Woodruff Cafe and Pie Shop, Monroe, Virginia

After an excellent lunch at Allman’s, I wandered over to Monroe, Virginia, to the Woodruff Cafe and Pie Shop. The Woodruff Cafe is a true destination restaurant. Not a lot of people just happen to be in Monroe, Virginia. It’s unincorporated, not even a Census Data Place. If you’ve heard of Monroe it’s because of either the Wreck on the Old 97 or the Woodruff Cafe. And the Woodruff Cafe isn’t even in Monroe, which is off Old US 29 (not the four lane). It’s another eight miles up a narrow road past Elon, another widish place in the road. You really have to want to be there to get there.

You drive and drive, and there it is.

And you do want to be there. For pie. That’s the Woodruff Cafe’s claim to fame.

I arrived in Monroe or Elon just before the 4:00 pm closing and entered the building, relieved after a winding drive through rain and snow and rapidly dropping temperatures. I walked in, saw the chalkboard,

and was struck — here we are miles from anywhere and the sandwiches are on ciabatta and the hot dog is a Hebrew National. Hear that? That’s the sound of preconceptions crashing to the ground. I had an impulse to order a pimiento cheese sandwich, and I would have but I saw the pie case.

I looked and ordered a slice of coconut meringue. Then I ordered a slice of buttermilk pie. Then a slice of pecan pie sort of ordered itself.

I paid and went out to the car. I had a bite of the coconut and a bite of the buttermilk, and would have had more, but I had promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep …ed. Well, one promise, to meet Road Fooder extraordinaire Mike Powers who was coming down from Charlottesville to join me in eating barbecue at County Smoak. More about that soon, but let’s get back to the pies.

I finished off the pies for breakfast the next morning. Each was delicious. First, the crust of each pie was beautifully flaky, and the crust was flavorful independent of the filling. Even the rim part of the crust that people often leave was a treat in itself.

And the fillings were heavenly. The coconut pie had a lush coconut custard with lots of shreds of coconut both in the custard and on the meringue. The buttermilk pie had that pumpkin pie consistency that lets you pick it up and eat it with your hand– which is something I’ve always liked to do since I was a child–and it had that distinctive lemony buttermilk tang. The pecan pie’s sweet filling played a good supporting role, a complementary role to the really exceptional pecan flavor and texture of the pecan top. These were three great slices of pie.

And the Woodruff Cafe is a good place. It started as a little country store in the 1950s, across from the family’s blacksmith shop that was the first black-owned business in Amherst County, founded I think, by the son or grandson of slaves The family turned the store into a three-table cafe in the late 90s. Then they started selling pies, and the world, NBC, PBS, the Wall Street Journal, beat a path to their door. Southern Living, which is serious about pies, declared the Woodruff Cafe’s apple pie the Best in the World.

I want to go back to the Woodruff Cafe when I’m not in a hurry, when I know that they’re not just hanging around on my account on a snowy winter afternoon when they really need to get home. I want to go back and have a pimiento cheese sandwich and maybe some soup and talk to the folks there and the other customers. And I want to eat more pie. Pies.

I say in all seriousness, that if at any moment in your life, you are within 100 miles of Monroe, Virginia, you should, at least once, drop your plans and go to the Woodruff Cafe.

You’re welcome.

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