Sorry, Mellow Mushroom is a chain. It started in Athens GA I believe. There is one less than a mile from my house in central Indiana. Pretty good pizza for a chain though.
Just checked the Mellow Mushroom website… over 100 restaurants in 15 states.
:smack: Of course it is. People tend to treat it as a bit of local color, and so it gets classified in my brain in a different category from Pizza Hut, but really that’s what it is. Thanks for the reminder!
Mellow Mushroom is good chain pizza, but I quite frankly wouldn’t bother with chain places when coming in from out of town, especially on the first trip. It kind of defeats the purpose of exploring a new place, going to a chain.
Really, there’s no need to worry over where to eat in advance–I’ve never had a bad meal in that town. A lot of times we just wander around getting drinks and appetizers in various places downtown because we can’t settle on one place. If you really want to get a broad overview for future reference, that’s the way I’d go.
And if you go to the Monk, get the nuts with the honey and spice glaze. I can’t remember if they had a fancy name, but they were fantastic, and perfect with the beer.
I think they try to do that on purpose… I got excited when I tried the new “local” place (they have murals specific to Indiana personalities… Bobby Knight, John Mellencamp etc.) and was going to take my sister and brother in law there when they came to town. BIL was excited too because he hadn’t eaten it since he lived in Athens :smack:
It looks like we’re not going to make it out to the Biltmore as a group. One of the party will be taking a day to go there, but as part of her job (she’s a conference and event planner for a large university) but the rest of us will have to miss it. Which I am sad about because I do love ostentatious houses (e.g. The Breakers - the Vanderbilt summer “cottage” in Newport RI) I am also very sad about not being able to take a drive out of town to see the reportedly spectacular secnery. Any chance we’ll be able to see any of it from afar while we’re in town?
Their prices online seem comparable to tapas places here in Boston. Could you clarify whether you mean that the food is pricey but good enough to warrant higher prices, or more expensive than the quality warrants?
I’ll add Mamacitas to our list of possibilities. I prefer to have lots of choices!
Boston doesn’t really do “hippy.” 
My original hometown of Ithaca NY, yes, but not so much here in Boston.
Many thanks on the rest of your notes. It’s interesting that I picked out two places by Hector Diaz.
For beer drinkings, looks like we’ll probably be sticking to the brew places and Thirsty Monk, given our limited time.
Oh, and a trip to French Broad Chocolates is a must - have to get some to bring home.
Thanks for the schedule, we will do our best to stick to it!
We are beer fans, and we’ll stop here. Not that we’ll be able to take anything home, given the TSA rules on liquid carryons. 
I am particularly excited to visit the Thirsty Monk. One member of our party is a big fan of Belgians, and I am decidedly NOT a fan of Belgians, so I am looking forward to a place that has terrific selections of both Belgians and non-Belgians. Also, at CrazyCatLady’s behest, we’ll also be having the nuts!
No, we’re flying to Asheville. We’ll be in the Charlotte airport for around 60 minutes, though. I’ll wave out the window toward you if you tell me which direction.
I’ll pass the note about the massage therapists along to my friend who is doing research for conference planning. Should I send you a PM if she wants more info?
Just wave in general at Charlotte. We’ll see it 
And yes - feel free to PM me or shoot me an email at melodyharmonius [at] g mail [dot] com.
Sadly, no. It’s several minutes of driving through the woods from the estate gates to the outer parking lots for the house. I disremember the exact distances, but most of the attractions on the grounds are couple-three miles apart. The place is mind-blowingly huge.
Zambra is more expensive than someplace like Tupelo Honey or one of the brewpub/pizza joints, but it’s also fancier food. The prices are absolutely in line with what you get. I heartily recommend everything on the menu, but most particularly the lamb t-bone. To put it another way, when we came down to the Biltmore at Christmas thing, we booked a table at Zambra first and then scheduled our candlelight house tour around that.
If you want chocolates, the other place you should check out is the Chocolate Fetish, which is right downtown. I’m terribly fond of the Dragon’s Kiss.
Oh, the food is great, and the prices are not out of line for what you do get, overall, with the selection and quality; instead of “overpriced” I should have said something more along the lines of what DoctorJ mentioned - that if you go in there with an appetite your bill can swell to impressive proportions. Extremely impressive proportions. burp
We’re baaaack!
