After the very cold temperatures I wrote about last week, we’ve been having classic mountain weather – fog, drizzle, and mist. Some folks complain about it, but I find it very beautiful, especially at dawn and dusk. It’s also a perfect excuse to make a fire and sit and talk, which I happen to love.
I’ve been down with the flu, so I haven’t seen this for myself, but I’m told that Danny Mellman and Michelle Moran’s new restaurant and bar is open in downtown Blue Ridge. It’s called Masseria: Kitchen + Bar, and it’s located downstairs in the “clock tower” building on East Main, at 67 Roberts Way, not far from their two other restaurants. It faces on the train tracks, and has a full bar. The menu will apparently feature something of an Appalachian/Mediterranean fusion, with Appalachian ingredients such as ramps and sorghum alongside handmade pasta and wood fired pizza. Chicken, fish, and vegetables are also in the mix. They apparently raised $12,649 toward the venture in a crowd funding effort on IndiGoGo, so here’s to their promotional brio. That’s two new bar/restaurant concepts in Blue Ridge in the past month or so (there’s a previous post about Chester’s).
I had a report of what looked like a food truck advertising Cucina Rustica parked in the empty lot in the same block on East Main as the Grocery and the Clocktower building. Thinking that would be an exciting development, I asked the folks at the restaurant. For now, they say that their plan is just to sell pizza and some other items during festivals and special events. So no regular food truck yet, but the Blue Ridge restaurant wars may be heating up.