Broken Clocks, Blind Squirrels & Liberals

Tomato Jam Café
379 Biltmore Ave.
Asheville, NC



Liberals are so easy to ridicule.

Whether it is city commissions banning toys from happy meals or “global warming” conferees stranded in the blizzard of the century or simultaneous pleas to save baby seals and kill baby humans (you know, ‘cause one of those humans might grow up one day to kill a seal), there is no limit to liberal idiocy.

Except when they are right.

Or -- as my recent trip to leftist heaven Asheville, North Carolina began to convince me -- when the labels are just wrong.

While our conversation didn’t evolve much beyond what I wanted for breakfast, it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if the owner of Tomato Jam Café, Rebecca Daun-Widner, and I agree on very little about how the world works.

A funky, eclectic place that serves nothing but organic, locally sourced food, Tomato Jam Café is the kind of place liberals love.

I consider myself a conservative. A traditionalist.

I recognize, understand and appreciate those things that make the world work properly - just as God intended – without interference by bureaucrats, government, Ben Bernanke, and nanny-state do-gooders who screw it all up.

When I find these things, I value them, cherish them, desire to “conserve” them.

Well, one bite of the locally grown, organic tomatoes, biscuits, sausage, eggs and apples at Tomato Jam Café, and I knew THIS was something worth valuing and conserving.

Think about it. What could possibly be more traditional and conservative than growing your own tomatoes free of government regulated/mandated pesticides, herbicides and God-knows-what-else?

The bulletin board behind the cash register where you order breakfast lists all the local farmers that supply every ingredient in the delicious food you are about to eat.

Now THAT is what I call traditional.

That is 19th Century know-where-your-food-comes-from old-school. It is breakfast by-passing Big Business, Big Government and Big Labor all in one fell swoop.

Who knew that biscuits and gravy at 9am on a Wednesday could be such a philosophically awakening moment?

But that’s what makes Asheville, North Carolina, generally, and the Tomato Jam Café, specifically, such a unique spot.

It’s a place where government-loving new age liberals flock to celebrate the most traditional of values: good food.

Strangely situated in a doctors’ office park on the busy main drag south of town, Tomato Jam Café is a small, cozy, easy-going place.

No waitresses, hostesses or bus boys.

You place your order when you walk in the front door and bus your own table when you’re done.

It’s the kind of place where you can be sure the orange juice is fresh squeezed – and served in a Ball mason jar for good measure.

And where the apple sauce doesn’t come from an industrial sized tub in the fridge. These Smoky Mountain apples are roasted and hand crushed, served warm in a bowl with a sprinkling of cinnamon.

But the specialty of the house is biscuits.

“Cat head” biscuits. So named because they are big as a funky shaped cat’s head – though I suspect, much more delicious. Made from scratch from whole grain flour, these are darker and tastier than your run-of-the-mill Southern buttermilk biscuits.

Unfortunately, I very nearly missed this entire whole-grain-inspired philosophical awakening.

I nabbed the last biscuit of the day! And the place had only been open for business for an hour.

Tragedy averted.

That presented me a great burden. As ridiculous as it may have seemed considering their size, I had planned to cop out and order a couple biscuits.

Maybe the BLT-of-my-dreams: all-natural, nitrate-free thick-sliced apple wood-smoked bacon with organic roasted tomato slices, lettuce and mayonnaise on one of those one-of-a-kind biscuits.

Or maybe just a plain biscuit, warmed up and dripping in butter.

And what about the Café’s name-sake condiment, home-made tomato jam? Gotta try that on one of those scratch-made cat heads.

But alas, there would be no easy-way-out gluttony today. I had to be a responsible adult and choose.

As you might expect, I chose to go WAY over the top. Literally.

I ordered the “Wendy Lou”: the final, precious biscuit of the day split open and smothered over the top with home-made sausage gravy and scrambled eggs.

Those two big halves of biscuit were completely buried in a messy mountain of deliciousness. All-natural local eggs and creamy warm gravy loaded with fresh sausage, this was biscuits and gravy for the gods.

I consider myself something of a sausage gravy connoisseur.

Let me tell you, this isn’t that wimpy Huddle House sausage gravy with mere specks of sausage.

No. We’re talking big hunks of zesty made-from-scratch organic, hormone-free, free-range, humanely-pampered pigs who probably enjoyed a higher standard of living than you or me.

Feel free to inject liberal ridicule here.

