Writer's Notebook - James Rafferty Blog

Mountain Hospitality

I spent last week with my family in the area in and around Asheville, North Carolina.  We had a great time.  Part of what I noticed was the friendly attitude of a lot of the people that we met.   We also found lots to do. 

Highlights for the week included riding the Blue Ridge Parkway in the area around Asheville, visiting the famed Biltmore Estate and just hanging out in the downtown area. 

I previously blogged about the Blue Ridge Parkway here.  I have no new pictures to add -- my camera battery ran out of charge -- but we did drive an additional 30 miles or so though the southern part of Asheville.   Over by Craggy Gardens, where there are great views on both sides of the road, the shadows of the fall season gave the area south of us a totally different look than I remembered seeing in the spring.  As you come down off the 5000 foot elevations to around 3000, the views of Asheville residential areas running up to the sides of the mountains are spectacular.  Most of the leaves were down, but there were still some very pretty rust, pale yellow and auburn colored leaves.   We then continued on, passing several side roads before getting off of the blue roads about 10 miles north of Asheville airport.  

The Biltmore Estate was all decked out for Christmas. We did the tour of the main building, which included view of some seventy plus Christmas trees, but the building itself is still the real star on this interior tour.   Here's a photo of the Biltmore when rendered as a gingerbread house. 

 

After the tour of the house, we booked our place at the Stable Cafe.  The stable from the estate has been re-purposed as casual eating establishment and the stalls have been converted to booths.  Just as I remembered, the food was wonderful.  I had a lamb burger with lots of tasty trimmings and my family members also enjoyed hearty choices such as a meatloaf sandwich and the hefty Heritage Burger.  This became our main meal of the day.  Afterwards, we walked on the grounds, taking a very colorful route through pathways that eventually brought us to the glassed-in conservatory.  

Here's a view that caught my eye. 

  

On the weekend, we'd gone to a local church in Asheville called Jubilee, where the minister preached about winter gardens, a fine metaphor for the work of the winter season, where root vegetables burrow deeper and trees extend their roots, awaiting the brighter seasons.   Here at the Biltmore, we saw how the gardens of spring turn into a toned down version for the fall, in preparation for the fallow months ahead. 

Here's a glimpse of unusual hothouse flowers seen inside the conservatory.  

 

 The grounds of the Biltmore were designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, the amazing landscape architect who also played a large role in the development of New York's Central Park and Boston's Emerald Necklace.  Here's a view of what the main house looks like when seen during a walk in the gardens.    

   

Later, we got in the car and drove along the long, twisting road that heads toward the exits.  On the way, we stopped off at the Biltmore Winery.  We'd noticed that the estate didn't miss a trick when it came to commercial opportunities, but the winery was almost purely commercial.  Our tickets did give my wife and I access to a wine tasting.  We queued up -- sometimes this felt like Disneyworld for adults -- then a group of us were led to a long oak bar for a tasting.  The selection was ample, with a broad choice among whites, reds and roses.   We tasted their Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Zinfandel, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon.  All of the wines were of reasonably good quality; the Chardonnay and Pinot Noir were my favorites for this round of tastings.  

Throughout the visit, downtown Asheville served as both a destination and resource. We ate several meals in town, including lunches and dinners, and took advantage of the eclectic cuisines available.   Two favorites were:

Mela, which had a fine selection of Indian food, including some spectacular custom flavored Naans (the delightful flat Indian bread) and variations on favorites like lamb curry that sated my appetite.  All of this was complemented by a fine pale ale from the local Pisgah microbrewery.   

Mellow Mushroom, which has a nostalgic late sixties vibe and makes terrific pizzas with a wide selection of possible ingredients.   Here we continued our symbolic tour of the local microbreweries and enjoyed more of the local products, guided by a friendly waitress.  

Asheville is also a great place to connect to the cyber world.  My youngest son and I each carried our Ipods with us and usually were able to connect to the 'Net using one of the ubiquitous wifi connections to be found in restaurants, bookstores and just about anywhere else in the downtown.  Want to check the upcoming weather, check the New York Times for the day or otherwise link up?  No problem.  

I'm now back in the Boston area and the dreary late fall weather, but I'm still buoyed by our one week sojourn to one of the most interesting destinations in the southern US, Asheville, North Carolina.  I'm already looking forward to the next visit. 

