Is there anywhere more beautiful than the North Carolina mountains in fall? This month, head to Asheville where cool days are best spent hiking the Blue Ridge trails, dining at nationally acclaimed restaurants and imbibing at some of the best craft breweries in the state. Each of Asheville’s eight districts are home to a distinctly different atmosphere, complete with their own unique eateries and watering holes. Downtown is always brimming with activity; from a host of music venues to South Slope’s brewery hub, there’s plenty to see and do (and drink). West Asheville offers quirky dive bars and hole-in-the-wall restaurants, and in the River Arts District, culture abounds in galleries, studios and locally-owned shops. Venture out to the mountain trails for outdoorsy adventures; day hikes offer stunning views of the surrounding peaks, as well as of waterfalls, wildflowers, curious wild animals and, of course, golden-hued leaves. Hundreds of miles of trails meander through the mountains, ranging from easy to strenuous, but always well worth the effort. And, if for some reason you run out of things to do, there’s always the Biltmore Estate to go tour. Asheville’s easygoing vibe welcomes all.
EAT
Gan Shan Station
Located in an abandoned gas station, Gan Shan Station delivers some of the best East Asian cuisine in the area. The menus change often, incorporating ingredients sourced from local farmers and seafood markets. Weekly lunch and dinner specials incorporate fresh ideas with seasonal flavors. Popular dishes include fried imperial rolls, drunken noodles and pork ramen. ganshangroup.getbento.com/location/gan-shan-station
Gan Shan Station
12 Bones Smokehouse
Get your North Carolina BBQ fix at 12 Bones Smokehouse, beloved for its scratch-made barbecue and sides comprised of family recipes and new favorites. Stop in the dine-in restaurant for a lunch of pulled pork sandwiches, barbecue plates and home-cooked sides, or grab a beer at 12 Bones Brewing, accompanied with a food truck style menu that rotates with daily specials including a house-brined fried buttermilk chicken sandwich, tender ribs and freshly made desserts. 12bones.com
Benne on Eagle
Benne on Eagle is located on a historically African American block that—once thriving—fell into disrepair in the late 1980s. Chef Ashleigh Shanti and James Beard-nominated Chef John Fleer are revitalizing the area with distinctive breakfast, brunch and dinner menus of Appalachian and West African-inspired flavors. Dishes include ogbono pork ribs with pepper-vinegar barbecue sauce, buttermilk britches and cracked corn spoonbread, onion-braised rabbit and fried catfish and waffles. benneoneagle.com
DRINK
Odds Cafe
If you’re looking for something a little out of the ordinary, Odds Cafe is the place to go. The cozy shop in West Asheville is loved by locals and travelers for its freshly roasted coffee drinks (using beans from NC-based Summit Coffee Co.) and locally baked goods, which are oftentimes accompanied by live music from local bands. The shop’s roll-up doors open on nice days, letting in Asheville’s fresh mountain air. oddscafe.com
Odds Cafe
Antidote
A sophisticated, Prohibition era-inspired cocktail lounge in South Slope, Antidote is one of the coolest spots in the city to get a drink. The three-story building offers plenty of seating options for tucking in with a craft cocktail, accompanied by rooftop and front-facing patios. Antidote’s bar offers a variety of gins, whiskeys, rums, amaris and even a special beer brandy made in collaboration with Burial Beer Co. antidote.bar
New Belgium Brewing
Breweries abound in Asheville, but New Belgium is definitely one you need to have on your list. The “liquid center” features kid-friendly tours daily, where you’ll hear the brewery’s story and get a sample of its award-winning brews. A spacious taproom features an outdoor deck overlooking the French Broad River. A range of New Belgium beers are available on tap, from the ever-popular Fat Tire Belgian-style amber ale to the Passionfruit Foeder Saison. newbelgium.com
DO
Catawba Falls
Just 30 minutes outside of downtown Asheville is one of the most picturesque waterfalls in Pisgah National Forest. A mild 1.5-mile hike along the Catawba River brings you to the lower falls, with the sounds of rushing water guiding you along the way. Pause for views of stone fountains, dams, rock gardens and woodlands. A tougher hike takes you to the upper falls—trek at your own risk. romanticasheville.com/catawba_falls.htm
Catawba Falls, Sam Dean / visitnc.com
Rooftop Bar Tour