Isn’t pampering mud-wallowing animals who are destined to be my breakfast anyway kind of weird? Pretentious? Lefty nutty?

Yes. Yes. And yes.

But, what is most important when dining on succulent dead pig?

Does it TASTE good?

Yes. Again.

And there, my friends, is where those wacky liberals actually get it right – completely by accident. Like a blind squirrel. Or a broken clock at the right time of day.

While they are busy tending to the poor piggy’s delicate psyche and self-esteem, they end up producing a darn tasty pig for my sausage gravy breakfast.

After all, that’s the only purpose of a pig. To taste good.

If pampering porky like some Guantanamo Bay terrorist on a Caribbean vacation makes him taste better – and the evidence seems to be growing that it does – then by all means, give him the Laz-Y-Boy, remote and a lap dance.

To end up in Tomato Jam Café’s delicious sausage gravy over a cat head biscuit should be the ultimate fulfillment of any pig’s life.

If that won’t boost porky’s self-esteem, nothing will.

Rating: Seriously Thought About Buying Shirt.

Rebels And Yankees Unite Over Grits And The Man In Black

Tupelo Honey Café
12 College St.
Asheville, North Carolina

Beer selection: Great selection of local microbrews.

Food: Southern cuisine served with Yankee flare.



To understand Asheville, North Carolina, you must understand that in the minds of certain Yankees, Southern culture is cool. And hip.

In contrast, I have yet to meet a Southerner who finds anything about Yankee culture the least bit interesting (except maybe The Sopranos).

This fascination with everything Southern is quite understandable. The South has better weather, politics, music, women…and, most importantly, food. It’s just that most Yankees have never lifted their head up out of their brown, crusty snow pile long enough to notice.

So if you think I’m about to launch into some rant out carpet bagging Yankee posers coming down to God’s country to pretend they fit in, well…I’ll save that post for the Buckhead bars in Atlanta.

Not today.

That’s because the Yankee celebration of Southern culture that goes on in Asheville is a good thing.

Here in Asheville you don’t have that most annoying bread of Yankees who look down on a South they’ve never visited and know nothing about.

No. Yankees come to Asheville because they actually LIKE biscuits, grits and Johnny Cash.

All three of which were on full display at lunchtime at the Tupelo Honey Café in downtown Asheville.

Johnny Cash provides the perfect sound track to lunch. Even Yankees who think they don’t like country music, like The Man in Black.

Even Yankees who think they don’t like grits, will love them here.

Tupelo Honey Café’s motto is “Asheville’s New South Kitchen”.

Translation: traditional Southern cooking exotically spruced up in the hands of a creative chef from New Jersey who fell in love with the South.

The result is one of the South’s premier meeting places for open-minded North Carolina natives and adventurous Northern tourists and transplants. Like what Willie Nelson did for the rednecks and the hippies in Austin, the Tupelo Honey Café does for hungry Rebels and Yankees here in Asheville.

I say open-minded natives because the Southern cooking coming out of the kitchen here bares little resemblance to the biscuits and grits at your local town square meat-and-three.

No ordinary Southern restaurant would serve warm biscuits with organic home-made jam rather than a traditional pat of butter. Or gild their grits with goat cheese or red pepper (or, anything in the least bit spicy). Or, heaven forbid, serve it all along with a flight of locally produced microbrews.

But that’s exactly what you get here -- to the delight of an eclectic mix of locals, transplants and tourists alike.

Yeah, it may not be like grandma fixed it, but these folks appreciate good food when they taste it.

Like the shrimp and grits, one of my all time favorite dishes.

What I love about shrimp and grits is that like the snow flakes falling outside on the College St. sidewalk on this frigid afternoon, no two versions are ever the same.

In the small Southern town I live in, you can go to over a dozen eateries to try different versions of the classic Low Country dish – some with cheese, some without; some with gravy, some without; some with ham, some with sausage, some with bacon, some without; some with creamy grits, some with fried grits. And you know what? Every last one of them is delicious.

Shrimp and grits rewards creativity. A perfect choice at a place like the Tupelo Honey Café.

Fresh shrimp layered on a creamy bed of goat cheese grits, generously enhanced by discs of andouille sausage and smothered in a spicy red pepper gravy, this has to be one of the best shrimp and grits dishes of all time.

The big surprise was the major taste-bud-kicking spice in these shrimp and grits.

