If you drove through Aldie last fall and then again this month, you'd swear a new restaurant opened out of nowhere. It didn't. The building at 39285 Little River Turnpike has now hosted three different concepts in under three years, and the pattern says more about how this village actually works than any single opening ever could.
Aldie isn't adding storefronts. It's recasting the ones it already has. Once you notice that, the rest of the weekend map starts to make a different kind of sense.
The Same Storefront, Its Third Life
Start with the address itself. Before it was anything else, the building at 39285 Little River Turnpike was known locally as the Aldie Country Store. Then it became The Black Market, an upscale farm-to-table restaurant and gourmet market that closed in September 2025. Now it's Oak & Ember, a tasting room and market that opened to the public in early January 2026.
| Era | What Occupied It | What Ended It |
|---|---|---|
| Earlier era | Aldie Country Store | Building changed hands |
| Until Sept. 2025 | The Black Market | Closed September 2025 |
| Jan. 2026–present | Oak & Ember | Currently operating |
Oak & Ember is the work of Christian Puccio, who spent eight years as general manager at Ahso Restaurant in Brambleton before opening his own place. His resume in Loudoun runs deeper than that one stretch. He opened Puccio's New York Deli in Leesburg in 2002 at age 25, sold it in 2009, and spent the years after in leadership roles with the Metropolitan Hospitality Group and Creighton Farms. A 2023 attempt at an Italian steakhouse in Brambleton fell through when contract negotiations collapsed, which is part of why this particular storefront mattered so much to him when it came open again.
"Local is everything," Puccio said.
The concept he landed on is a hybrid: a market and tasting room built around handmade pasta, local charcuterie, and wine flights, with lunch service Tuesday through Saturday, dinner Wednesday through Sunday, and an Ember Hour running 3 to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. Monday is dark. The menu leans Modern American with Italian and Appalachian threads running through it, which is a fair description of the building's whole history if you squint. Every version of this storefront has tried to sell the same idea: local ingredients, a market up front, something to sit and eat in back. The tenant changes. The pitch doesn't.
The Market That Subtracted Its Way to Better
A mile east, at the intersection of Routes 15 and 50, the Gilberts Corner Farmers Market runs a different kind of consistency. It's open year-round, Saturdays and Sundays, 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., which puts it in a small category of Loudoun markets that don't take a winter off. The Piedmont Environmental Council took over ownership of the market in 2019 and has held a long-term agreement with local farmer Tyler Wegmeyer ever since, whose family has run the strawberry and pick-your-own sunflower operation there since 2012.
The market didn't get bigger this year. It got smaller on purpose. At the end of 2025, PEC removed the old gas station building that had stood on the property for years, citing it as a public safety priority. If you've been going to Gilberts Corner for a while, that's the kind of change you notice the first weekend you're back: the layout you knew is gone, and what's left is more open ground for the actual market.
A few other things worth knowing if Saturday mornings are part of your routine:
- Wegmeyer Farms' strawberry season and pick-your-own sunflower patch typically begins in early April
- The market has operated at this corner for years as a fixture, not a pop-up
- For current vendor lists, PEC recommends following the market's own social channels rather than relying on secondhand listings
The Thursday Alternative
If weekends are already spoken for, there's a smaller, quieter option. The Willowsford Boat House Farm Stand at 41025 Willowsford Lane runs Thursdays from 4 to 6 p.m., carrying Willowsford's own organic produce and pasture-raised eggs alongside products from Bees Wing Farm, Village Cheese Works, Locksley Farmstead Cheese Co., Harvest Symphony Bakery, and Ayrshire Farm. It closes the week of July 4th and the week of Labor Day, so plan around those two gaps if you're counting on it.
The One Building That Never Changes
Set against all that turnover, Aldie Mill Historic Park is the one constant. NOVA Parks acquired the mill in 2006 from the Virginia Outdoors Foundation. The structure itself, an imposing four-story brick grist mill with tandem metal waterwheels, was built between 1807 and 1809 by William Cooke for legislator Charles Fenton Mercer. The waterwheels were restored in October 2010 with grant assistance from the Loudoun Preservation Society, and they still turn.
Tours and grinding demonstrations run weekends between April and November. The site is also available to rent, with indoor seating for 50 and outdoor space for up to 120 overlooking the wheels. Unlike the storefront up the road, the mill hasn't changed hands, changed names, or changed its reason for existing in over two centuries. That kind of permanence is rare enough in a small village that it's worth treating as an anchor point when you're planning a weekend, not just a photo stop.
Part of why every building here carries so much weight is that Aldie doesn't have many of them to spare. The Route 50 Corridor Coalition puts it plainly: Aldie currently "has the appearance of a highway with buildings along it, not of a village with a main street." That's not a criticism so much as an explanation. When there's no dense strip of storefronts to spread activity across, each occupied building ends up doing more work for the whole community's rhythm than it would somewhere with more commercial density.
Building This Into an Actual Saturday
If you're trying to make a weekend out of these four spots without overplanning it, here's a sequence that respects the actual hours each one keeps:
- Morning: Gilberts Corner Farmers Market, 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. any Saturday or Sunday, for produce and a coffee before the day heats up
- Midday: Aldie Mill Historic Park, if it's a weekend between April and November, to catch a grinding demonstration or just walk the grounds along Little River
- Thursday detour: Willowsford Boat House Farm Stand, 4 to 6 p.m., if you'd rather spread your errands across the week instead of stacking them on Saturday
- Evening: Oak & Ember, Wednesday through Sunday for dinner, or the 3 to 5 p.m. Ember Hour if you want wine and charcuterie without committing to a full meal
None of this requires driving into Leesburg or Middleburg. It's all within a few minutes of Route 50, which is either the whole appeal of living here or the thing you didn't expect to notice until you'd been here a year.
The next time a new sign goes up in the village, it's worth checking the address before assuming it's new ground. More often than not, it's an old building finding its third act, and that turnover, not expansion, is how Aldie's weekend actually renews itself.
For more on what makes this stretch of Loudoun County distinct, our Aldie neighborhood guide has additional local detail worth a look.
If you're already living the Aldie weekend and have questions about the market here, or just want to talk through what's changing in the village, David D Kyle is always glad to talk. Let's Connect.
