Asheville, NC
Posted by Peter Owen | Filed under Uncategorized
Elek and I settled in our very clean and modern looking AirBnB around 6:15 PM ET. Then we started watching Vegas Vacation while we relaxed, which was hilarious. We walked to dinner around the block at the White Duck. I got the Korean Beef and bang bang shrimp tacos and Elek got the Lamb Gyro, black bean and cheese, and steak and cheese taco.
The lamb gyro and the Korean beef were wonderful! The bean taco was a little carb heavy. Bang bang shrimp was pretty good as well as the steak and cheese taco. We walked around the downtown area a bit and went to Sunshine Sammies for desert. They had great ice cream!
For brunch we went to Tupelo Honey and both had the (deconstructed) fried chicken biscuit with gravy. The chicken was seasoned wonderfully! I have to admit my biscuits are better though! We both tried an in house soda – I tried the blueberry and Elek had the lavender limeade fizz. They were both surprisingly tasty. They brought out 2 biscuits with blueberry compote and house made honey, hence the name of the restaurant, on the house.
Our next stop was the Retrocade which was a few miles away in West Asheville. It’s two floors of retro video games, fighting games, and pinball games. It was pretty fun – all you can play for $10 per person. They also serve beer and food there. We thought the Mast General Store might be interesting but it was just about as you would expect from a general store and similar to Cracker Barrel. Next, we walked by the Soda Fountain at Woolworth’s, but it was closed at the time. Would love to have been able to go by to get a sandwich and a malted milkshake – maybe next time!
For our food tour, Kelly was our guide. She was very knowledgeable about the history of the area as well as the restaurants. We got a taste of vegetable curry at blue dream curry house, 2 french restaurants – Isa’s french bistro and Bouchon, Aux bar, Polanco – a mexican restaurant and had a margarita and an enchilada. We ended at Asheville Chocolate and had a delicious salted chocolate caramel and then finished with mint chocolate chip and dark, rich chocolate gelato. The dark chocolate gelato was the best I’ve ever had!
Next morning we went to a donut place called the Underground Cafe where they had extremely large donuts which were very tasty. We both got a different kind and milk. Elek had a wonderful idea to pick up breakfast since we were planning on leaving before anything would be open the next morning. So, we went by Button & Co. Bagels to grab two everything bagels and scallion cream cheese for the next morning.Â
The Broad Chocolate Factory Tour was really informative. We got to sample a multitude of chocolates including nibs. We learned about the whole process of creating chocolate from cacao is more complicated than I thought! I’d love to go back to experience more of the night life.