Fortunately, the Tupelo Honey Café, like most eateries here in “Beer City USA”, had just what my taste buds needed – a nice selection of local microbrews on tap.

Ah, but here’s the dilemma. Which local microbrew?

So many beers, so little time.

Just when I thought my lunch couldn’t get any better, my enthusiastic friendly waitress solved my problem by suggesting a flight of beer – the indecisive beer drinker’s salvation.

Sure enough, within seconds, she brought out four 5 oz. servings of locally brewed beer and helpfully identified and described each one, which is very important for determining favorites for future beer drinking adventures.

Johnny Cash, shrimp and grits – AND an education.

Who ever said drinking beer kills brain cells anyway?

Well, to be honest, I’ve already forgotten the name of the pilsner. But that’s okay. Skunky like a Eurotrash import, it wasn’t going to make my top ten list anyway.

The Pisgah Porter would be perfect evidence for my “don’t judge a beer by its color” mantra. The darkest beer on this flight by far, was the most tasteless. Thin, bland and watery, this porter just didn’t do it for me.

The second darkest beer, Highland Gaelic Ale, was much tastier – a nice balance between sweet malt and hoppy spice.

By far the best of the flight was the Pisgah Pale Ale, a locally brewed organic beer that had a nice strong hoppy taste and a crisp, clean finish.

We have a winner!

My waitress, curious about my scientific conclusion, concurred with my decision.

“That’s my favorite too,” she said. “It’s delicious!”

As the last strains of “Folsom Prison Blues” played on the sound system and I pulled on my overcoat to venture back into the icy mountain air, I contemplated what a quirky unique place this is.

Carolina and New York accents peacefully comingling.

Out-of-this-world Southern cooking by a chef from New Jersey.

Mouth-tinglingly spicy shrimp and grits.

And chicks who dig hoppy microbrewed beers.

Like the food served up at the Tupelo Honey Café, Asheville is one of a kind.

Rating: Bought the Shirt!

The Greatest Night Of My Life

Barley’s Taproom & Pizzeria
42 Biltmore Ave.
Asheville, NC

Beer Selection: Welcome to heaven.

Food: Awesome pizza – made of beer!

Welcome to “Beer City USA”.

In other words, welcome to heaven!

No, seriously. Tiny Asheville, North Carolina, up here in the mountains of far western North Carolina won an official poll conducted by some official sounding beer geeks who keep track of this sort of thing.

Beer City USA!

Two years in a row. Over other such malted barley Meccas as Portland, Oregon and Portland, Maine.

Asheville has nine – count ‘em – nine microbreweries! And three or four bars dedicated to hard-core, obscure beers. And several stores that sell nothing but microbrews.

Basically, you can get any beer made anywhere on the planet somewhere in Asheville.

Just don’t ask for a Bud Light. Please.

Barley’s Taproom & Pizzeria is one of the best places in Beer City USA to try out some of these cool beers. Their motto is one any Suit in a Strange Place can appreciate: “Where suit and tie meet tie-dye.”

The fun begins as soon as you sit down in the 1920s appliance-store-turned-beer-paradise and open the six page menu.

Six page menu…of beer.

Oh yeah! I was giddy as a schoolgirl at a Justin Bieber concert, flipping through the pages, perusing all the descriptions of all the obscure beers I’d never even heard of.

Think about that for a minute.

I’m Suit757.

I fly around the country every day. Been to all 50 states. Touch ground in all four time zones on a weekly basis.

And I like beer. A lot.

I always try whatever happens to be the most local, weirdest beer I can lay my hands on.

In Montana, good ole’ Moose Drool is ubiquitous. In Hawaii, I’ll take the Kona Fire Rock. In Alaska, give me the Alaskan Smoked Porter. In Mississippi, make it a Lazy Magnolia Southern Pecan Nut Brown.

In Florida? Well, in Florida, I’m usually stuck with Miller Lite. (Florida has the lamest beer drinkers in America -- although Virginia is a close second.)

But you get the idea.

Cool local beers excite me. And on that most rare of occasion I find one I’ve never heard of before? Well, stand back buddy.

So you can imagine my excitement scanning Barley’s page after page of cool sounding beers that have never before graced my liver.

I mean, my friends sometimes accuse me of getting overly excited about things like this. Inevitably, at some point during peak frivolity on an evening like this, I’ve been know to blurt out to them, “This is the greatest night of my life!”

