The story below is a preview from our May/June 2023 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
The Vault at Liberty Trust dishes out casual elegance and funky vibes in a local historic landmark.
John Park
When a chef tells you that a dish’s origin involves a secret recipe, a DJ and a competition, you sit up and take notes. Most of Andy Schlosser’s stories begin like that. No wonder then that one of Roanoke’s pioneering fine dining chefs is tapping the full range of his experiences to write his next chapter. With The Vault, which opened last October inside the lobby of The Liberty Trust Hotel downtown, Schlosser fuses his eclectic tastes, top-notch cooking, and passion for music to create a modern take on fine dining inside a historic landmark.
Schlosser made his mark with Metro, a multi-hyphenate joint that was a white tablecloth restaurant, night club and sushi bar. When it opened in 2002, Schlosser’s intention was to bring the big city to Roanoke by creating a modern menu inspired by his travels and underscored by well executed, technical cooking. Part of his ambition was also to showcase his talents as a career DJ, so he built out the sound system, installed DJ booths, and hosted collaborators. He had a great run, but after 15 years, Schlosser had no intention of returning to restaurants—he’d been there, done that. But the Liberty Trust Hotel offered the potential to try something different.
John Park
“I didn’t want this place to be about me. Metro definitely became about me and my art as a chef,” Schlosser says. “I really wanted this to be about the place itself and for me to almost have a back seat to it. I want to showcase this beautiful place and what it represents.”
The hotel is named after the Liberty Trust Company, which moved into the building in 1926, after first operating as the First National Bank. Fairfax-based Savara Hospitality purchased the building in 2018, working with local historical preservationists from Hill Studio to uphold its status on the National Register of Historic Places and as a Virginia Historic Landmark. The integrity of the lobby layout was maintained along with key features such as the marble floors and the marble bases that were once old bank teller stations but which now partition seating nooks in the loungey side of the lobby. Richmond-based design firm Glavé & Holmes selected a color palate of yellow, pink and green to echo the various shades of marble and play off the banking elements. Plush velvet high wingback chairs and love seats in cool pinks contrast with the gleaming bronze and warm copper tones of the stately vault door, while the bar’s emerald-tiled backsplash calls to mind gold bricks.
By virtue of the restaurant being in the lobby of a hotel, the initial soft branding for the food concept was “for the love of travel.” It’s one that Schlosser embodies personally and in his cooking. “My way of discovering the world has been by recreating cuisine as best and authentically as I can, to experience it without going to those places. It’s a talent and passion of mine and something I’m obsessed with.”
To feed that obsession, Schlosser researches and tests a dish exhaustively before it lands on the menu. There’s the dashi, a Japanese stock he perfected at Metro, which boasts a tea-like clarity and accompanies a spring-ready dish of chilled buckwheat soba noodles with accompaniments such as shaved daikon, julienned kizami nori (seaweed), umeboshi (pickled, salted plum), wasabi and Japanese pickles (which I could eat a whole plate of). It’s designed to be an interactive dish; as diners add seasonings to the broth to develop its flavors, and as the noodles soak in the broth, the flavors get more intense. Another example of Schlosser’s devotion is the khachapuri, which became a signature dish at Metro. He was inspired to recreate it after a DJ friend challenged him to recreate the version he’d tasted at a friend’s Eastern European restaurant in D.C. The Georgian dish features an oblong bread boat filled with warm sulguni cheese, a runny yolk, butter and spices that’s mixed to create a melty dip. Schlosser rose to the challenge and recreated it by making his own cheese, blending feta and ricotta curds to strike the right tartness, and developing a recipe for lepinja, the fluffy flatbread. Tableside, a server mixes the cheese, a local farm egg yolk, European cultured butter and a proprietary spice blend anchored by everything bagel seasoning. Diners are invited to “rip-and-dip,” as maître d’ Dexter Hall puts it. It eats like a gourmet fondue and makes for a fun, interactive meal opener, particularly if you’re dining with a group. It’s best enjoyed on the spot, but our server promised it’d reheat like pizza in an air fryer or oven.
“I kind of feel like a pied piper in a way. I really do enjoy pushing things on people and getting the success of seeing the smile and excitement of someone trying it,” Schlosser says. “I wanted to travel through food and that’s what I’ve done and that’s how I experience the world. That’s what I’d like to bring people.”
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The story above is a preview from our May/June 2023 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!