Combine two of Asheville’s most alluring amenities—great bars and stellar views—with a bird’s-eye-view tour of the city’s hottest rooftop bars. You’ll visit three or four award-winning bars, including The Montford, Pillar, Capella on 9 and SkyBAR. Many offer food discounts too so you can enjoy tasty local bites once you’ve sipped your way along Asheville’s skyline. ashevillerooftopbartours.com
Asheville Rooftop Bar Tours
Asheville Pinball Museum
For a unique experience, duck into the Asheville Pinball Museum where admission gets you unlimited play on more than 80 pinball machines and classic video games. The vintage machines date back to the 1950s, with varieties you’ve likely never seen before. ashevillepinball.com
STAY
Foundry Hotel
The Foundry brings an Old World class to downtown Asheville, with a brick exterior that’s mirrored in each of the modern rooms. The rustic hotel has its own history, too; it was once Asheville’s original steel factory and guests can find artifacts from the factory throughout. Accommodations include a regionally inspired restaurant, workshop lounge, bocce lawn and fire pits with rocking chairs, perfect for enjoying cool fall nights. foundryasheville.com
Omni Grove Park Inn
Nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the inn is surrounded by trails. For the outdoors enthusiasts, Omni Grove boasts an 18-hole mountain golf course, three indoor and outdoor tennis courts and a huge sports complex. For those who just want to relax and unwind, a 43,000-square-foot subterranean spa has it all. omnihotels.com/hotels/asheville-grove-park
Princess Anne Hotel
This gem of a B&B located just outside of downtown Asheville delivers Southern hospitality and cozy sleeping quarters, complete with a complimentary, made-to-order breakfast each morning and a wine and hors d’oeuvres hour in the afternoon. The Princess Anne Hotel has been charming Asheville guests since 1924. princessannehotel.com
Elevate meal times with Haand’s beautiful, handmade porcelain pottery crafted by a team of 15 skilled potters located just outside of Burlington. Haand specializes in dinnerware made from a mold and slip casting method as opposed to using a wheel. The company’s collections include bowls, cups, plates and other serving accessories in a variety of colors. Haand was founded by two friends, Mark Warren and Chris Pence, who met in high school in Jacksonville, Florida. Pence, now Haand’s CEO, practiced pottery throughout high school and went on to study business and accounting in college; creative director Warren attended the Penland School of Crafts, where he was introduced to ceramics and slip casting in a class taught by the renowned potter and artist Tom Spleth. In 2012, the duo reunited to launch Haand, initially operating out of a rundown farmhouse outside of Durham and selling products at gift shows and craft fairs. This fall, Warren and Pence opened a new, 13,000-square-foot factory in a former hosiery mill in downtown Burlington. The space is equipped with a stunning showroom and shelves upon shelves of colorful pieces of pottery. In the Triangle, find Haand’s one-of-a-kind pieces on tables in Death & Taxes and The Durham Hotel. haand.us
Hawthorne and Wood Chef-Owner Brandon Sharp, Gray Burton
At Hawthorne & Wood in Chapel Hill, chef-owner Brandon Sharp’s new American menu incorporates dishes touched by flavors from all over the world, with influences from Southeast Asia, Tuscany, Great Britain and the American Southwest. But the chef’s origins are humble: Sharp’s first stint in the kitchen came at age 18, at Chi-Chi’s Mexican Restaurant in Greensboro, where he grew up. Sharp was working as a busboy and was asked to fry chips in the kitchen one day; he hasn’t looked back since, he says.
After graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill and The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York—and following years of cooking in kitchens across the country—Sharp launched his exquisitely crafted menu at Hawthorne & Wood in April. The diverse dishes change often, sometimes daily; past dinner items included duck confit lettuce wraps with cucumber-radish chowchow, black garlic hoisin and peanuts; seared slow-cooked pork shoulder with Tuscan melon, Thai basil, serrano peppers and tamarind sauce; and wild-caught redfish with coconut-lemongrass broth, scallion oil, Chinese broccoli and jasmine rice—all of which are largely comprised of locally sourced ingredients. “We’re taking the best ingredients we can find from the closest [purveyors] we can find and treating them the way that we think they ought to be treated,” Sharp says. He has has cooked in kitchens in New Orleans, New York City and California, where he earned seven consecutive Michelin stars as the executive chef of Solbar in Napa Valley.
