BLACKWATER — Blackwater Trading Post will soon reopen under new ownership — the family behind the popular Redhead Bay Café in Creeds — with all the features rural residents have come to expect from the country store and more.
Aristotle and Robbie Cleanthes are renovating the historic building on the 5600 block of Blackwater Road.
The revamped business is expected to reopen with a newly designed menu in May.
“This place has been established here for a long time,” Robbie Cleanthes said. “For us to have roots in it, it’s humbling.”
“We’re keeping it a store – a convenience store,” said Aristotle Cleanthes during a recent visit, where work continued on the building, which has undergone renovations since February.
The business behind the Trading Post is named for their son, Arrow, who is six. But, despite a few rumors out there, it will still be the Blackwater Trading Post.
The Trading Post is small but vital hub for rural Virginia Beach residents and locals traveling between the city and Chesapeake and Currituck County, including nearby Gibbs Woods, a community that is isolated from the Currituck mainland.
It’s been a place for folks to stop for gasoline, convenience and grocery items, meals and even bait for nearby fishing.
All that and more will be there when the Trading Post reopens, Aristotle Cleanthes said.
“We’ll still have bait,” Aristotle Cleanthes said. “That’s the million-dollar question.”
There will be breakfast, lunch and dinner menus, including culinary creations Aristotle Cleanthes has featured on his YouTube cooking channel, The Campin’ Kitchen, filmed at home in Knotts Island, North Carolina.
There will be grab-and-go breakfast sandwiches and lunches. Dinner options will be a focus, with steamed shrimp, Dungeness crab legs and hot honey pepper frog legs.
And a burger Aristotle Cleanthes called the pineapple bacon barbecue double cheeseburger.
That’s kind of a long handle to Robbie Cleanthes, though.
“I want to call it the Aloha, Y’all,” she said.
During the recent visit, customer Sonja Garringer poked her head in the door to see how things are coming along.
“What are you guys doing to me?” she asked.
“We’re getting there,” Aristotle Cleanthes said.
“My favorite ice cream store,” Garringer told them.
The new owners promised there will be ice cream when they open – and they’ll “step up the ice cream game.”
Ed. — Here’s a menu preview for the new Blackwater Trading Post that went online after this story originally appeared in print.
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