Asheville, North Carolina. Famous for its breweries and I am now declaring it famous for its food. This past weekend some friends and I spent two nights and three days nestled in a very cute cabin in the rolling mountains of North Carolina. The two-and-a-half-hour drive gave us time to get excited about the upcoming adventure and continue to celebrate my roommate’s birthday.
We began our journey hungry. Food was the first thing on our mind when we arrived at our cabin, so we did what any college student would do: we Yelped the best hamburger joint in the area. Our results were unanimous.
BURGERWORX.
I’m going to tell you right now. This was the best burger I’ve had in a long time. Have you ever watched the episode of How I Met Your Mother where Marshall is looking for the best burger ever? I am convinced it was this burger. I was really hungry already so that may have added to the praise I gave this burger, but I swear it was the best burger I’ve ever had.
The restaurant is simple: you walk inside and fill out a form with what you want on your burger. I got a beef burger on an old-fashioned bun with pimento cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, raw onions, pickles, coleslaw, mayo and grilled mushrooms. They also have an option for cheese fries, so ya girl wasn’t messing around.
This burger was juicy, this burger was scrumptious, this burger was perfect. I 100% recommend driving to Asheville just to eat this burger. If I didn’t have class I would honestly consider going back just for this burger. Not only was the burger delicious, the cheese fries were equally as good. The cheese was a liquid drizzle and the fries came in a metallic bowl, which made it easy to mix together and eat with a fork.
All in all, this experience was fabulous. Check out their website here and I can’t wait to tell you about the next time I end up at this burger joint.
After our lovely burger experience, we found this AWESOME pinball place called Asheville Pinball Museum that made me feel like the kids in Stranger Things. No, we did not encounter the Upside Down, but we did get to play old games like Dig Dug, Frogger, Donkey Kong, and about 50 different games of pinball. It was a neat little find and we probably could have spent another two hours in there if we didn’t want to go explore more parts of Asheville.
Now to the real reason we came to Asheville: beer. Our first night taught us many things about beer. For example, Funkatorium taught me I do not like sour beer. So, being a bar that specializes in sour beers, this was not the place for me. I got a flight of a mixture of light and dark beers.
From left to right, the beers are Bombadille, La Bonte Fig, Denoument, and Montmaretto. The latter are darker, but all share the same sour taste. They weren’t bad. It wasn’t that they were brewed poorly, the taste is just not for me.
After we decided sour beers were not our cup of tea, we moved on to a brewery called Hi-Wire. I went back to my normal order of IPA and enjoyed this beer much better. Although the beer was better, I wasn’t a fan of the environment. It was kind of cold and weirdly lit inside. Great merch, though.
We got a great night's sleep after watching a scary movie and promptly woke up at 10 a.m. after oversleeping past our 8 a.m. alarms (we’re ambitious, okay?). Brunch was decided the previous night so on our way to Biscuit Head we went. Y’all. Y’ALL. I thought I was blown away by BURGERWORX but Biscuit Head brought happy tears to my eyes. I’m not normally a fan of breakfast food. I would much rather eat cold pizza at 9:30 a.m. than eat pancakes. However, the food I had here was phenomenal. After much debate, I settled on the Fried Green Tomato biscuit.
This comes with what appears to be two biscuits with a fried green tomato on each biscuit, brie, regular tomato, two poached eggs and smoked tomato hollandaise. I also got a side of grits with bottomless coffee. The combination of hollandaise and fried green tomato with egg yolk drizzled on top made my taste buds dance. We literally all sat there for 15 minutes in silence because we were so enamored by our food. Even the grits were good, and I am very particular about my grits. Check out their website here and let your mouth water as you go through the website.
We needed to walk off that breakfast, so we went to the River Arts District. There were a bunch of cute little stores that had local merchants selling things from toys to yarn. One of my favorite places was a bookstore called Malaprop’s Bookstore/Café. I love bookstores. The smell of the books and the serenity of people make me so relaxed. This bookstore had a section of books that were all wrapped up in paper with only a few words printed on the front of each book. I picked up a book with the words emotional intensity, haunting sensuality, poetic, sprawling, fiercely told, tumultuous, blood-pounding and “indispensable American writer” written on the cover. I was so excited to be able to take off the wrapping and find out what book I was going to get to read next. To my delight, the book under the wrapping was Another Country by James Baldwin. The summary on the back sounds like an interesting read and I’m excited to jump into it.
Once we finished walking around and exploring the city, we had an itch for beer again. Shocking, right? We decided upon Catawba Brewery. First of all, the environment is incredible. The back wall had these floor-length windows that looked over the mountains which made the lighting one of the best parts of the experience. I ordered a Light Flight which included a Farmer Ted’s Cream Ale, White Zombie, Lemon Ginger Zombie and a Belgian Singel.
The Belgian Singel was a dark beer and it was my favorite. It had an almost coffee-like taste that left me completely satisfied. Big fan, big fan. The other beers were just as good in that “pale ale” type of way. Between the environment and the beer, I was impressed with Catawba Brewery.
Our final food destination of the night was bartaco. As a taco lover, I was very excited about trying this place out. I looked up the menu in advance and I knew exactly what I was going to order when I got there. Besides the waitress giving me white wine instead of red, I was ultimately satisfied with this restaurant.
I ordered the Baja fish taco, the pork belly taco and the duck taco. The Baja fish was somewhat bland but did a good job for what its purpose was. The pork belly and the duck tacos were absolutely delicious. The pork belly had a very nice texture with a sauce that I can still taste in my mouth. The tacos paired fine with the white wine, but I believe they would have been better with red. Overall, I rate this restaurant well, but it definitely doesn’t compare to the other two beauties from the trip.
The night ended with us finding a few breweries and bars to hang out at, but nothing was really worth mentioning. The beer was good, the company was better.
Our last day there started with… BURGERWORX. We loved the burgers so much that we decided to go back and devour more food. As we were leaving Asheville, we decided to stop at the famous Sierra Nevada Brewery in Mills River, North Carolina. If I had to pick a favorite part of the trip, it would definitely be this. We were able to tour the facility and see how the beer is actually made. I learned so much about yeast and barley and hops that I actually want to start home brewing (I have no idea how to do this so if you have any suggestions, please hit me up). At the end of our tour we were able to try different types of beer. I discovered I actually love porters! This really surprised me because this was a beer I just didn’t think I would ever like, but my motto on this trip was to go in with an open mind and that I did.
Asheville really showed me the best parts of living in the mountains. There were positives and there were negatives, but I would definitely come back for the food and the beer. Also, many groceries stores don’t have craft beer so I am in desperate need of finding a store in Columbia that can give me the high quality beer of Sierra Nevada.
Peace. Love. Beer.
-jf