Ryan Monroe
Hawthorne & Wood, located in a small shopping center off of Raleigh Road, features a lounge that serves bar snacks, a private room for large parties and an alluring gray-and-teal bar with an impressive craft cocktail list and bartenders Sharp describes as being “amazingly cutting-edge;” the best he’s seen in America and beyond. hawthorneandwood.com
Burying the Hatchet
Hatchett Brewing
They both served in the U.S. Military, have a knack for homebrewing and have a passion for their community; now, they’re bringing a new microbrewery, Hatchet Brewing Company, to an abandoned office building this month in Southern Pines. Hatchet Brewing co-founders Greg Walker and Mike Carey met as neighbors when they were both stationed at Fort Bragg—Walker as a Captain and Green Beret in the 3rd Special Forces Group and Carey as a Senior Operations Sergeant Major for the 82nd Airborne Division and Sergeant Major. The pair soon realized they shared a homebrewing hobby, and, after leaving the military, decided to turn that hobby into a business.
Moore County-based architecture firm Pinnacle Development Design Build renovated an abandoned Berkshire Hathaway office on the corner of SW Broad Street and West Illinois Avenue in Southern Pines. The new space features a bright, inviting taproom with roll-up garage doors, exposed beams and a spacious wraparound patio. Hatchet will feature a dozen rotating house taps, as well as one or two guest taps, with an emphasis on American craft beers and German and Belgian influences.
The brewery will also offer cider, wine and its own line of kombucha teas. “We solely wanted to focus on the small-town community feel, which is why we chose Southern Pines,” Carey says. “Our brewery is based on friendship and community through craft beer. We want to be a brewery where everyone feels welcome, no matter what your background is.” Hatchet’s grand opening takes place November 2. hatchetbrewing.com
An Apple Cider A Day…
Botanist & Barrel
Botanist and Barrel’s Farmhouse Cider Seriously Dry is the first-in-the-South canned natural cider, meaning there are no additives, no sulfites and no sorbate—just juice from North Carolina- and Virginia-grown apples. “Nothing is put in and nothing is taken away,” says Amie Fields, co-owner of the Cedar Grove-based cidery. Botanist’s canned cider is also canned conditioned, like champagne, meaning the bubbles are created inside of the can rather than in a bright tank which force-carbonates beverages. Because Botanist is a low manipulation cidery, the canned cider—like all of its bottled ciders—is also unfiltered, unrefined and unpasteurized, so you can taste the full flavor of the apples.
For its Farmhouse Cider, Botanist uses a mix of cider apples and eating apples (think Gala and Granny Smith) from orchards located within 200 miles. While Fields says most of Botanist’s ciders are meant to age in bottles, the Farmhouse Cider was made specifically for a can for portable, quick consumption that’s best enjoyed fresh. It’s fermented with a special culture to produce tropical fruit and citrus notes, with a light, dry finish at 7 percent ABV. “It’s supposed to be bright and zippy,” co-owner Lyndon Smith adds. “It’s a crushable cider.” Farmhouse Cider Seriously Dry is available at select Raleigh beer and wine shops but we suggest venturing out to the cidery to check out Botanist’s other innovative products in the works.
The cidery offers a sparkling cider made with North Carolina blackberries, a house cider fermented in old bourbon honey barrels and a spontaneously fermented cider that’s both sweet and sour, to name just a few. Last month, Botanist released an Arkansas Black cider, a single varietal made with 100 percent cider apples. The company is also experimenting with wine making, with plans to launch a natural grape wine, and is in the process of fermenting a cucumber wine called Cucumber Cup—a play on the Pimm’s Cup cocktail—made with black tea, botanicals and homemade ginger beer. Next year, Botanist will launch its new wine name, défi, which means “challenge” in French. “That’s perfect for us,” says Fields.
Botanist and Barrel will host its annual Big Apple Festival on November 9, featuring tastings, games and live music. Get tickets at botanistandbarrel.com.
