Tupelo Honey Café
Biscuits with Blueberry Preserves
Pimento Biscuits with Bacon Cream Cheese
Fried Green Tomatoes Served over Goat Cheese Grits with fresh basil
Tupelo’s Encore Cheesy Grit Cakes – deep-fried cheesy grit cakes, drizzled with hot sauce and served with our Sunshot Salsa and sour cream
Scratch-Made Mac ‘n Cheese
In Praise of BBQ Plate – Eight ounces of slowcooked, hand-pulled pork ‘cue tossed with smoked jalapeno barbecue sauce
Jumbo Lump Crab Cakes with a Lemon Cherry Pepper Aioli
Nutty Fried Chicken – nut-encrusted, natural, hormone-free, chicken breast topped with milk gravy
Brian’s Shrimp and Grits Shoo-Mercy Style – A dozen large shrimp served over Goat Cheese Grits and anointed with a spicy roasted red pepper sauce, bacon, carmelized onions, spinach and sautéed mushrooms
Brown Butter Pecan Pie with Vanilla Bean Caramel Sauce
Banana Pudding with Whipped Cream
Having visited the Knoxville location for lunch just two days prior but wanting to fully experience Asheville’s most famous culinary contribution fully with my family the decision was made to visit Tupelo Honey Café for dinner and although the wait on a Friday was expectedly long – 75 minutes for a table of four – the dining we experienced that day on the patio was the work of a restaurant well deserving of its praise, save for the unfortunate presence of some inebriated and vagrant foot traffic that was reportedly not uncommon according to our waitress. Beginning with those exquisite buttermilk biscuits plus the daily special pimento and bacon version and progressing through some of the best fried green tomatoes of the trip appetizers were terrific and actually large enough to serve as entrees for some and when it came time for our primary plates each and every one was a wonderful take on classic southern staples, the shrimp and grits particularly impressive with the fresh shrimp swimming in an ocean of cheesy grits topped with smoke, spice, and touches of sweet. Limiting our dessert choices to only a pair as we already had plans elsewhere the meal concluded with a good but relatively standard banana pudding and Tupelo Honey’s famous brown butter pecan pie, a slice served warm literally melting into a puddle of toasty salted praline over a rich butter crust that should be on everyone’s “must order” list when visiting any of the restaurant’s locations. Overall a case of a famous place not happy to rest on its laurels but instead turning out great food and service from start to finish I only hope Tupelo Honey maintains its standards as it expands…and if it can, then I hope to see one in a town near me soon because southern food of this quality just isn’t common enough in most states.