But my joy turned to despair as I quickly realized that my liver probably wouldn’t appreciate it if I tried all six pages of newfound brew.

I had to choose.

But how?

One of the great aspects of craft beer is matching beer to seasons.

Spring and summer seasonals tend to be lighter. Fall seasonals usually default to Oktoberfest, a mild, German-style beer or festive pumpkin ales.

But winter is my favorite beer drinking season. ‘Tis the season for the strong, dark manly beers that put hair on your chest. Lots of hops or lots of malted barley or lots of alcohol.

Or, better yet, lots of all three.

These are the kinds of beers you sip in front of a roaring fire on a cold winter’s night.

Winter beers are beer lovers’ beers. I have a beer fridge at home stocked with nine different varieties of winter beer (not that I am ever there to enjoy them).

So that’s how I solved my dilemma. I wanted to start with a fresh winter beer on draft I’ve never tried before: Asheville’s own Highland Brewing Company’s Cold Mountain Winter Ale.

It was dark and delicious like a good winter beer should be, with just a touch of cinnamon and vanilla to put you in the holiday spirit.

Good choice, Suit757. Good choice.

Of course as soon as my waitress dropped off my pint I began strategizing my next move.

The worst thing you can do in a place like Barley’s is get caught unprepared, with a near empty pint glass, a rapidly approaching waitress, and no idea what you want next. Such lack of planning can lead to the unforgivable, “Uh, I guess I’ll just have another one of these.”

No. A true beer drinking professional has to plan his evening like a general planning for battle. Not George W. Bush looking for WMD.

Notice I haven’t mentioned a word about food yet. Not even going to look at the food menu until I have my beer plan in place.

I mentally noted four or five that I really wanted to try before they shut off the lights and kicked me out into the frigid cold streets of Asheville.

This may sound sacrilegious, but my second beer wasn’t a beer.

It was a spiced mead.

Mead? Isn’t that the stuff toothless medieval barbarians used to drink before God invented beer?

Uh, yeah. Cool, huh?

Where else, other than Beer City USA, will I ever get the chance to try mead?

It turns out that mead is as closely related to beer as I am to Michael Jackson. Not close.

In fact, mead, which is fermented from honey, is more like wine. And that’s exactly how Barley’s serves it. “On draft,” at room temperature in a wine glass.

Loaded with cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves, my spiced mead tasted like a thick, sweet, spicy cider. Like liquid pumpkin pie. Not terrible for a cold December night, but not very thirst-quenching either.

As luck would have it, after my first sip of mead, the waitress brought my pizza to the table.

I grabbed her and pleaded, “Look. I like the mead you just brought me just fine. I’m going to drink it, I promise. But I need a BEER!”

Totally understanding, within 30 seconds, she brought me out a Catawba Valley King Don's Pumpkin Ale, a local take on the classic American brew.

Back in Colonial times, Americans had to import barley from Europe. So sometimes it was just easier and cheaper to substitute locally-grown pumpkins in their home-brewed beer.

And darn tasty too.

Before I could make room in my home beer fridge for the winter beers, I had to finish off my seven different varieties of pumpkin ale. I’m happy to say, King Don’s ranks right up there with the best.

Did I mention Barley’s also serves some of the best pizza on Planet Earth? With all that hoppy excitement, I almost forgot.

And get this. The crust is made of beer.

No. Really.

I asked my waitress to explain it twice. Something about spent barley from the brewing process.

Hey, you don’t have to tell me three times. If it is made of beer, I’ll try it.

I’m glad I did. Absolutely delicious. The crust was just a little chewy with a nice grain flavor.

But of course, the best part of any pizza is the dead animal parts that go on top.

In addition to onions and sun dried tomatoes, my pizza was loaded with pepperoni, andouille sausage, salami and beefalo.

Beefalo?

Yes. The waitress said it is a local all natural, organic, free-range cross between a cow and a bison.

I’m sorry. There is nothing “all natural” about creating an entirely new species just to add a new topping to pizza.

As it turns out, the salami and spicy andouille sausage stole the show from the crumbled bits of Frankencow. But hey, I’m a sucker for something new every time.

Every bite of pizza packed a spicy meat-filled wallop. Which was darn convenient because I had to drink two more beers to get through the pizza.

Venturing onto the long list of bottled beer, I had the R.J. Rockers First Snowfall, which was an appropriate choice since just outside Barley’s welcoming front door, Asheville was experiencing its first snowfall of the winter – along with 18 degree temperatures, 25 MPH winds and wind chill of zero.

