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Asheville Restaurants

this thread makes me want to go get dinner in avl.


...and i live in pdx. i've also already eaten dinner, so let's just blame the beer.
 
WFcatamount22 said:
Asheville definetly sucks now. I use to live there. Couldn't imagine trying to raise a child in that town now.

It's still fun to go for a weekend but that's about it.
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Everyone has their own opinions, but this is definitely a very uncommon opinion. I've lived in Asheville since I was 8 (24 years) and I can't think of any way that Asheville is worse now that it used to be. (except for traffic in south asheville)
 
Buttermaker said:
Explain please.
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Asheville has been overdone with tourists, sold out, and lost its soul. Throw on top of that pure and utter lack of diversity, both in thought and demographics. This leads to some pretty stupid group think problems going around Asheville and a general lack of tolerance to anyone who isn't like minded.

Also the economy is strange. There is no real economic backbone to Asheville besides the services industry. However it has been such a large retirement destination the city gets flooded with money, that doesn't work in the local area. This leads to a huge economic gap of the haves and have nots. It's why you will $500,000 homes sitting next to trailers.

The best part of Asheville use to be the scenery and mountains. They however have been so flooded with out of state plates and tourists that it is next to impossible to find somewhere scenic that is peaceful. We ended up driving hours out of town to go hiking at some point it was like wtf do we even live in Asheville if we are constantly escaping it every chance we get?

I wouldn't want to raise my kids there because I don't want them to become another burnt out drug addict like so many of the young people are in town.

The beer is good, the food is outstanding, and it's a fun place to visit, just not live.
 
catamount has been on a roll lately, esp on the sports board
 
WFcatamount22 said:
Asheville has been overdone with tourists, sold out, and lost its soul. Throw on top of that pure and utter lack of diversity, both in thought and demographics. This leads to some pretty stupid group think problems going around Asheville and a general lack of tolerance to anyone who isn't like minded.

Also the economy is strange. There is no real economic backbone to Asheville besides the services industry. However it has been such a large retirement destination the city gets flooded with money, that doesn't work in the local area. This leads to a huge economic gap of the haves and have nots. It's why you will $500,000 homes sitting next to trailers.

The best part of Asheville use to be the scenery and mountains. They however have been so flooded with out of state plates and tourists that it is next to impossible to find somewhere scenic that is peaceful. We ended up driving hours out of town to go hiking at some point it was like wtf do we even live in Asheville if we are constantly escaping it every chance we get?

I wouldn't want to raise my kids there because I don't want them to become another burnt out drug addict like so many of the young people are in town.

The beer is good, the food is outstanding, and it's a fun place to visit, just not live.
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Now THOSE are some rustled jimmies.
 
WFcatamount22 said:
Asheville has been overdone with tourists, sold out, and lost its soul. Throw on top of that pure and utter lack of diversity, both in thought and demographics. This leads to some pretty stupid group think problems going around Asheville and a general lack of tolerance to anyone who isn't like minded.

Also the economy is strange. There is no real economic backbone to Asheville besides the services industry. However it has been such a large retirement destination the city gets flooded with money, that doesn't work in the local area. This leads to a huge economic gap of the haves and have nots. It's why you will $500,000 homes sitting next to trailers.

The best part of Asheville use to be the scenery and mountains. They however have been so flooded with out of state plates and tourists that it is next to impossible to find somewhere scenic that is peaceful. We ended up driving hours out of town to go hiking at some point it was like wtf do we even live in Asheville if we are constantly escaping it every chance we get?

I wouldn't want to raise my kids there because I don't want them to become another burnt out drug addict like so many of the young people are in town.

