If you’ve been thinking the downtown restaurant scene was missing something in the breakfast department – a warm, gooey cinnamon roll drizzled with vanilla glaze, perhaps, or a grab-and-go biscuit hot from the oven – you might just be in luck. Crumbles, a new spot for a morning bite, is now open for business on Kirk Avenue, a convenient dash from the city municipal building and courthouse.
Crumbles is the creation of restaurateur Ruben Liendo, who previously operated Grandin pizzeria Grace’s Place with his sister, and who left Grace’s in 2014 to launch his own venture, Al Dente on Brambleton Ave. Several years after his Italian-style eatery closed its doors, Ruben is ready to begin again – this time with an emphasis on humility, hustle, and a trim business model.
“One of the things I’ve realized [at Al Dente] is I opened way too big, too soon,” says Liendo. “So when I saw the sign [on Kirk Avenue] that said, ‘For Lease’ … I said, this could be a small place for me to start all over again…This is my comeback story.”
The breakfast menu he’s created for Crumbles is simple, streamlined and unpretentious – scratch-made honey-laced rolls available with cinnamon or vanilla glaze for just $3.50, and biscuits ranging from $1.65 to $4.95, topped with classic ingredients like pimiento cheese, crispy chicken, vegetarian sausage, or his personal favorite, steak and eggs.Yogurt parfaits, coffee and frappes round out the selections, with smoothies to come in the summer.
“I hope that it can remind people of somebody’s mom who used to bake biscuits at home. Maybe it’ll bring them back to being a kid… The simpler the better,” Liendo says.
Wrapped in newsprint-style paper and sized for easy munching in one hand, the biscuits make for an ideal meal on the run. But if you want to dine in, the storefront offers a cozy spot for a cup of coffee at one of six small tables. A large hand-lettered sign on the back wall reads: Your Day Starts at … CRUMBLES – Rise & Grind.
It’s become a personal motto for Liendo, who feels this reboot as a breakfast baker has brought him full-circle to his childhood in Caracas.
“Where I used to live in Venezuela, at the bottom of the building was a bread place… When you came out of the building, that’s all you smelled. As a kid, I used to be friends with the owners’ kid, so we used to hang out, run into the back of the bread place. I saw the chef using honey and sugar cane, and it stuck with me…Years later I never would have thought I’d end up doing this.”
He hopes his customers will fuel up for the day at Crumbles and leave ready to hustle.
“That’s one of the greatest things about this country – if you can dream something, you can have it,” he says. “That’s my rise-and-grind motivation.”
To find a full copy of Crumbles’ menu, visit their Facebook page here. To inquire about catering boxes, call the restaurant at (540) 566-4292.
About the Writer:
Ashley Wilson Fellers is a writer, educator, self-taught painter and contemplative photographer in Roanoke, Virginia. When she isn’t teaching writing at Virginia Western, she snaps photos of sidewalk cracks, rescues wet leaves from windshield wipers and leaves poems hidden under park benches. She has a Master of Fine Arts degree from Virginia Tech.
