I just got back from a week in Asheville, NC with my friend Lindsay, a fellow letterpress lady and typewriter-advocate, and my boyfriend.
We went for the letterpress and arts. We stayed for the chocolate.
This was a "liquid truffle," a hot sipping chocolate from the French Broad Chocolate Lounge, the "Indian Kuffi" flavor. It had cardamom, rose, and pistachios. I speak of it in the past tense because it was not long of this world. I struggled to merely sip, not gulp, this 4oz treat.
This is chocoalte mousse, also from the French Broad. Delicious as well (the liquid truffle was better). The purple stripe is a fresh berry ganache or something. I took the picture from the side I hadn't eaten yet -- can you tell?
We also stayed in Asheville for the tacos. We ate a lot of tacos. Boyfriend had mediocre Black Mountain tacos the first night (Lindsay and I had thai). The next day, we stumbled upon these beauties from The Local Taco in downtown Asheville:
That would be, from left to right:
SMOKED BRISKET GF Slow smoked
pulled beef brisket with mole rojo,
pickled onions, and cilantro
PORTABELLA Marinated portabella
mushrooms with Three Graces Dairy sage
goat cheese, zucchini slaw, tomatoes, and
crispy fried onions
DUCK & SHIITAKE Maple Leaf Farm duck
medallions with shiitake mushrooms, napa
slaw & hoisin crema
OM NOM NOM.
Boyfriend got a taco platter, which looked far more exciting before I took his sides, and even less exciting once I stole his guacomole and lime (on the bottom left there.
Aren't these vegetarian black beans and Mexican tater tots beautiful? Well, I thought so, especially with that guac.
Everything at The Local Taco was beautifully presented. This was Lindsay's fancy corn...
And her fancy taco and fancy drink. We also had the absolute nicest waitress, who practically read our minds.
We also ate tacos at the White Duck Taco Shop in the River Arts District (another day, we're not that taco crazy!) I don't have pictures because we got them to go, and to go tacos, while delicious, are not as picture perfect as they could be. I got a taco with kimchi and korean beef, and a lamb gyro taco. OM NOM NOM!
A friend of ours had insisted we could not visit Asheville without eating sweet potato pancakes at Tupelo Honey Cafe. Boyfriend got fried chicken and biscuits, no gravy, because he was not persuaded that sweet potato belonged in pancake. Turns out, it does belong in pancake, but boy does it make a LOT of pancake! This thing is the size of a dinner plate! It was bigger than my head! And I have a pretty big head!
That's peach butter nestled in a sweet cluster of pecans and powdered sugar on top. I got my pancake with granola in it, and a side of goat cheese grits. OM NOM indeed.
We certainly made a point of eating well for breakfast. One morning we ate at the Creperie Bouchon, which is sort of related to a much more expensive French comfort food restaurant we weren't quite convinced was worth risking the pricey menu. At the creperie, the food was delicious and within our budgets. I had watermelon-ginger gazpacho soup,
and an obviously satisfying nutella and seasonal berries crepe.
For three breakfasts, we enjoyed pastries from the Black Mountain Bakery. I don't have pictures; I was impatient and hungry.
Ok, ok, enough of the food already! Here's some cool swag I picked up in our adventuring:
The skirt is from Hip Replacements, and yes, it's hip. The skirt makes me feel very hip. As in, I have hips. Yep. I fell in love with it thinking it was on the sale rack, but it... wasn't.... Alas. I bought it anyway. I also bought boxes of truffles from The French Broad, OM NOM never ever enough chocolate. The little brown book is from Malaprops Bookstore, which carries tiny and small press books as well as big press books, which was fun and impressive.
I got the bear card from Asheville Bookworks, which is a wonderful arts space chock full of letterpress and book arts and papermaking equipment (well, they recently relocated the papermaking studio), with studio and equipment rentals and classes and shows.
I got a wallet of upcycled leather and bar of handmade soap from Garage 34, which we found while heading to the French Broad Chocolate Bar and Lounge a second time.
We also stopped to peer in the windows at 7 Ton Collective's studios; sadly, we would be on our way home on Saturday when they'd be open. It looked like a nice space, and they're really near a beautiful community garden.
We DID get to visit and talk to Mark Olson, the proprietor/master printer of Innerer Klang letterpress studio. He barely looked up from his printing on a 10x15 platen press to chat with us. I picked up the iguana card there, and I hope to track down his former apprentice to buy a print of her nasturtium suicide print, which would make a great gift for Boyfriend's mom.
I don't have photos of Penland School of Crafts, which Lindsay and I visited on Tuesday. It was too rainy to haul out my iPad (I managed to lose my camera at the beginning of the summer, before, you know, all the traveling), but we were lucky enough to visit in between sessions, so we got to wander the studios. We visited the gallery and store as well as the letterpress and book and photography and glass studios. I'll be applying again next summer to take some classes (I got wait listed for funding this year), and I really hope I'll get the opportunity to work in that energetic environment.
We also visited the Blue Spiral 1 Gallery, where we went for the show of work by Jessica C White of Heroes & Criminals Press, and stayed for room upon room of art by locals and Penland artists and this guy Andy Farkas, who has gorgeous wood engraving prints, and is actually not, as I had thought, the same person as Andy Farkas, UA MFA in Creative Writing graduate.
...
So, that book in the picture above, the one that's called Self Portrait: Book People Picture Themselves, is super cool. I picked it up at the bookstore in Asheville. This guy Burt Britton, a bookseller at the Strand in the 70s, collected not just signatures from authors and illustrators and poets, but their own self-portraits. Here are some of my favorites...