The beer is good, the food is outstanding, and it's a fun place to visit, just not live.
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so your weed dealer moved? i think this is about your weed dealer moving
 
WFcatamount22 said:
Asheville has been overdone with tourists, sold out, and lost its soul.I agree there are lots of tourists, but I disagree that it has lost it's soul. I mean, 15 years ago it had no soul...unless a half run down downtown = soul Throw on top of that pure and utter lack of diversity, both in thought and demographics. This leads to some pretty stupid group think problems going around Asheville and a general lack of tolerance to anyone who isn't like minded. Asshats come in all shapes and sizes, but as a reasonably conservative person, I've never really run into any issues of "tolerance" of my ideas (any more than anywhere else anyway), that being said, like a decent person, I don't go around wearing my beliefs on my sleeve and if I do get into a discussion with someone about my ideas then I find that a reasonable, respectful discussion is well received even if they don't agree

Also the economy is strange. There is no real economic backbone to Asheville besides the services industryThis is true, healthcare and tourism are the main economic engines in Asheville, but at least it's an economy...20 years ago it was the same except without the tourism. However it has been such a large retirement destination the city gets flooded with money, that doesn't work in the local area. This leads to a huge economic gap of the haves and have nots. It's why you will $500,000 homes sitting next to trailers. There are nice neighborhoods and shitty neighborhoods just like everywhere, but I wouldn't say there is any more economic inequality than anywhere else, and certainly aren't any neighborhoods with 500k houses next to trailers

The best part of Asheville use to be the scenery and mountains. They however have been so flooded with out of state plates and tourists that it is next to impossible to find somewhere scenic that is peaceful.I'm not sure I agree with this, there are a million peaceful scenic places in and around AVL We ended up driving hours out of town to go hiking at some point it was like wtf do we even live in Asheville if we are constantly escaping it every chance we get? There a countless numbers of nice hikes within an hour of downtown Asheville and many of them are within 30 minutes

I wouldn't want to raise my kids there because I don't want them to become another burnt out drug addict like so many of the young people are in town. Most of the "burnt out drug addicts" you are likely thinking of aren't actually from Asheville and I would bet Asheville doesn't have any more of a "drug problem" than any other town of a similar size. Growing up in Asheville isn't materially any different than growing up in any mid-sized southern town.

The beer is good, the food is outstanding, and it's a fun place to visit, just not live.
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hmmm
 
So...thanks to all for recommendations. We had a great weekend in Asheville (despite the bitter cold and wind on Sunday).

If anyone is visiting from out of town and wants something different than a downtown hotel, I highly recommend our B&B - Applewood Manor in Historic Montford. If it had been nicer out we certainly could've walked downtown easily. With the cold we ended up either driving (pretty cheap parking in the garages) or taking an Uber (for $6-7), so it worked fine for us. Nice room, excellent 3 course breakfasts, and social hour every evening with wine, cheese, etc included.

Friday for dinner we went to Nine Mile since we'd read good things and it was the closest place to us. We had to wait maybe 30 min or so for a table (place is small and was packed). It was ok, but neither of us were particularly wowed, and ended up taking home two huge portions of pasta that we didn't even end up eating. Green curry hummus was good, as were the salad dressings, but entrees were just ok.

Saturday instead of lunch we did the Eating Asheville High Roller food tour. This was a lot of fun, great food and drinks, and I think a pretty good value for everything we got.

-Battery Park Book Exchange - we met and started here with a glass of sparkling wine, local pimento cheese on toast, and local trout spread on toast.
-Zambra - we had sangria and a pork spring roll (lots of folks recommended we eat here and the menu looked good...next time it'll be on our list)
-Strada - red wine with a small serving of orichette with white wine sauce and prosciutto. The pasta dish was excellent. Their Sunday and Monday family meal sounds like a fun thing to try, and our guide said they had a good brunch. And they were talking up Social Lounge a lot.
-Sovereign Remedies - a cocktail with some combo of congnac, lemon, rose, and some herbal aphrodisiac plus a pimento cheese filled gougeres which were pretty awesome
-Bomba - champagne and an arepa with cabbage and jalapeno. The arepa was awesome (probably one of our favorite bites). And our guide said Bomba was his favorite breakfast spot in the city.
-Seven Sows - no alcohol (boo) but we had the caramel glazed pork belly which was great
Nightbell - last stop on the tour and maybe the best? Atlantico cocktail (rum, cointreau, porto, bitters, and lemon), the "deviled egg" and liquid apple pie. The egg presentation was very cool with a corn sabayon and smoked trout served in an egg shell, and the apple pie petit four was just a very unique bite. While there we found out they'd had a few cancellations for that evening so we swooped in to get a late dinner reservation.

