By Jay Whipple
Trend Magazine Online™
Great Burgers and Fries!
re-published from a previous edition...
Trend Magazine Online™
Great Burgers and Fries!
re-published from a previous edition...
I have been stopping by this eatery for many years now as
part of the QCT
Fall Leaf Changesm trip which includes sightseeing along the nationally
renowned Blue Ridge Parkway which extends 469 miles north to the Shenandoah
National Park and south to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park
in North Carolina and Tennessee. If you have been in the fall you
can attest to the fact that it is a splendid journey of epic natural beauty
especially if you go during peak leaf-change season which is typically the
middle to end of October each year. We use this restaurant for our late lunch stop before descending to sea level, from over 5,000 feet near Mount Mitchell (highest point east of the Mississippi River, 6,683 feet), at Blowing Rock after one more stop at Price Lake. Earlier on our trip (from Charlotte, NC) we make memorable stops in Lake Lure (featured in Dirty Dancing [1987] starring the late Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Gray, then picturesque Chimney Rock, and Bat Cave (my favorite) before hoping on the parkway in Asheville.
We arrived a little off schedule at 1:50 PM to a crowd waiting to be seated; and were told that our wait would be about 20 minutes. We considered trying our luck elsewhere but decided to keep our pace in line here as opposed to taking a chance back down the road. Once inside we ushered through the packed dining room to the deck which was unusually cold with a wind chill. It was in the upper 50's, I was told, which is cold to this Florida boy and my guests all agreed that a coat with hood or skull cap was needed to shield us from the frigid temperature.
I must admit that this was the coldest it has been on the deck since I have been conducting this tour since 2005. It was just one of the days. Our server arrived shortly after we were seated. She was very friendly and cordial. I ordered my favorite; their bacon cheddar burger with fries and sweet tea. They were out of their famous sweet potato fries (yikes). It was a packed house so I knew it would be longer than the usual 20 minutes for our orders to arrive. This gave me plenty of time to check out their men's room which was clean but the trash can needed attention.