Horizon Catering takes the pressure off holiday cooking while supporting Inter-Faith Food Shuttle.
This holiday season, share a delicious meal with your loved ones that you don’t have to prepare yourself in service of a good cause—and support members of the local community who are working to better their lives.
Chef Terri Hutter founded the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle’s catering program in 1997 as a way to help raise money for the organization, which strives to end hunger in North Carolina, while providing an avenue for students to train for culinary jobs. Last year, Inter-Faith relaunched the program as Horizon Catering and, just last month, released a new selection of tasty menu items curated by Nunzio Scordo, chef at Driftwood Southern Kitchen and Bodega, and catering chef Jim Hinger, a former production manager for La Farm Bakery.
Items on the the full-service catering menu are prepared using fresh, locally grown ingredients, including produce from the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle Farm, in dishes such as French toast for breakfast, Cubanos and mushroom mac and cheese for lunch and a diverse variety of hors d’oeuvres, entrees, salads and sides for dinner.
“What stood out to me was knowing that every event we produce food for, a large percentage of the profit made goes right back into Inter-Faith Food Shuttle’s amazing programs,” says Hinger. “It really makes me feel good knowing that getting to do something I love on a day-to-day basis, and that I have such a huge passion for, is in return helping to feed underprivileged children or our seniors.”
Scordo and Hinger also teamed up to revamp Horizon’s culinary job training program into the Culinary Apprenticeship Program, which will accept new applications this month. CAP’s mission is to teach unemployed or underemployed people the basic skills for working in a commercial kitchen through hands-on training with the eventual goal of placing them in entry-level positions at restaurants or in other commercial kitchens where they can continue to develop their skills and create careers.
“The people that are going into that program are kind of re-assimilating into life and into different kinds of situations and they need work,” explains Scordo. “[The apprenticeship program] will help them and it’ll help the restaurant industry on a local level.”
Maria Biron graduated from Inter-Faith’s culinary program in 2013 and now works as a production cook for Horizon Catering under kitchen production manager Sunshine Beard, who also went through the program. Biron says she was in a bad place in her life when she found out about Inter-Faith Food Shuttle’s culinary program. While taking classes at Wake Tech, she took a chance on applying and got in, finishing with a 99.9 average.
“It’s a good program to be in, especially if you have a passion to cook but are in a situation where you don’t know how to get the right training,” says Biron, who has worked for Horizon Catering for six years and plans to continue carrying out Hutter’s mission of providing food for the community.
Profits from Horizon Catering go directly back into Inter-Faith Food Shuttle’s hunger relief programs, which include Backpack Buddies, Grocery Bags for seniors, mobile markets and school pantries.
“When you partner with Horizon, you’re helping to feed hungry people,” says Laura Rice, Inter-Faith’s communications and media manager. “You’re doing something that nobody else is giving you the opportunity to do.” horizoncatering.org
The Prohibition years were ones of mystery, of exhilaration and, unexpectedly, the ones that brought us some of today’s most beloved classic cocktails. Jon Seelbinder, owner of Local Icon Hospitality Group, is bringing back a taste of those times with a new speakeasy called The Merchant in the former Level Up space at 126 S. Salisbury Street. The name is a nod to the long history of the building that will house the new speakeasy; built in 1920, it originally served as the offices for the North Carolina Retail Merchants Association. Seelbinder sees the space, recently renovated by Louis Cherry Architecture, as an opportunity to bring a concept that doesn’t already exist to the city. “Raleigh doesn’t have enough true, secret door, cool speakeasies,” Seelbinder says. “I love the elusiveness of a secret door that leads to something really special.” Along with a concealed entryway, The Merchant will offer classically inspired cocktails by Beverage Director Brett Michael Lysak and a chef-driven sharing plates menu from chef Ethan McClellan and chef Adrian Black, whose resumé includes a stint at Herons at The Umstead Hotel. Modern riffs on traditional speakeasy-style drinks along with unique house favorites pair well with charcuterie, burgers and strip steak in the revamped space decorated to capture the dark ambiance of the 1920s. “This is the most exciting project I’ve done in seven years,” Seelbinder says. Expect to duck into The Merchant either late this year or early next—if you can find the door, that is.