We didn't eat a lot when we went back to Nightbell for dinner, but all of it was excellent - chicken wings, philly cheese steak, and Canadian waffle (duck confit, foie gras poutine, and cheddar mousse). Yum.

After dinner ended up wandering into Off the Wagon. It's definitely cheesy and caters to tourists and groups/parties, but we had a good time (after having been drinking since 2pm, maybe anything would've been a good time?).

Brunch at Tupelo Honey South (yay parking and reservations) was good, but I was a bit hungover, so didn't fully appreciate it. Biscuits with blueberry jam were stellar. My sandwich had like fried green tomatoes, bacon, ham, havarti, pimento cheese, and caramelized onions. Ridiculous.

We had lunch at Chai Pani and this might've been our favorite meal of the trip. Super unique, delicious, and pretty cheap. I HIGHLY recommend this. We had Bhel Puri, Samosa Chaat, Bombay Chili Cheese Fries, and the special chaat of the day. You can order 1/2 portions of most of the chaats, which lets you try even more things. I would love to have some place like this in DC. I love traditional Indian food, but this was just a cool place.

Dinner at Limones was of course good. We had the lobster nachos, pork tenderloin al pastor, and beef and shrimp burrito. The pork was ridiculously tender and flavorful (and apparently we got the last portion of the night before it was sold out). Churros with Mexican hot chocolate and caramel for dessert.
 
Srsly, love Limones so much.

And yeah, I mentioned it before, but we finally tried Zambra for dinner for the first time Saturday night and it was really really good. It's not quite as Spanish inspired/focused like Curate, but pretty much every dish we got was fantastic. They don't really mention it on their website, but they have a much bigger "daily" tapas menu in addition to the smaller one they post on their site.

I've got to get to Chai Pani. It sounds amazing.
 
Baconwfu said:
hmmm
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I'm liberal and I think ashevillians over do it to the point where if you don't sniff your farts and immunize your children you are the strange one. That's like my opinion though

Go to Oakley/west Asheville. Shitty homes and trailers, next to expensive houses everywhere.

There are great hikes there is just a ton of people on them.

Ashevilles drug problem is considerably worse than anywhere else I've ever lived. I know teachers in the city school system it is definetly a large problem with kids in the area. It is exponentially easier for kids to get LSD/shrooms/Molly/coke an opiates in Asheville then let's say winston.
 
Back on track.

Nine Mile is awesome and I'm not sure it's been mentioned. Doc Chey's is great on the cheap.

For breweries French Broad is awesome and kind of off the radar for most people, definety worth stopping in.
 
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WFcatamount22 said:
I'm liberal and I think ashevillians over do it to the point where if you don't sniff your farts and immunize your children you are the strange one. That's like my opinion though

Go to Oakley/west Asheville. Shitty homes and trailers, next to expensive houses everywhere.

There are great hikes there is just a ton of people on them.

Ashevilles drug problem is considerably worse than anywhere else I've ever lived. I know teachers in the city school system it is definetly a large problem with kids in the area. It is exponentially easier for kids to get LSD/shrooms/Molly/coke an opiates in Asheville then let's say winston.
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Fair enough, but I disagree still in general, drugs are everywhere (not just Asheville), I'm sure the city school system is worse than the county school system, but that's probably par for the course with any locale
There are definitely some dumpy places in Oakley and West Asheville, but both of those locations used to be complete dumps and now there are some "decent" places going up (200-300K), but nothing approaching "expensive"
 
My family was thinking about going to Asheville for thanksgiving this year. Any suggestions for rentals? Would be looking for a house or condo with at least 3 bedrooms and a nice enough kitchen to cook a big thanksgiving dinner.
 
Maybe no one on here follows this but worth a shot. So I'm getting married in Aville next summer and was looking to stay in a vrbo, but I saw the city council just levied a bunch of new fines promised stricter enforcement, etc. I've been looking at places but they all want my money now. How is this really gonna play out? Is this enforceable, I'm afraid of giving a person my money and them being gone by the time I'm gonna stay there.
 
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