Michie Tavern

An 18th-century Virginia tavern that has been feeding travellers, in one location or another, since 1784 — the building was dismantled and moved to this spot on the road to Monticello in the 1920s, when the automobile tourist arrived.

Lunch is the reason to come: a midday buffet of fried chicken, black-eyed peas, stewed tomatoes, cornbread and biscuits, served in low-ceilinged rooms by staff in period dress. Around the tavern sits a cluster of outbuildings — a grist mill, a general store, a smokehouse — that you can wander for free, plus one of the better gift shops in the area for Virginia hams, jams and mead.

Practical: the kitchen keeps short hours (roughly 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.), it fills up fast on Monticello days, and it is one of the few genuinely rainy-day-proof stops on this stretch of road.