An Easy Place to Be at Crystal Spring Grocery

The story below is from our March/April 2021 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you! 

The team at Crystal Spring Grocery Co. brings fine dining to their grab-and-go menu.

It’s not often small business owners are able to marry their concept with the perfect people for bringing that concept to life. When it does, something like Crystal Spring Grocery Company is born.

Devon Steiner, general manager at Crystal Spring Grocery, grew up in Hagerstown, Maryland. She attended Virginia Tech where she studied hospitality and event planning. After graduation, she worked for a short time in the Blacksburg area before landing a job at River and Rail in Roanoke. Steiner quickly fell in love with Appalachian food, wine and the magic that happens when the two come together in a beautiful setting. 

Matthew Lintz, executive chef at Crystal Spring Grocery, was born in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. He lived most his childhood in Pennsylvania until he was 16 years old, when his family moved to Chesapeake, Virginia. Like Steiner, Lintz also graduated from Virginia Tech, though his degree was in Biology. He went on to graduate school, with the goal of becoming a science teacher. The summer after he graduated with his master’s degree, Lintz took a job at an area restaurant. He never stepped foot in a classroom after that.

Whit and Lauren Ellerman are the owners of Crystal Spring Grocery. The long-time Roanoke residents also own River and Rail Restaurant, located on the same block as Crystal Spring Grocery.

“They are people who love investing in this community,” says Steiner, who developed a close relationship with the couple during her years working at River and Rail. 

The Ellermans must also have an eye for recognizing the talents of others and a vision for how those talents might be harnessed for creating something new. They saw a natural talent in Steiner for bringing full expression to regional foods, wine and the craft beverage industry. They also saw – and tasted – a similar passion in Lintz and his thoughtful attention to locally grown foods. 

“[The Ellermans] were always big fans of Matt,” says Steiner. “He does these unusual things with vegetables … but they’re always so delicious.”

Lintz, former executive chef at Local Roots Restaurant in Grandin Village, credits Bloom Restaurant & Wine Bar owner, Nathanial Sloan, for opening his eyes to the many ways vegetables can play a lead role in any fine dining experience. For several years the chefs worked together – along with Alex Tyree, Crystal Spring Grocery’s kitchen manager – at Local Roots, tending the restaurant’s garden and creating delicious meals from the humble vegetable.  

This is the inter-woven web of relationships that brought Crystal Spring Grocery to life. In 2019, when Tinnell’s Finer Foods was ready to close their doors after 82 years serving its South Roanoke community, the Ellermans bought the space with Steiner and Lintz specifically in mind.

“They let us have this space to do something with it we’ve always wanted to do,” says Steiner, gratitude filling her every word. 

Crystal Spring Grocery offers something new to the area, while honoring the spirit of that which came before it. This is most evident in their grab-and-go case. Here you will find a direct head nod to Tinnell’s: ham biscuit sandwiches, pimento cheese, deviled eggs and cheese slaw.

Lintz took these Tinnell’s staples and gave them his “Chef Lintz” twist, bringing his fine dining experience to bear in every item. But, this is only the beginning of Crystal Spring Grocery’s grab-and-go offerings. 

But, this is only the beginning of Crystal Spring Grocery’s grab-and-go offerings. In their effort to meet a multitude of dining needs, Lintz has created individual serving meal options, and family-sized offerings as well. A busy parent can stop by Crystal Spring Grocery on his or her way home from work and grab a main course with any number of sides. Or, one can choose a family meal kit option like the fully in-house made barbeque kit complete with fixings, sides and sauce. The kits (like all their family meals) are sized with a family of four in mind and priced under $40, rivaling similar grab-and-go options found in chain grocery stores. Better than all this, is the greater reward of knowing you are serving your family a truly homemade, healthy, seasonal meal, utilizing local and regional resources and prepared with culinary excellence.

Crystal Spring Grocery’s grab-and-go case is an important feature of its food offerings. However, the café is where customers experience the full weight of Lintz and his team’s culinary expertise. The café is a lunch counter offering soups, salads, sandwiches and some well-crafted sides. Lintz says while developing the menu, he, Tyree and the CSG team spent long hours talking and eating their way through their favorite sandwiches. From there, they curated a list of menu items they knew folks would recognize and love, with the hopes they might eventually venture out to discover some new favorites as well. Also important to Lintz is offering foods customers won’t likely duplicate on their own.

An excellent example of this is the B.L.Squash sandwich, the first sandwich I tried at Crystal Spring Grocery. It’s their play on the traditional B.L.T., except in place of the tomato is a slab of butternut squash, a perfect winter-time substitute. My experience with butternut squash is limited, outside of hearty soups. I was eager to discover a new way of eating this healthy, but often intimidating, vegetable.

Never could I have imagined butternut squash tasting so good. The squash slice is cut in a half-inch-thick round and cooked to a perfectly firm tenderness. It’s then layered with Benton’s bacon, lettuce, thin-sliced hard-boiled egg, caramelized onion and aioli, and served on grilled sourdough bread. Each bite begs for slowing down and savoring.

I asked Tyree what magic they use to make their squash taste as it does. He described a complicated, multi-step process: vacuum packing the rounds, cooking them in the French sous vide style, dousing them in an ice bath, then seasoning and searing each one to order. (I can honestly say I’ll never duplicate the B.L.Squash at home.)

Along with my B.L.Squash, I ordered a half salad of seasonal greens. The name hardly does it justice. What I enjoyed was a salad medley of flavors, textures and taste: shaved radish, roasted golden beets, candied peanut, pickled green tomato and blue cheese, drizzled with a red wine vinaigrette. Here is another example of culinary expertise brought to bear on the simple salad, and done in a way I wouldn’t dream of reproducing at home.

All of Crystal Springs Grocery’s café menu is like this. Their roasted turkey sandwich is filled with thick slices of their in-house slow-roasted turkey, seasoned with their own unique poultry blend, and has pepperoni as one of its layers. Their broccoli cheddar soup is pureed and seasoned with a seasoning blend that has just enough spicy kick – something I don’t imagine in broccoli cheddar soup, and yet it makes this soup a complete delight.

I’m looking forward to establishing a long and beautiful relationship with Crystal Spring Grocery Company. I see many happy afternoons in my future, enjoying time with friends and loved ones lingering over great food and a glass of wine. All under the canopy of a place brimming over with generosity – an easy place to be.

The story above is from our March/April 2021 issue. For more stories, subscribe today or view our FREE digital edition. Thank you for supporting local journalism!