Dark and strong, I was really impressed by such a high quality beer from the mountains of South Carolina, a state not otherwise known for interesting brews.

I wrapped up my evening of beer drinking, mead sipping and beefalo chomping with a draft of Pennsylvania’s Victory Harvest Pale Ale, a hoppy contrast to the winter beers I’d been sampling all night.

As I sat nursing the last few sips and bracing myself to venture outside into the frozen snow-filled mountain air, a profound thought came to my admittedly somewhat foggy mind. Stomach full of hops, barley and chopped-up, organic, hybrid animal parts, I realized, this really and truly just might be the greatest night of my life.

Rating: Bought the Shirt!

A Liberal-Hater’s Confession

Early Girl Eatery
8 Wall Street
Asheville, NC

Beer selection: Exciting variety of local brews for lunch or breakfast!

Food: Delicious, down-home, sustainable, natural, cage-free, hormone-free, hand-scooped, grass-fed, free-range, organic, personally-blessed-by-Pope-Benedict Southern cooking.

I hate liberals.

I’ve dedicated my entire life to defeating everything they stand for.

I especially hate that they see every problem, vice and inconvenience of everyday life as an opportunity to use the levers of government to take more money and liberty from me.

Why don’t you just leave me the #@$% alone!?!

But after a visit to the Early Girl Eatery in liberal heaven Asheville, North Carolina, even I have to confess they get a few things right.

Like food. And beer.

I mean, think about it. Think about your city.

Where do “conservatives” live...and eat…and drink?

Right. On a cul-de-sac amid some cookie-cutter soulless expanse of suburban hell.

They hop in their minivan with “W” sticker attached and drive exactly 2.7 miles (which takes 15 minutes due to all the traffic lights) to the nearest strip shopping center where they dine at some corporate chain outparcel restaurant and order the “2 for 20” and a 22oz. draft of Bud Light.

Where do liberals in your city live?

Right. In the cool part of town.

With the cobblestone streets lined with a canopy of century old oak trees, 100 year old Victorian mansions and interesting, eclectic shops, bistros and bars. And the old timey movie theater that plays the obscure “edgy” (a favorite word of liberals) flicks the cineplex won’t run.

Think Germantown in Columbus. Georgetown in DC. Ghent in Norfolk. Riverside in Jacksonville. Every city’s got one.

Granted, the weirdo dope-smoking, forehead-pierced cross-dressers creep the crap out of me too, but that’s the price you have to pay for a good local craft beer and gourmet pizza.

Of course most of my friends who describe themselves as “paleo-libertarians” (think, conservatives who like to have fun) aren’t familiar with either of these living arrangements.

No. Paleo-libertarians live deep in the swamp, out in the woods or up on the mountain where they can kill their own meat, collect their own rainwater (before Obama banned it) and sit on a tinder box of ammo in anticipation of the “conservatives” and liberals screwing the whole thing up.

These are the guys who will be prepared when America is reduced to a rubble-strewn landscape patrolled by marauding flesh-eating zombies.

Okay, so these guys have probably watched “Red Dawn” and “Zombieland” a few too many times, but you get the idea. I’m headed to their house the first sign of trouble.

Which somehow gets me back to the liberal, organic, free-range downtown of Asheville, North Carolina, the quintessential liberal neighborhood.

And my confession.

Organic, free-range, all-natural just tastes better than frozen, processed, boxed, nitrated.

There. I said it.

Here’s the problem.

Unfortunately, liberals think all six billion people on the planet should be force-fed this way by government fiat.

As far as I’m concerned, if George W. Bush supporters want to live off a steady diet of Chicken McNuggets, Bud Light and high fructose corn syrup, they should be free to do so.

Me? Given the choice, I’ll take the all-natural fare served at the Early Girl Eatery.

Every day.

Everything I ordered – from the locally brewed Ninja Porter to the fried green tomatoes to the North Carolina Smoky Mountain stream trout to the candied yams to the ham-studded collard greens to the buttermilk biscuit – was made fresh, organic, all-natural and local.

And absolutely delicious.

The local organic fried green tomatoes just tasted more tomatoey. The collards tasted greener. The yams tasted yammier.

You get the idea.

And it makes sense when you think about it. The less you molest your food between seedling and plate, the better it will taste when it gets there.