American Versailles: The Biltmore Estate

What if a gentlemen with unlimited resources joined forces with a world famous architect and the genius who designed Central Park and built an estate over hundreds of acres in the mountains.   George Vanderbilt did exactly that when he initiated The Biltmore over one hundred years ago in the hills of western North Carolina on the edges of the city Asheville.  

I've seen the Vanderbilt summer cottage in Newport, known as The Breakers, but the Biltmore estate was much more ambitious.  Like The Breakers, the huge mansion is heavily influenced by then current trends in Italian and French architecture, but the piece de resistance is the remarkable estate surrounding this home and the scale on which the estate was envisioned.  

I drove into the Biltmore and went at least 2 miles before we even got close to the main Biltmore House.  When designing the landscape, Frederick Olmstead deliberately built the long winding roads that pass by lush forests and local rivers, so that guests would realize they were passing into a different kind of experience.  Suffice to say, it works.  On this day, crews were out with chainsaws repairing the damages from a storm the prior evening, but the many trees and plants along the edges of the roads still enchanted, bringing a calming effect as the drive continued.    

Today, the estate has been preserved by the Vanderbilt family, so it is a hugely popular tourist spot that needs the satellite parking lots about a quarter of mile away from the main house.   I joined my fellow tourists on the shuttle bus and we were dropped off by the front door.  But on this way in, here is the view of the main Biltmore House:  

 

I took the walking tour on my visit. Inside, each of the major rooms is distinct.  Sitting rooms often have art from world renowned artists of the day including Whistler, John Stewart Sargent and Renoir.  

Looking out, you can see the views which Olmstead sought, where the house stands above the fields below, but also looks on to the Smoky mountains in the distance. 

 

This is the kind of place where even the nooks and crannies are special.  The exterior of the main house brought to mind another famous French building -- Notre Dame in Paris.  Like Notre Dame, the exterior of the house had a variety of carefully sculpted gargoyles who did double duty in serving as water spouts to drain water away from the house in the event of rain.  No sign of such rain this day; the temperatures pushed 90 degrees even in the morning.  

The interior rooms for the family members were huge.  Each room had a different style, though variations of double posted beds were common.  Here again, I saw the influence of Versailles in the attention to detail, be it in special wallpapers, imported furniture and, in one case, a fireplace taken from Europe and reconstructed here.  

Tying the house together is the Grand Staircase which winds upward in a style much like the one featured in Gone With the Wind.  Here is a glimpse of the staircase looking down from the top floor. 

 

As distinctive as the interior of the house is, the exterior grounds designed by Olmstead offer an even more colorful and varied set of views.  

On the left of the main house, the collection of carefully tended gardens begin.   Looking forward from the Libary Terrace is the Italian Garden.  Here, a combination of leafy green plants, ivory statues and stone bordered pools create an oasis of beauty which contrasts with the wilder appearance of the forests soaring skyward behind it.   

 

Next, I began the walk downhill toward the conservatory and was immediately distracted by magnificent hanging gardens.  On a cooler day, I can imagine sitting under the vineyard style trestles and reading for hours.  

On this day, the scorching heat made me think it was time to find water and lunch, not necessarily in that order.  But first, a quick walk down to the walled gardens seemed essential.  Which looked like this: 

 

And putting the garden against its backdrop, revealed this pastiche:  

 

The walk through these gardens provided a feast for my eyes, but the heat from the sun was unrelenting, so I bid adieu to the gardens and returned to the main house of the estate.   I circled back to the other side of the house and checked in at the front desk of the stable cafe.  The place was very busy, but I was able to get a seat almost immediately.   A waiter quickly came by and brought me a large lemonade and ice water, which I began to drink to get rehydrated.  Looking around, I noticed that the tables were set in the former horse stalls and built of polished hardwood and wrought iron.   Like everything else I experienced at the Biltmore, the drinks were excellent and gave me a chance to scope out the menu.  The variety of choices left me with a tough decision, but I opted for Lamb Sliders based on the description provided by my attentive waiter.  Shortly afer this, he came by with hot cornbread.  Perfect to whet my appetite. 

