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Half the questions I get from people thinking about a move here have nothing to do with square footage. They want to know where the good coffee is, whether the schools are any good, and, almost always, where to eat before noon on a weekend. That last one I can answer without thinking. Brunch is one of my favorite weekend meals, and after over thirty years of dining my way around, these are the five I keep coming back to and the five I keep sending other people to.
They’re spread out on purpose. One’s downtown, two are in West Asheville, one’s up in Weaverville, and one’s down in Arden. Eat at all five over a month of weekends and you’ll have seen more of this area than any driving tour could show you.
Sunny Point has been on Haywood Road in West Asheville since 2003, and the huevos rancheros have been called some of the best in the country, which is the kind of thing a restaurant usually slaps on a banner and then coasts on. They didn’t coast. It’s two eggs however you want them over black bean cakes, chorizo (or tofu chorizo, this being Asheville), feta, potatoes, and a green salsa you could drink if it were socially acceptable. I order it almost every time. When I don’t, it’s the shrimp and grits; chipotle cheddar grits under blackened shrimp and their maple bacon, which is good enough that you should order a side of just the bacon too.
There will probably be a wait. On a Sunday it can run forty-five minutes. But they grow a good bit of what ends up on your plate in the garden right beside the dining room, so go walk it. Grab a biscuit from the Rabbit Hole bakery on site to hold you over. Nobody who has actually eaten here begrudges the line.
When I don’t feel like waiting, I go to WALK, which stands for West Asheville Lounge and Kitchen and sits at 401 Haywood, right across from the Admiral in the old Rocket Club building. High ceilings, exposed brick, garage doors they roll up when the weather cooperates, a couple of pool tables in the front. Six days a week it’s a bar and restaurant. On Sunday it turns into the most low-key brunch in town.
The move is the biscuit with Hickory Nut Gap sausage, which comes from a farm just up the road in Fairview. The french toast is good. So is the burger, if you’re the sort of person who eats a burger at eleven in the morning, and no judgment, I have been that person. You walk in, you get a table, you eat. Some mornings that’s exactly the amount of ceremony you want.
Yes, it’s a chain now. There are Tupelo Honeys in Boise and Pittsburgh and plenty of places that are not the mountains. But the one at 12 College Street downtown, across from Pritchard Park, is where the whole thing started, back in December of 2000, when it was one of the first farm-to-table kitchens in a town that now can’t stop talking about farm-to-table. Locals call it the Mothership.
You come for the biscuits, which land warm on the table before you’ve decided anything else, and you stay for the mac and cheese waffles under hot fried chicken, which is exactly as unreasonable as it sounds and worth the nap it earns you. The fried green tomatoes and the goat cheese grits have been on the menu roughly forever. Is there a line? Usually. Is it mostly tourists these days? A fair amount. The food is still good, which is more than you can say for a lot of famous places.
This one takes a little driving, north up Merrimon into Weaverville, and it’s the one I send people to when breakfast is the point of the morning and not a pit stop on the way to something else. The Dermas family has run Stoney Knob since 1962. Walk in and you’ll see what that kind of tenure does to a room, which is to say it’s packed wall to ceiling with art and oddities, a velvet Elvis somewhere in the mix, largely unexplainable and completely great.
The food is Mediterranean by way of the American South, and brunch is Sunday only, 9:30 to 3, no reservations, so aim for before the church crowd or well after it. The Stoney Knob Benny stacks poached eggs and roasted red pepper hollandaise over two crab cakes instead of the usual English muffin. There’s also a stuffed French toast with orange cream for those with a sweet tooth. If you lean savory, the corned beef hash uses sweet potatoes and Gouda and ruins ordinary hash for you a little bit.
The one almost nobody tells you about is down in Arden, on Long Shoals Road, and it’s called Abuela’s Little Kitchen. Mexican breakfast, doors open at seven every single day, which by itself earns a lot of loyalty from me. The chilaquiles are the real thing. So are the huevos divorciados, two eggs split between red and green salsa. They do a Mexican eggs Benedict, where they pour cajeta over the pancakes, and they’ll bring you a mimosa or a proper margarita before nine in the morning if that’s the kind of Saturday you’re having.
Read the reviews and they all say some version of the same thing, that it tastes like somebody’s grandmother is back there cooking. They’re right. If you live south of town, or you’re looking down that way, this is your spot. You can thank me later.
Look back at that list and notice it walked you through West Asheville, downtown, Weaverville, and Arden without me setting out to do it. Where people line up for breakfast tells you a lot about how a neighborhood actually lives, which corners stay sleepy on a Sunday and which ones are already humming by nine. You won’t get that information from a listing sheet.
That’s the part I care about most when I’m helping somebody buy or sell. The numbers I can read in my sleep after thirty plus years in these mountains, two decades of it as a certified appraiser. What takes longer is figuring out whether a neighborhood actually fits the life you’re trying to live, right down to where you’ll end up on a slow Saturday morning. If you’re weighing a move, or you just want an honest read on what your corner of the map is worth, come talk to us at the Troy Flack Group. We’re glad to get into the numbers, and we’ve always got opinions about where to eat.