aklikins and I headed up to Asheville for Labor Day weekend and had a spectacular time (one of those vacations where the worst thing you can say about it is that it ended). Amongst the highlights were staying at the Hill House B&B, which is a favorite of mine, massages at Spa Theology (highly recommended), and visiting Adrian’s friends from high school at their restaurant/bar in Brevard, The Square Root.

The Square Root has *wonderful* food — my favorite was a “Surf & Turf” appetizer featuring strips of delicious, rare steak and sashimi tuna with a teriyaki-style demiglace — YUM!  Also tasty was the pecan-crusted fried Brie (and yes, fried + cheese is almost always a win in my book), though I shouldn’t have eaten the raw apples with it, as they triggered a little bit of my food allergy.

Since we were there on Sunday, which is trivia night at the Square Root, we stayed for that and didn’t do too badly considering it was just Adrian, Scott (Adrian’s friend from high school) and me (and I suck at trivia).

The other restaurants of note were the 28806 Deli, which is tucked away in a little quasi-industrial-maybe-used-to-be-a-drycleaner-building, yet serves some amazing fusion cuisine (a salad of lump snow crab meat, strawberries and mango with spring greens and a ginger-papaya dressing, for instance) and Fig, where I had perhaps the best pork tenderloin ever, served on a puff-pastry tartlette with figs and vidalia onions.  We finished with the pana cotta and pots de creme — meltingly wonderful.

Add to that some quality shopping and an adorable traveling companion and you get an amazing vacation — HOORAY!