That’s a concept even an avowed enemy like me of liberal dope-smoking weirdoes can appreciate.

Rating: Seriously Thought About Buying Shirt.

Christmas: The Most Wonderful Time For A Beer

Sapphire Mountain Brewing Company
553 West Main Street
Sylva, NC
Visited December 5, 2010

Beer Selection: Good variety of local microbrews.

Food: Sandwiches and good pizza (supposedly, if you get there before 7pm on a day that isn’t snowing).

‘Tis the season!

Main Street on the quaint far-Western North Carolina mountain town of Sylva was decked out for Christmas.

As if on cue to enhance the ambiance, like out of one of those ubiquitous Budweiser Clydesdale TV ads, the snow flakes began to fly as I pulled up in front of Sapphire Mountain Brewing Company.

The owner of the place, Craig Shatto, jumps into the Christmas spirit with both snow boots. The entire courtyard leading up to the atmospheric 100-year-old mountain-home-turned-restaurant is filled with piped-in Christmas carols and 16 fully lighted and decorated 12-foot Christmas trees.

Those corporate hacks at Wal-Mart, who now subject their customers to Federal Homeland Security videos at the check-out line but bar their greeters from wishing Merry Christmas, could never hire this guy.

Waaaay too festive.

The celebration of the season continues once you open the front door and trod the centuries-old hardwood pine floors, as more holiday music and Christmas trees await you inside.

Secular?

Sure. But during these days of Big Brother Wal-Mart military-industrial bahhumbugness and taxpayer-owned banks that have banished Christmas trees from their lobbies, a right-wing Christian takes what he can get when he goes out drinking.

Unfortunately, my Christmas spirit dissipated quickly once I presented myself to the hostess.

“I kind of think we are closed.”

“What????” I yelled incredulously as I looked at my watch.

“You kind of think you are closed at 7:15?”

Now, as a resident of a small Southern town myself, I’ve long ago learned that you don’t want to be hungry after 8pm – or you’ll end up at the Huddle House (the poor man’s version of Waffle House).

But closing at 7:15 – even on a Sunday – is a bit ridiculous.

After all, my Best Western desk clerk highly recommended the pizza at Sapphire Brewing Company – and assured me they are open until midnight on Sundays.

My loud protest prompted the manager to scurry to the hostess stand and assure this suddenly unhappy customer that they would be happy to serve me – as long as I don’t order pizza. He already shut the pizza oven down for the night.

Bummer.

The manager explained that as soon as it starts snowing, business dries up quicker than a snowball in July.

Never mind that the snow flurries – while festively atmospheric – weren’t about to accumulate into so much as a Dairy Queen Blizzard.

“You’d think these Carolina mountain people would be used to it,” he said. “But they lock themselves up tight at the first sight of a flake.”

Just then, the front door opened and a party of five presented themselves for an evening of beer and food, which made me feel better about any inconvenience my existence might have caused.

Relegated to the sandwich section of the menu, my Italian Sausage sandwich was okay. Nothing spectacular. Topped with a few onions and red peppers supposedly sautéed in “Sapphire High Red Ale”, it could have used something more – maybe a marinara or some sort of zesty condiment.

On the side, I ordered onion petals that came with a beer-cheese dipping sauce, which just didn’t work. The texture of the beer-cheese was too thick for the delicately fried petals. And even if you could somehow get the beer-cheese onto the petal, the flavors just don’t mix that well.

Look. I love beer. And I love dipping sauces. But even I think you can stretch it too far on occasion.

Clearly, the highlight of the meal was the beer and the appetizer of crab & jalapeño poppers.

While not house-made, the pre-packaged poppers packed a spicy, cheesy, crunchy bite. All the more reason to reach for the specialty of the house.

Beer.

My friendly, easy-going waiter – who, unlike the hostess, didn’t seem put out in the least to be working past the ungodly hour of 7:15 – recommended a porter from the local Green Man Ales brewery.

The porter was so good, I ordered a couple, rather than sampling Sapphire’s other selections.

Dark, heavy and full of nutty, chocolaty flavor, Green Man Porter was the perfect choice for a cold winter’s Smoky Mountain evening.

While snowfall, carols and red ornaments on a green Christmas tree may be the secular symbols of Christmas for many, nothing puts me in the festive sprit like a dark, toasty winter ale.

Merry Christmas, indeed!

Rating: Would Wear A Free Shirt.