GUESTS: Sean Piper (Jargon) and April Moon Harper & Belinda Rabb (Sunny Point Café)
The Matt Mittan Show
English - September 11, 2019 22:00 - 25 minutes - 17.8 MB - ★★★★★ - 8 ratingsBusiness News News Commentary matt mittan asheville business entrepreneurship talk independent community civility collaboration neighborly Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Joining Matt in this podcast:
- Sean Piper, Jargon
- April Moon Harper & Belinda Rabb, Sunny Point Café
Two of the award-winning restaurants along Haywood Road, Sunny Point Café and Jargon both took on the initial challenge of renovating/restoring buildings that had been vacant for a long time - providing revitalization while preserving part of the history of West Asheville. The neon “Cafe” sign at Sunny Point Café was found in the building, while at Jargon custom art incorporates some of the old shoe shop tools discovered as they were working on the space. Both places were able to utilize the street facing walls, but built new to finish out their spaces.
Sunny Point Café opened in 2003 and has become a destination for locals and visitors alike. Initially open with counter service only for breakfast and lunch, it quickly morphed into a full-service restaurant for breakfast and lunch (available 7 days a week), with dinner (available Tues-Sat) added soon after. A roof was added over the patio to accommodate more seating and extensive landscaping was done to make pleasant places for people to wait for tables. The on-site garden was started shortly after opening as a place to grow flowers for the tables and is now a full kitchen garden, with paid staff, growing produce, herbs, and flowers for use in the restaurant - garden produce is featured in the evening specials.
Jargon is open for dinner seven days a week and features “social cuisine” - small, interesting, beautifully presented, share plates. Their food is intended to be the catalyst for conversation over dinner. They set the mood with background music played on vinyl.
Both places offer small batch sodas and interesting cocktails.
Both places have won awards from Stu Helm, The Food Fan - Sunny Point Café’s Shrimp ‘n’ Grits received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Stu in 2018 as he retired the category after presenting it to them multiple years in a row. Jargon won for Best New Restaurant the year they opened.
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