Photos by Jane Kortright Photography
Inside the Village Café at the Villages at Woodside, a happy hum rises.
It’s the sound of community — which is exactly how general manager Tyler Richardson describes the café’s purpose: to bring people together. Owned by Rick Steele, the café serves up breakfast and lunch to residents of Aiken’s Woodside Plantation and The Village at Woodside, plus diners from all over the Aiken-Augusta area.
Community here also means locally-sourced food. The restaurant gathers its ingredients from more than a dozen local and regional farms: eggs from Ramey Farm in Wagener, milk from Hickory Hill Dairy in Edgefield, meats from Grice’s Butcher Shop in Aiken, strawberries from Cold Creek Nursery, and so many more. “Whenever we can, if we can work with local vendors, if we can get fruits and vegetables from local farms, that’s what we do,” says Richardson.
Farm-fresh eggs with their rich, luscious taste appear in breakfast sandwiches and homemade quiches. Soups are made daily, and the café regularly has enough tomatoes on hand to stir up its popular tomato bisque, finished with heavy cream and shaved Parmesan. In the summer, fresh peaches are baked into muffins and frozen into its signature gelato — the Village Café is the only Aiken restaurant making the creamy Italian treat. “You can taste the difference [of having fresh, locally-sourced food],” says Richardson, “but you can feel it, too.”
And for every dish like The Sammy’s Turkey (Chef Sam Young’s dream of a sandwich) — with roasted turkey, creamy ranch, bacon, Havarti cheese and the added zing of jalapeno jelly — of course, the restaurant offers lighter fare, too, such as its veggie wrap with house-made hummus. On the drink menu, the Golden Milk Latte is its riff on chai made with anti-inflammatory turmeric, black pepper, ginger and cinnamon. Or, if you like the sound of a sandwich but want it lighter, you can order it atop a bed of lettuce instead of bread — which, says Richardson, is how many people enjoy its popular Village Club.
“For me,” says Richardson, “the café is about the experience. The theme, over and over again, is always community. So, I hope that when they come and dine with us, that’s the takeaway.”
As seen in the May 2026 issue of Augusta magazine.
