Article by Mary Scott Hardaway Fletcher
Photography by Joshua Fitzwater
Lead photo: Craig Hartman Owner, Chef, Pitmaster The Barbeque Exchange
Gordonsville is a crossroads town with the kind of Mayberry main street that’s particularly charming on a blustery Thursday in November. The town hall boasts strands of garland, and giant wreaths speckled with holly adorn the storefronts. It’s 10:59 AM and folks are already starting to make their way to the top of Main Street and up the steps of the Barbeque Exchange, a 13-year-old institution here in central Virginia.
The Barbeque Exchange in the evening, Gordonsville, Virginia
“I believe food has to have a soul,” says Exchange owner Craig Hartman. “As a chef, I’ve always made my menus based on the culture and history of the area I live in.”
Hartman has called Gordonsville home for 16 years. He is intimately familiar with this part of the state, studying the history of Virginia foodways as assiduously as he has honed his cooking skills.
The Barbeque Exchange’s Pitmaster and Hartman’s right hand, Daniel Thompson making coals
Classically trained, Hartman worked as an executive chef for nearly four decades in upper-echelon historic inns and hotels. In 2010, while working at Keswick Hall’s Fossett’s, Hartman says he and his wife Donna talked about winding down—one can only sustain 16-hour days for so long.
Hartman wasn’t ready for a Lay-Z-Boy style retirement, though. His dream was to open a small restaurant, one “steeped in the history of the South, very casual and relaxed,” says Hartman. “Barbecue came into my head because Virginia has always been known for its pork and bacon.”
Thompson checking the pork ribs and continuing the making of wood-fired coals
Barbecue, perhaps more than any other American cuisine, is imbued with the soul of which Hartman speaks. Slow and low cooked meat embodies generations’ worth of stories, traditions and fiercely loved recipes.
It’s perhaps the most argued over American cuisine, too. Texas brisket and Eastern Carolina pulled pork may make headlines, but Hartman says it’s Old Dominion ‘cue that’s worth pulling off Route 33 for.
Simmering baked beans and Thompson checking pork ribs
“We wanted to create a restaurant that when people were in central Virginia checking out Monticello and Montpelier and the battlefields they could eat here and actually know they were in Virginia,” says Hartman. “Everything is very intentional.”
For Hartman, Virginia barbecue isn’t complicated. “I think that Virginia barbecue is the best pork that you can possibly cook over green hickory wood—just like they would’ve cooked it years ago.”
Pitmaster Daniel Thompson
At The Barbeque Exchange, diners will find this pork, served “neutrally” with six different scratch-made sauces to dress it if they choose.
The QX, reminiscent of a Kansas City style sauce, is sweet and simple on the surface, but it, too, was created with intention. “Ketchup is mentioned in The Virginia Housewife [published 1824],” says Hartman. “In the book there’s a recipe for ketchup with tomatoes and vinegar. She [Mary Randolph] writes about tomato ketchup being great for ‘grilled and wood roasted meat.’”
In addition to hogs cooked over fire with a “light salt and spice cure,” the Exchange also serves beef brisket, salmon, wings and chicken halves grilled over live coals. There’s a pickle bar with 10 kinds of pickles, house-made pumpkin muffins and cornbread, baked beans, mac and cheese, multiple slaws and Brunswick Stew.
The humble wood-paneled dining room boasts matching wooden picnic tables draped with white paper (there are crayons for little ones, or little ones at heart). Swine is everywhere. You are greeted by a Three Little Pigs statue on the porch, and pigs continue to fly inside.
The Barbeque Exchange’s pork BBQ sandwich and a sampler of pork ribs, BBQ chicken, coleslaw and hush puppies
This time of year, Hartman says the Exchange is especially proud of its holiday décor, which includes, “the most beautiful pig-related Christmas tree in the universe.” It’s hog heaven, and everyone longs to enter the pearly gates.
“When we first opened, we were serving around 500 people a day,” says Hartman, who notes that his retirement plan wasn’t so relaxing at the beginning. “Now we sometimes get 800 or 1,000 people a day, it can get a little crazy.”
No matter the crowds, the staff at the Exchange is always cool, calm and collected, greeting everyone from Baptist churchgoers to Hells Angels members with the same warm, welcome smile.
The Exchange crew spans generations, with kids who grew up eating pork belly sandwiches eventually working behind the counter, then bringing their own kids in to eat corn dog bites and chicken tenders.
“During harder times you don’t want an uptight restaurant, you want a place that makes you feel like you’re at a county fair,” says Hartman. “We put that in our business plan. When you come inside, we want it to feel like you’re at a pavilion at a fair. And nobody’s ever had a bad day when they went to the fair.”
For more on The Barbeque Exchange, visit bbqex.com
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