Flight Savor Fare

The street in front of Flight.

Main Street between 3rd and 5th is closed.

In the pit! This photo was taken from inside Flight at the front door. If you look closely, you can see the black and gray art deco tile – amazingly intact.

Taken from Flight’s balcony window.

The city of Hendersonville is replacing the underground utilities on Main Street and we’re all grateful that they have waited until January, our least busy time of the year, to dig up the sidewalk. It’s more problematic in front of Flight because underneath the sidewalk is access to underground Hendersonville. There’s a room down there that sports art deco era style tilework. In the ’60s, the room was used for a teen club, but it looks as if it were built to be a speakeasy. Wonder who would know the history of underground Hendersonville and could tell us?

It’s certainly a mess. And it looks to be a mess through the rest of January at least.

We’ll keep you posted.

Everyone here at Flight would like to thank our wonderful friends and customers for making this New Year’s Eve the largest ever!

We enjoy serving you and appreciate your business.

See you soon!

You have to have a glass of champagne on New Year's Eve (or bubbly as we call it because only bubbly stuff from the area in France called Champagne can legally and morally be called that. Otherwise, it's bubbly.) Maybe it's like Hoppin' John and portends good luck for the coming year. With 2012 being the end of the Mayan calendar, we will all need every bit of good vibes we can muster. So let's drink!

Do you just buy the stuff on display in your neighborhood grocery store? Shame on you! No wonder you complain that "champagne" always gives you headaches.

Thanks to the Wall Street Journal and Lettie Teague, we have a bit of a guide, but be prepared to spend at least $40.

And THEN, to find out what WNC cuisine entails, they ask a restaurant in Chapel Hill!!

Crook’s Corner is legendary and the late Bill Neal was known as a Southern cuisine historian. His focus, in his cookbooks and in his restaurant, seemed to be on a low-country or variation thereof, cuisine. Here in the mountains, until recent times, there was not a focus on shrimp and grits or any seafood found in the ocean. We had mountain trout.

I’m not certain about this, but in addition to availability I think our ancestry skews more Scotch-Irish, German than English. I’ll have to study on that. Or, if you all know, comment here on the blog.

A listener asks NPR, How do you know we eat huckleberry pie in North Carolina? http://bit.ly/u5QnFR

NPR’s Karen Grigsby Bates did a piece on a boarding school in Brevard for overweight children called “Wellspring” and commented on the fact that its located “in a part of the country known for its caloric cuisine” such as huckleberry pie. A listener in Durham writes, “I don’t even know what a huckleberry looks like. While this may seem like a quibble, the mention of huckleberry pie perpetuates regional stereotypes, reinforcing images of quaint bumpkins living in Mayberry. We don’t eat huckleberry pie – really.”

Well, really? What’s wrong with eating something local? Why does that make you a quaint bumpkin? It could be the use of the word “huckleberry” which really is a wild blueberry, more or less. According to wikipedia, “I’m your huckleberry” in the 19th century was a way of saying that one is just the right person for a given job. Could be because the rest of the country switched to calling them berries “blueberries” while Appalachia didn’t. And we all know the rep them Appalachians have.

The huckleberry is the state fruit of Idaho. Hmmmmmm…..

I didn’t have an issue with huckleberries, but I did with the rest of the “caloric” cuisine Bates referred to such as “home-churned ice cream” “buttered cornbread.” Flight serves homemade ice cream, but I don’t think that’s on the monthly recipe list for most Southern home cooks.

I think the issue here is that any cuisine can be caloric, but nowadays most Southern cooks have taken those beloved heavy-on-the-cream-and- butter recipes and have made them healthier. Or, we don’t eat them except on special occasions like Christmas.

Version #1
2 oz Absolut Peppar vodka

1 oz white creme de menthe

1.5 oz Godiva

1 oz peppermint schnapps

garnish with chocolate covered peppermint stick

Version #2

2 oz Absolut Vanilla vodka
peppermint schnapps
Godiva

leave out the creme de menthe

Unique wine from Row Eleven, offered only at restaurants like Tomas Keller’s Bouchon, Daniel Boulud’s Cafe Boulud, Wolfgang Puck’s restaurants (too many to name) and Emeril’s (ditto), St. Regis HotelNYC, The Broadmoor, Tao (one of my favorite over-the-top restaurants) and The Charleston Place hotel (best peach iced tea ever).

Flight has Row Eleven now, too.

Jonathan Waters, Wine Director at Chez Panisse, the famous Alice Waters restaurant -- wait, maybe they're related? I'll google that in a minute, but here's a wine he suggests to impress your annoying wine-snob friends -- Gobelsberger Schloss-Gobelsberg Gruner Veltliner 2010 (Austria) about $12. Well, if you can throw that down at the store, it will be impressive, but I believe he is referring to the taste which he likens to….lentils. Could be I just don’t have the wine tasting lingo down, but that sounds like soup to me.