Southern USA Road Trip - Asheville, North Carolina

When planning our road trip to Nashville, we discovered that Asheville, North Carolina was not too far from our route, so we decided to make a little detour to check it out for one night.

Asheville is located in the Blue Ridge Mountains and has been named the best beer city in the USA many times.  There are over a dozen craft breweries and great restaurants in the town so it seemed like the kind of place we'd enjoy.  

We stayed at the Aloft Asheville hotel located right downtown.  We loved this hotel - from the decor to the service to the location.  The rooftop pool even has a nice view of the mountains.  

Our first stop was a quick lunch at White Duck Taco's new location downtown, right across from our hotel.  We tried the Banh Mi Tofu, Bangkok Shrimp, Korean Beef Bulgogi and Fish tacos.  They were all great but the shrimp and fish were our faves.  Every place in town sells local craft beer so we had some here too.  

Then we headed down the street to Wicked Weed Brewing.  They have a great brewery and restaurant right downtown.  Matt tried the Black Angel black sour cherry ale and it was his favourite beer of the whole trip.  He tried a few other kinds of beer in their downstairs tasting room and bought some bottles to bring home.  

We headed back towards our hotel and stopped for a coffee at this coffee bus.  Matt had a "shot in the dark" which is a brewed coffee with an espresso shot in it!  I had a dirty iced chai.  It was just what we needed to keep us going through the evening. 

We visited several other pubs and got some pizza for dinner.  It was a great night and a very fun town.  

When I do research for our trips one place I always look for information is the travel section of the New York Times.  The next morning we headed for breakfast in West Asheville to one of their recommended places, Biscuit Head.  

This meal was insane.  I had fried chicken on a biscuit with sweet potato butter, sriracha slaw and a fried egg on top!  Matt had a country ham biscuit with scrambled eggs, cheese, fried green tomatoes, and red eye gravy which is made with coffee!  We also ordered an extra plain biscuit so we could try the butter & jam bar.  We tried jalapeno butter, orange chocolate butter and banana butter with chunks of banana in it.  We also had cherry Dr. Pepper jam and green chili jam.  Outstanding!

We were sad to leave Asheville and wished we had more time to spend there.  But even the drive out of town and back to Tennessee was gorgeous on the Blue Ridge Parkway through twisting mountain roads.  A fantastic detour.  We will be back!