Appreciating Asheville
You do not have be a millionaire to experience grand mansions, delicious food, unique culture, and beautiful scenery in Asheville, North Carolina. Amanda and I visited the Biltmore Estate and the Grove Park Inn, ate at restaurants Tupelo Honey and The Mellow Mushroom, enjoyed talking with the friendly people of the town and appreciated beautiful views of the Smoky Mountains .
The Biltmore Estate is unparalleled in its grandeur. The house and gardens are beautifully maintained and stunningly lavish; the self-guided tour gave us some perspective into how one wealthy American family, the Vanderbilts, once lived.
The main dining hall is as large as a cathedral; it has a ceiling-high pipe organ at one end, three massive fireplaces on the other, five-hundred-year-old tapestries on the wall, and a table that easily seats forty-eight people. The library has hundreds of original books filling the first-floor shelves and a second-level balcony accessed by a spiral staircase. In the basement, there is an indoor swimming pool with a wood and brass swimming deck reminiscent of the fine ocean liners of the time. Fredrick Law Olmsted designed the gardens of the estate where we enjoyed natural beauty while wandering through meandering paths and touring formal gardens and greenhouses.
Opening the Biltmore to the public has helped transform the estate into a destination for food and wine. There are several restaurants with varying degrees of refinement: a grill, café, pub, tavern, restaurant, winery, and formal dining room serve the many visitors with a spectrum of food that includes pizza, burgers, shepherd’s pie, steaks, ribs, hushpuppies, baked goods, and much more. From the bakery, we ate a delicious cinnamon bun which was made with a laminated dough, creating a flaky bun with a chewy bite, gooey interior, sweet icing, and spiced with cinnamon.
The town of Asheville is quiet early in the morning as the sun begins to peek around the low brick buildings and colorfully painted alleyways. We arrived at Tupelo Honey restaurant just before it opened it’s doors at 9 o’clock and were greeted by the friendly staff and the rich aroma of bacon, sausage, and potatoes.
It is a pleasure just to sit and enjoy the morning sun shining through the window into the dining room and eat Tupelo’s wonderful fresh and comforting biscuits with their own Florida honey-and-blueberry jam. The worn-wooden floors and cabinets reveal the history and warmth of this place.
We ordered poached eggs with hollandaise and ham on a fresh biscuit, sweet potato pancake with pecans spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg, French toast smeared with blueberry jam and sprinkled with almonds, and hash-brown potatoes. All the food was wonderful! After eating here, it is no wonder that Tupelo Honey is considered one of the best breakfast spots in the country.
After touring downtown Asheville and stopping in many of the great shops, we ate lunch at The Mellow Mushroom. The decor is decidedly psychedelic; prominently displaying large wooden sculptures of personified mushrooms offering you pizza and murals of Woodstock-era musical icons floating in the clouds above the Mushroom’s pizza ovens. We sat outside and enjoyed the beautiful weather and laid-back pace of the city. The local gardener here seems to enjoy planning flowers and vegetables in “anything and everything” including an old Hobart dough mixer.
The beer selection at the Mellow Mushroom is excellent. We tried two locally brewed beers; Pisgah Pale Ale and High Gael Ale. Asheville is known as Beer City USA and for good reason; there are tons of local breweries making great beer and selling it for a great price. You simply cannot go wrong with any of the local beers here!
The pizza is amazing, too! We had their Gourmet White pizza with olive oil, garlic, fresh tomatoes, sundried tomatoes, Provolone, Mozzarella, feta, and onions. The sweet and fresh flavor of the tomatoes complimented the rich garlic and salty, gooey cheese. The crust was the clincher, however, beautifully blistered and airy, with plenty of texture from it’s crisp bottom which was generously dusted with semolina flour. Our server revealed that molasses and whole wheat flour are the secret to this wonderful dough.
During a stop at the Grove Park Inn, we admired the granite stone and red-clay architecture and the beautiful view from the terrace described by one local as “a sea of rolling Smoky Mountains waves.”
Something about Asheville helped us to appreciate that this city, with all its charms, quaintness, and grandeur, welcomes anyone who wishes to experience its wonders, and does so with hospitality that is classically Southern and uniquely Asheville!