eats | asheville, nc | tupelo honey cafe & early girl eatery

My family was in North Carolina a few weekends ago.  The Chief was speaking at a conference and if there's a good excuse to travel, hey! we're on it.

We don't usually stray too far from where we are staying, unless there's a Starbucks involved.  If that's the case we'll drive clear across the state to find a proper cup of joe.  And by "proper", I mean, in a cardboard cup with mermaid logo on the front.

I digress.

Brooke was dying to go to Early Girl in South Asheville, she's been reading about in magazines and blogs for a while now and needed to see if the cools kid's reviews were all that.  And also, we were talking about going while at our gate at the airport and an Ashevillian (is that what they call the locals?) overheard us and told us that we needed to go, immediately.  How's that for a confirmation?

We hit up Early Girl Eatery first.  The very next morning.  They open at 7:30am, we were there at 7:20am.  And they weren't open yet.  How's that for irony.  Anyway after a minute, the hostess let us in.  The place was pretty hip.  Waitresses in vintage rockabilly hairstyles and outfits, crazy weird artwork on the walls, hand-thrown pottery sugar bowls with llamas on them.  Hip.  The food was awesome!  I ordered grits (because I live in the North and we just don't have the luxury of being able to order GRITS off of a menu), biscuits (because, well HELLO!) and an egg (because to keep this kinda healthy).  It was a plate lacking in color (no worries I probably had salad for lunch...)  The grits were so-so, I'm more of a cheesy grits kinda girl, and they were just a plain grit.  But the biscuit.  OH MY GRACIOUS!!!  It was heavenly.  Overall, we all loved our visit to Early Girl Eatery.  My only regret was that at 8 o'clock in the morning, it was too early to order a slice of the red velvet layer cake that was sitting on the counter when we walked in.

We purchased a few bags of ground grits to take home and some tee shirts.  I now wear that tee shirt whenever I make biscuits, I'm hoping whatever they've got going on over there rubs off on me.

I'm nowhere near responsible for this one, friends of the family had made reservations Sunday after church and invited us along.  I was so pleasantly surprised at this place.  A popular spot that has been since franchised, Tupelo Honey Cafe was fabulous!

I ordered the something-something-something and then, just to be difficult, requested some changes.  Basically, by the time the place was placed in front of me it was a biscuit with eggs and pimento cheese with a side of goat cheese grits.  Perfection!  The addition of goat cheese to the grits was incredible, I need to try that at home.  But the biscuit was only second to the Early Girl.  You can't win them all!  I wish they'd open a location in Chicago, the influence of local food with the southern style is the best.

Now, if only there was a way to get a combo of Early Girl Biscuits and Tupelo's goat cheese grits flown straight to my door for breakfast tomorrow morning...