Road Trips
Eat Across the Blue Ridge Parkway

Local Cherokee have been hunting and foraging in the area around the Great Smoky Mountains for centuries. Though the U.S. government forcibly removed them in the 1830s, those who remained or returned have established a community in what is now known as Cherokee, North Carolina. 

It’s about a 10-minute drive from Great Smoky Mountains National Park to Cherokee. After a day spent admiring the mountaintop vista of Clingman’s Dome and spotting the elk and black bears that call the park home, visitors can stroll along the main drag of the small town, dotted with Cherokee-themed motels, shops, and cultural institutions like the Museum of the Cherokee Indian. 

Those seeking indigenous fare should stop at Paul’s Family Restaurant. The small house may look like your average roadside greasy-spoon, but the line of cars and motorcycles parked by its porch testify to the Native-owned restaurant’s longstanding appeal. Its indigenous specialties include bison steaks, pheasant breast, and—for those inspired by the nearby park’s roaming horned beasts—elk burgers.

Whenever the weather’s good in Western North Carolina, you’re bound to find folks tubing, kayaking, or fishing in the region’s beautiful rivers. Along with an often-brisk current, the waterways offer an Appalachian specialty: rainbow trout. 

Many area restaurants source their trout from Sunburst Trout Farms. The family-run business has been breeding trout since 1948. Though the fish are raised in the Shining Rock Wilderness, they’re brought to a small facility in Waynesville (about 13 miles off the Parkway) for processing. This is also the home of Sunburst’s official store, which sells fresh filets, caviar, trout burgers, trout dip, and more. Curious visitors can even take a tour of the facility to learn more about the trout-farming process. 

With just a bit of butter, salt, pepper, and garlic, a home-roasted Sunburst filet will rival fine-dining meals that command far higher prices.

While farm-to-table restaurants have sprouted up across the United States, few offer diners the chance to forage their own food, then turn it into a dish. On the foraging tours led by Asheville-based company No Taste Like Home, you can collect and eat everything from mulberries to elderflower to birch bark, then drop off some of your finds at one of several local restaurants that will gamely transform them into an appetizer. (You're free to enjoy the dishes at these restaurant or as takeout, but most require the purchase of an entrée as well.)

One such restaurant is Benne on Eagle, which specializes in “Afro-Appalachian” cuisine, a hybrid of West African, Caribbean, and Southern styles. After I brought my foraged finds of sheep sorrel, day lilies, and plantain weeds, the chef incorporated them into a sweet-and-savory appetizer of Jefferson red rice, plantains, and fermented black beans.

The restaurant’s Afro-Caribbean-Southern menu also includes dishes such as Edna Lewis’s fried green tomatoes, catfish with broken-rice grits, and fufu gnudi with cassava chips, pickled okra, and a maafe (peanut soup) sauce.

Virginia’s reputation as a peanut-producing powerhouse owes a great debt to the innovations of George Washington Carver and the enslaved chefs who brought West African peanut-based recipes to North America. One such recipe was maafe, a soup from Senegal and Gambia (the very same maafe used in Benne on Eagle’s gnudi).

Though not quite as spicy as maafe, the Virginian version of this peanut soup is a creamy, savory treat. And there’s no better place to sample it than the dining room at the Hotel Roanoke, a towering Tudor-style structure dating back to 1882. The man responsible for the hotel’s recipe is Fred Brown, a legendary Black chef who led Roanoke’s kitchen and debuted his soup in 1940.

Though many restaurants offer versions, Brown’s soup still remains the one to beat. Be sure to order yours with a side of spoonbread—a small skillet of cornmeal-based bread so warm and soft that you can eat it with a spoon.

A little under 30 minutes off the Parkway, Monticello’s splendor is worth the detour. Its vegetable and fruit gardens are particularly spectacular, growing more than 330 varieties of heirloom vegetables and 170 varieties of fruit. 

The gardens recreate the botanical collection that Thomas Jefferson assembled from 1770 to 1826. After exploring the sprawling gardens and learning about the legacy of Monticello’s enslaved farmers and chefs (including the exceptionally talented and underappreciated James Hemings), visitors can stop at the site’s Farm Table cafe to sample meals that incorporate the gardens’ offerings. 

The cafe’s menu is seasonal and currently offers salads, grain bowls, sandwiches, and soups that incorporate such crops as cucumbers, arugula, basil, peppers, tomatoes, and garlic from the gardens. 

Wash down your meal with some Monticello Root Beer or, for those seeking something stronger, a Monticello Mountain Ale (brewed in collaboration with Blue Mountain Brewery). The latter is made with honey from Monticello’s beehives.

In mid-summer, black jewels dangle from the bushes and jammy smudges dot the trails of Shenandoah National Park. During peak blackberry season, visitors can pluck fresh, tart treats as they hike (the NPS allows individuals to forage up to one quart per day).

While its natural form is delicious, the local berry’s most decadent manifestation is Shenandoah’s signature Blackberry Ice Cream Pie. A single slice consists of a giant slab of light-purple blackberry ice cream sitting atop a graham-cracker crust and topped with a dollop of meringue and blackberry compote. The result is a sweet, tart, and creamy dessert. 

While fresh blackberries are limited to their brief summer window, the pie is available at the park’s two on-site lodges—Big Meadows and Skyland—year-round.