tuesday through Thursday it doesn't open until 3 p.m. Next door at 5775 The Square, New China posts takeout hours from 11 a.m. every weekday. That makes it the one downtown kitchen on this list with posted lunch hours all five weekdays.
Monday lunch happens on The Square and Three Notch'd Road. From Tuesday through Thursday, most of the options move to the other side of downtown.
Piedmont Place covers the middle of the week
Piedmont Place at 2025 Library Avenue is where the Tuesday-through-Thursday options are. CroZeli, in Suite 204, serves sandwiches, salads and sides Tuesday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. On Friday it stays open until 8 p.m. Smoked Kitchen & Tap, in the same building, lists Wednesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. on its contact page. Its homepage says it is open "Wednesday dinner through Sunday." Plan on Thursday and Friday for lunch there, and call ahead if you're thinking about a Wednesday.
The building's own dining directory lists longer hours for some tenants than the tenants list themselves. The operators' pages are the better guide.
On Monday, nothing in Piedmont Place has posted lunch hours. That's why Monday lunch stays on The Square.
A bottle shop that sells out of soup
Blue Ridge Bottle Shop, in Suite 203, has long been downtown's place for beer, wine and gourmet treats. Early this year it added a rotating menu of soup, quiche and daily salad specials. To cook it, owners Jude Russell and her husband brought in Marty Philpott. She's a longtime Shenandoah Valley chef who ran Frederick Street Café in Staunton for years. That café was known for fresh, made-from-scratch lunches, and Philpott told the Gazette she's cooking the same way at the Bottle Shop.
"We wanted to offer something you couldn't find elsewhere," Russell said. By February she added: "We've sold out nearly every day since we started."
The seating came first. While Piedmont Place was closed after the flood, the Russells expanded and remodeled the shop and added a sunny corner where customers can sit down for lunch or a snack. The shop's website lists Wednesday through Saturday from noon to 8 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. It doesn't give separate kitchen hours. So on Wednesday it becomes a second sit-down lunch spot in the building, and if the soup is selling out daily, getting there early is the safer plan.
A fridge in a bookshop
Bar Botanical, the rooftop restaurant at Piedmont Place, is open Wednesday through Saturday from 4 to 10 p.m. Owner Ryan Becklund told the Gazette that "a lot of people in town have been asking for healthy lunch options." The fridge at Bluebird & Co. is how he answered them.
Here's what to expect:
- What's in it: everything is plant-based. There are seasonal salads, soups and grain bowls, plus specialty items from brands like Rebel Cheese.
- Prices: most meals run about $20. Snacks start at $4.
- When you can get it: during Bluebird's hours. That's Tuesday through Friday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sunday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
- What changes: the menu. Becklund plans to rotate out items that sell slowly and wants to hear what people ask for.
The timing matters. The fridge is stocked on Tuesday, which is also the day Crozet Pizza is closed and Fardowners doesn't open until mid-afternoon. For a Tuesday lunch you can buy on the spot downtown, New China, CroZeli and this fridge are the posted options.
L'Etoile keeps Friday going
L'Etoile has cooked for Crozet for more than three decades. In March, the Gazette reported that founders Mark and Vickie Gresge are handing the business to Schuyler and Christina Lemus Cox. The Gresges are stepping back gradually, staying on through the new owners' first weddings and first UVA event. According to the Gazette, the soup pickup business "grew organically," and the preordered Friday meals are designed to be reheated at home. Customers often buy several and freeze some for busy days.
The Coxes are keeping both the soups and the Friday meals. They've also made a few changes:
- A new cooling unit lets customers see what's available.
- Customers can pay with Venmo.
- There's a meal option for kids who aren't ready for chicken Mirabella, such as a pasta dish.
- They plan to cook with more Crozet-grown produce and meat as they build ties with local farmers.
Weekly take-and-bake meals are ordered at letoilecatering.square.site, and the grab-and-go soup menu is posted on L'Etoile's Facebook page. L'Etoile isn't a lunch counter. Still, a quart of soup picked up on your way through town goes a long way on a midweek day when the sit-down spots are closed.
Why these fixes came from shops
The larger long-term change for downtown is the former Barnes Lumber site, and its public plaza is still a while away. In its 2025 year-end update, the Downtown Crozet Initiative expected the site's road network to be built in spring 2026, with plaza construction being prepared for 2027. The plaza design shown in May 2026 includes a central lawn with a concert pavilion, a railroad promenade and family play areas. At a May 2026 briefing, DCI said the road contract was out to bid. The planned order is roads first, then the buildings and a boutique hotel, then the plaza. Albemarle County's page for the Library Avenue extension says budget shortfalls were identified in January 2026. That's the road meant to run through the Barnes property to High Street and Hilltop Street. All of those dates are tentative.
Businesses that already have space, staff and a kitchen or cooler can add lunch far faster than new buildings can go up. That's what happened this year. A remodeled corner with seating, a borrowed refrigerator and a new owner's cooling unit each made downtown a little easier for lunch between Tuesday and Thursday.
Mudhouse at 5793 The Square is open daily from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., so it's often a good place to wait while you decide. Its hours page doesn't say whether it serves lunch food.
Where to go, day by day
- Monday: head to The Square for Fardowners or New China, or go to Crozet Pizza on Three Notch'd Road.
- Tuesday: try CroZeli at Piedmont Place, takeout from New China, or a bowl from the Bluebird fridge.
- Wednesday: get to Blue Ridge Bottle Shop soon after noon before the soup runs out. CroZeli and the Bluebird fridge are also open.
- Thursday: every downtown spot on this list except Fardowners is serving lunch, and Smoked Kitchen & Tap is back on the list.
- Friday: Fardowners reopens for lunch, CroZeli stays open until 8 p.m., and L'Etoile's Friday meals are ready for pickup if you ordered ahead.
Every week our team spends time in Crozet, from Piedmont Place to The Square, and we follow changes like these because they're part of daily life here. If you're thinking about what your Crozet home is worth, Better Homes & Gardens Pathways is happy to talk it through, and a table at CroZeli works for us. Request your free home valuation when you're ready.