I always mean to come back to the threads where I am asking for tourism advice and let people know how it turned out, but this is the first time I’ve remembered to, I believe.
So I am patting myself on the back, of course!
Here are my very brief reviews of the places we managed to hit.
Many thanks to everyone who weighed in on our tourism ideas. My only regret is that I didn’t get to try them all, especially Randolph’s porch, because Sunday and Monday were perfect outdoor-drinking weather!
Saturday:
[ul]
[li]Grove Arcade - we arrived at our Asheville hotel around 5 and headed right out to see something of the town. We made it to the Grove Arcade just as everything was closing up for the evening. I was surprised at how many shops close at 5 or 6. I’m used to shops that stay open until 8 or so, well into the second dinner seating. We looked through the windows at some merchandise, wondered what someone would do with an entire gallon of honey, then moved to Thirsty Monk for a drink.[/li][li]Thirsty Monk - Two of us grabbed pints at the upstairs bar, then went downstairs to join our Belgian fan friends. I was disappointed in the small selection of brews that weren’t high-alcohol, but I know that high-alcohol brews are the in thing these days with brewers, and I was able to find something good that wouldn’t knock me on my ass before dinner. Our Belgian fan friends liked the selection downstairs, but the bartender was just awful. Nice lady, but seemed completely lost and inefficient behind the bar. She complained to us congenially about how busy the bar was, and it only had 23 people in it - we counted. She took so long to bring one person’s last beer that we had to cancel the order to make our dinner reservation. [/li][li]Market Place - We were really looking forward to this dinner, because they touted their use of local ingredients and the menu online looked really good. We definitely had a good meal. The waitress was very slow with drinks, and we went more than 20 minutes at one point with empty glasses - wine, water, everything. Other than that, the food was quite good. We started with the housemade pickles, charcuterie, and local cheeses. All great selections, but we wished they’d provided some crostini or bread with the cheeses. For entrees we had: the pork osso bucco, goat cheese and mushroom ravioli, flat iron steak, and the trout. The celery root puree with the ravioli was divine. The two members of our party who got cocktails said they were mixed nicely. We were disappointed that they were offering only a single item for dessert (some kind of fruit tart - maybe the other items were sold out? not sure, but it was weird) so we hit the French Broad Chocolate Lounge.[/li][li]French Broad Chocolate Lounge - chamomile tea, a selection of truffles, a spicy brownie, some kind of mousse cup. All very very good.[/li][/ul]
Sunday:
[ul]
[li]Salsas Mexican Caribbean Restaurant (their website is not doing much of anything right now, though a few days ago it had menus, etc) - hit this place for lunch before we browsed the shops. Oh my! So good! We had a salsa sampler to start (Fire Roasted Tomato & Chipotle Peanut, Seared Tomatillo & Pumpkin Seed, and Guacamole), plus he Jalapeno Poppers because we just couldn’t resist the menu disclaimer: “Warning: can not be sent back due to spiciness.” For entrees we had Tilapia Tacos (they had some kind of curry sauce on them that was yum), Pork-stuffed Chile Relleno empanada, a Crab empanada off the daily specials and Slow-roasted Pork fajitas. We really stuffed ourselves before waddling off to look at shops.[/li][li]Mast General Store - this place was fun. I picked up some candy that’s hard to come by ‘round these parts (Valomilk, Cherry Mash, Coconut Long Boys, Slo-pokes, Black taffy) and a Peach Nehi, which I don’t think I’ve had since my family left Oklahoma in 1980. It was just as good as I remembered.[/li][li]Woolworth Walk - two of our group abandoned us here and went back to the hotel for a nap. The other two of us spent a good hour and a half here looking at the art. I resisted buying two pieces that I loved, though I am still thinking about calling about them (got the artists’ business cards) because I really loved them and at $600 and $580 they were within my price range for original art. Still thinking, though. There were a lot of affordable beautiful things here (more affordable than my paintings!) like jewelry, pottery, etc.[/li][li]Barley’s Taproom - we were looking for a beer and a pizza, something simple after a day of food and shopping, and Barley’s fit the bill. The pizza was decent, the beer selection very good, and we were able to relax and enjoy both.[/li][/ul]
