Comfort food in an old grocery store.

After thirty years in the magazine and newspaper world, most notably an award-winning tenure at The Washington Post, and Preservation and Smithsonian magazines, I was itching for a change. I enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America (the other CIA) in New York, was trained by two former White House pastry chefs at L’Academie de Cuisine outside of D.C., took courses at King Arthur Baking in Vermont, and hightailed it to a former convent in Oaxaca, Mexico, for local culinary training with chef Rick Bayless, owner of Chicago’s Frontera Grill and Topolobampo. In 2008, I left publishing to create a bakery in rural Virginia with just three employees, after a story by The New York Times  writer Marian Burros, on the front page of the Times’ food section, sent my fledgling bakery’s website visits from two dozen to 57,000 in one day. Over fifteen years, the bakery grew into two locations, with a staff of sixty shipping thousands of cakes and other items across the country each year. I wrote two cookbooks and toured the country promoting the bakery and The Red Truck Bakery Farmhouse Cookbook and the Red Truck Bakery Cookbook (Clarkson Potter/ Penguin Random House, 2022 and 2018). The bakery’s popularity reinvigorated a sleepy Main Street, bringing new businesses to town, and I received Presidential accolades for my hard-won success and my pies. 

I sold the bakery in 2023, and we’re as happy as a dog with two tails to be living in the village of Little Washington—officially known as Washington, Virginia (pop. 88)—purportedly surveyed and laid out by a 17-year-old George Washington in 1749, near the Blue Ridge mountains and Shenandoah National Park. We reside just around the corner from the revered Inn at Little Washington where we dine on special occasions, and you’ll find us every few days at the Inn’s superb Patty O’s Café across the street. Sometimes, though, we just want a quick bite with our pals: a sausage biscuit for breakfast, homemade soup and a sandwich for lunch, and for dinner maybe a bourbon & ginger with a burger, and apple pie for dessert. Four months after moving to town for what I expected was the start of a relaxing retirement, I pondered the possibilities of a long-shuttered café, in a former IGA grocery store, four blocks from our home. 

So, behold my new Hayfields in Little Washington, a market and café named after the golden fields and the monumental trailers of huge hay bales that lumber through the village we call home. I’m excited to tout our biscuits, sandwiches, entrees, pies, and whiskey, although Hayfields will be much more: a unique market carrying local and national products, and a counter-service café where you can order at the register and your meal will be brought to you in our dining room, our bar area, or on the spacious patio outside. Or run in and run out, if you prefer: we’ll be serving up grab-and-go sandwiches, and offering online ordering for pickup orders. Then there’s our full-service bar, The Last Straw, a neighborhood joint that the townsfolk made me promise to keep. I’m glad we did. No dining reservations are needed, unless you’re headed our way with a big group. Stop in and say howdy to the gang, and save room for pie.

Hayfields is getting ready for you, and we’ll be opening later this summer. Sign up for updates here, and follow our progress on Instagram @hayfieldslittlewashington