Home to craft beers, different type of food around every corner, and weather that allows you to wear flannel year around, the gorgeous mountain town of Asheville, North Carolina is definitely a hipster’s paradise.
Anthony and I travelled here for a getaway to see one of my favorite bands, Alt-J, in concert. Alt-J is interesting just listening through your own ear buds, but add in their 70’s psychedelic light show, and it’s truly a mind blowing experience.
We figured their concert was a great way to get to a new state, so we took advantage and made a long weekend out of it. And I don’t think we stopped eating except when we were at the concert; where we certainly kept drinking. And I’m not even mad about it. Here are a few places I recommend for your own Asheville escape.
6 Places to Visit in Asheville For Great Food and Drinks
Sovereign Remedies
We’ll just start out with the basic hipster… brunch, greenery, a vintage bar. It’s a stunning location. You can saddle up to the bar (like we did), or cozy up on a couch and get a house cocktail. In my case: a blood orange mimosa.
Their menu changes (of course), but everything we had was truly delicious. We got an apricot, avocado toast sprinkled with greens and drizzled with honey as well as the breakfast sandwich. With our full bellies we were ready to explore the weekend markets… or in our case the beer festival with vendors and live music that happened to be going on by Wicked Weed’s newest location.
Wicked Weed: Funkatorium
Speaking of Wicked Weed, we planned on going there even before we knew that a beer festival block party was happening on the same day. Anthony is a huge fan of sour beers and Wicked Weed opened up a whole distillery dedicated to sours. The process is apparently more complicated, so they cannot make sours in the same distillery as they make their other beers because it will ruin them. Or something like that.
They have a bunch of beers on draft. I recommend doing a couple of beer flights to see what you like, as they are reasonably priced and already hand picked by the staff (yay for not having to make decisions). I am not a big beer drinker, but the flights helped me find a couple sour beers that I could stand. And, of course, Anthony was happy to finish anything that I didn’t like.
You can also get food here, which looked really good, but we were still full from our brunch at Sovereign Remedies.
Curate
We had originally planned to eat here for lunch, but they didn’t have any actual tables available and the bar isn’t full service. You can, however, order charcuterie plates, and thats just as good (sometimes better) in my opinion. The menu is pretty vague, so your best bet is to just tell the bar tender what you are looking for (meat only, meat and cheese, etc), and let them pick a couple things for you to try. If you aren’t into relinquishing control like that, you’ll probably just want to grab a drink here and call it a day. The interior design is gorgeous enough to do just that.
But we did let the bartender choose for us and we were not at all disappointed. Some of the cheeses were a bit weird for me, but the meat was incredible. And when you stacked the meat and cheese on top of the tomato bread… yum!
SkyBar
There is no better place in the city to watch the sunrise than Skybar. This could be a lie, but it was the best view we experienced while we were there. You take an old elevator to the top, where there is a one drink minimum so tourists don’t come just to watch the sunset and then leave. But it’s not a problem because, while the drinks were a bit pricey (a lot of Asheville is in general), they were delicious. And the sunset is more than worth the price of admission. I mean, did you see my feature image?
Nightbell
We had the most delicious dinner here. The restaurant itself is an intimate setting, almost speakeasy-esque. Absolutely gorgeous. We weren’t able to get a table, but they did have a spot at the bar, which served their full menu as well. Nightbell is tapas style plates, which Anthony and I enjoy so we can try a bunch of different things.
Their menu (which also changes) was insane! We got “deviled eggs” that weren’t traditional in the least. It came out still in the egg shell, with the top open and almost like a frothy whipped custard. Idk what they did to make it, but I’d have eaten 20 of them.
Aside from that we got a steak tartare that came in a cone (so like tartare cone instead of ice cream cone). I had to try the burger because I’m a sucker for a burger with runny eggs on it. And we ended the night with an ice cream brownie that was covered in burnt marshmallow… I die! Everything we had was incredible. We also learned that Nightbell‘s head chef also runs Curate… no wonder we liked them both so much. It definitely made me want to go back and try to get a table at Curate next time.
French Broad Chocolate Lounge
If you’re looking to end your night somewhere else, but still have a sweet tooth craving, head on over to French Broad. From Madascar vanilla cake to true peanut butter cookies and boozy champagne chocolate floats, you are sure to leave with a happy tummy…. and maybe a touch of diabetes. It’s delicious! Even if you pop in for a mid afternoon pick me up, I recommend you not miss this quaint little shop.
So, have you gone to Asheville? Where were some of your favorite stops? Let me know if the comments so I can mark them for our next visit! There were so many places we wanted to go that we just didn’t have time for.
And feel free to follow my adventures on instagram.
Need some more foodspiration? Check out my London eats post for a some overseas recommendations.
Prost,
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