I wrote up a few postcards and then tended to the food when it arrived.  The sliders were excellent, silver dollar sized slices of lamb on a small toasted bun with a horseradish sauce.  I added a taste of catsup and the blended taste was outrageous.  

So ended my trip to the Biltmore.  I had an appointment after this, so with great reluctance, I returned to my car and followed the 4 mile loop through more forest and past the Biltmore winery, finally exiting the estate.  I got my money's worth on a discounted ticket and definitely want to go back again with my wife and family to share this amazing treasure built into the hills on the outskirts of Asheville.  

Dining Contrasts: Montreal and Quebec City

I'm winding up a trip en famille to the two largest French cities in North America, Montreal and Quebec City.  I've been to both cities before, but this was the first time I brought my family along.   

The biggest challenge was to attempt to balance the needs of four different people.  I love walking around in cities, but my family has less interest in that than I do.   I like French cuisine and usually can strike a good balance between quality and price. It was much more difficult this time than ever before, thanks to the weak US dollar.  So, we made compromises.  

As it turns out, we had four outstanding dinners.  Three were in Quebec City and one was in the Chinatown of Montreal.  I'm not really surprised about this, since I have always found wonderful food in Quebec City and we managed to do so even when we watched our expenses.  By contrast, Montreal is much broader in scope and has a much wider range of dining possibilities.   I've had spectacular food in Montreal on past visits, but have also had mediocre dinners.   We did okay on this visit to Montreal, but we were definitely alert to the high costs of dinner in Canada and stayed away from the high end places.   

It turned out that Chinatown in Montreal hit all of the right notes.  On this trip, I relied a lot on Google to get both dinner possibilities and advance reviews.  This was a big help.  For example, I'd eaten well in Montreal's Chinatown before, but it had been a long time ago and I really had no idea what restaurants to pick.  Enter Google.  I simply went to Google, entered the words Montreal Chinatown Restaurants and up popped a few reasonable possibilities.   We ended up at Maison Kam Fung.  It was on the second floor of a business building, so the restaurant itself was a bit hard to find.  Happily, we eventually found the magic escalator that took us to the proper floor, unlike the elevator, which was closed for the night.   

The food there was excellent.   The menu offered all kinds of choices, so we settled on a group portion of wonton soup, steamed shrimp dumplings, spring rolls and two main dishes.   We had a bit of a wait for the soup, but is was worth it.  The soup was hot and very tasty, with plenty of wonton to go around.   The shrimp dumplings were equally good, though we were surprised they came without a sauce.  No problem, we simply used the sweet and tart sauce that came with the spring rolls to complement the delicate dumplings.   A little later, the main dishes arrived: grouper with fresh vegetables and orange chicken.   I was personally more partial to the grouper, which was light to the touch and accompanied by the best tasting green beans I can recall, prepared in a way which kept them bright green and firm for eating.  Yum.  This meal cost less than any dinner on the trip, but really worked for us.   

By contrast, in Quebec City, we had three multiple course meals.  Each meal was a total experience.   We were served one course at a time and each one had its time.   This was particularly true of the restaurant Verla, which was promoted as being value-priced Italian, but turned out to be much higher end in all respects.  We had an incredible dining experience, but it included a full two and one half hours devoted to the dinner and up to 30 minutes between courses.  Everyone except my youngest son loved this place, but it was off the charts when we totalled up the bill.   Still, our experience there symbolized the difference between the Quebec City and Montreal dining experiences.  In Quebec City, dining is a passion.  In its ideal form, you will sit down for up to three hours and have time to savor each course, while taking the time to enjoy a full bottle of wine.   

In Montreal, there is a lot more going on.  So dining is just one of the things to do and much less time seems to be devoted to it.  As indicated by our Chinatown experience, it can still be marvelous, but the diner needs to be more careful in their selections and perhaps have lesser expectations.  I love both places and now have had a chance to share both of them with my family, but the cities are very different experiences.   

Do you want to enjoy a taste of Europe in North America and to bring home dining experiences to savor? Please, head off to Quebec City and enjoy the intimate experience offered by this special ville.   But for the more cosmopolitan experience with many more things to do, head to Montreal, another unique city on the water.   Either choice is a good one, but you'll have dramatically different experiences based on which city you choose.