Monday:
[ul]
[li]Biltmore estate - one of our party flew home and one of our party went out to the Biltmore. She had an appointment on Tuesday but wanted to see some of it on her own first. I never made it there, because there were just not enough free hours during the trip. Someday I’ll be back.[/li][li]Barley’s Taproom - the two of us who were attending the conference hit Barley’s for lunch and had the beefalo burger and the beefalo wrap. I had the beefalo wap, which was really really salty, but I was coming down with a cold and loved the salt. Not sure if I would have enjoyed it as much under different circumstances. [/li][li]Spice and Tea Exchange store - stopped in here because they had a bunch of exotic salts. I live close to a Penzey’s store, but Penzey’s doesn’t carry exotic salts. I picked up a small bag of Cyprus Black Lava salt, a couple of other salts, and some Sweet Onion Sugar which I don’t know yet what I’ll do with. I wish I’d picked up some jalapeno sugar and habanero sugar as well, but they do online sales, so all is not lost.[/li][li]Jack of the Wood - grabbed a beer here but no food, though peole were ordering things that smelled good. Really enjoyed the Green Man IPA, Fiddlehead and the ESB. The cask-conditioned had run out, so we didn’t get a chance at it. Too bad, I love cask ales.[/li][li]Salsas Mexican Caribbean Restaurant (their website is not doing much of anything right now, though a few days ago it had menus, etc) - back to Salsas for dinner. Plantain chips with guacamole, mojitos, caipirinhas, a molcajete full of orange fennel pork, a paquete filled with adobo beef and a poached egg, tofu and pumpkin empanada.[/li][/ul]
Tuesday:
Brews Cruise
[ul]
[li]Asheville Pizza & Brewing Co. really great pizza - one of the vendors sponsoring our conference kicked in for pizza at this place. Don’t know how many they ordered, but the pizzas just kept coming. I stuffed myself, which put a damper on the rest of my beer tastings because I was full! I didn’t get my hands on any of the (recommended above) Greek pizza, but I was all over the Mom’s Garden, and Biltmore. I also had a very good slice of cheese pizza (sounds boring, I know, but it was good) and one with a bunch of mushrooms on it. Brews: we tasted Shiva IPA, Rocket Girl, Red Light, and Old School. I really liked Shiva and Old School. [/li][li]Highland Brewing Company - they gave us a top-notch afterhours tour. Really fun and informative, and plied us with beers throughout. I was still full from pizza, so I was only taking small tastings, but if I had been accepting full samples I would have had about 3 full beers here. We tasted Gaelic Ale, Oatmeal Porter, Black Mocha Stout, Kashmir IPA, St. Therese’s Pale Ale, and one other I can’t recall. My faves were the Gaelic and the St. Therese’s.[/li][li]French Broad Brewing - They also gave us a talk and tour here, but I couldn’t hear any of it due to acoustics and the fact that most of the brews cruisers were half in the bag at this point and talking up a storm. We tasted Gateway Kolsch, Wee-Heavy-er Scotch Ale, Ryehopper and ESB. My fave was Ryehopper.[/li][/ul]
Wednesday:
12 Bones Smokehouse - a group of 80 conference-attendees hired out 12 Bones for the evening. They served us buffet style: pulled pork, chopped beef brisket, collards, sweet vinegar coleslaw, cornbread, mashed sweet potatoes, vinegar BBQ sauce and a sweet tomato-based BBQ sauce. The collards, pulled pork and vinegar BBQ sauce were outstanding. I didn’t care for the coleslaw and the brisket, both of which were very different than the styles I know and love. Other people seemed to really like them, though, so I am sure it was a matter of personal taste and not execution.
Thursday
Early Girl Eatery - we skipped out on the morning conference activities and went to Early Girl for brunch. I had the Early Girl Benny with country ham. I had forgotten how aggressivley salty country ham can be, but man was it good! The tomato gravy was fantastic, too. Companion had a special - garlic potato cakes with tomato gravy, poached eggs. Yum yum.
Sounds like y’all had a great time–excellent! Yeah, Salsa’s jalapeno poppers are ridiculously spicy. They’re delicious, but pretty far beyond my normal spice tolerance.
Of the three on the plate, two were quite mild and one was really hot. Interesting variation.