Cara Modisett

While on the road, I’m always looking for sources of good, strong, non-Starbucks coffee.

I was in Asheville, N.C., not long ago finishing up this issue’s Biltmore Estate story, and talking with artists at the Blue Spiral 1 gallery (see our website, BlueRidgeCountry.com). I grabbed a quick po’ boy at a Cajun restaurant in between interviews. Sitting at a window reading one of Asheville’s seemingly endless supply of arts tabloids, I looked across the street and saw – a bright red, British double decker bus. Parked in a pleasant little courtyard. Serving coffee.

Of course, I had to take a short detour on my way back to the gallery.

“It’s a 1963 Bristol Lodekka,” owner Ryan Cox told me. He’s from Caldwell, N.C., and he and his fiancée, Nicole Mitzel (originally from Yorktown, Va., though her family’s now in N.C.) bought the double decker coffee shop in April, gutted it, refurnished it, put in new plumbing and electrical. Now there’s a counter and a few stools in the low-ceilinged but bright interior. They sell coffee, tea, baked goods and gelato inside.

Not very long ago, Cox was general manager of a restaurant on Wall Street – New York’s Wall Street, that is, not Asheville’s. Mitzel, who has a master’s degree in theater education from NYU, was finishing a residency at the Guggenheim. Home for the holidays, she noticed the bus was for sale and told him about it.

“Come again?” was his first response, but “it didn’t take much to convince me.” They left New York and bought the bus.

As for the double decker, “it’s got good karma,” says Cox. “This used to run from Trafalgar Square out to the suburbs every day.” He and Mitzel plan to go to England and trace the bus’s old route, take pictures and put them up on the walls.

Owners Nicole Mitzel and Ryan Cox stand outside the Double Decker Coffee Company in Asheville, N.C.

As for New York, “Wall Street is like – I don’t know – being in the middle of a power plant, how supercharged everything is,” says Cox. “Sometimes you need a moment away, and on Wall Street you don’t always get that.”
As for Asheville, “it’s a city that really appreciates creativity.”
As for the coffee, it’s good and strong.

In this issue, we’re celebrating the edible side of the Appalachian region – from coffee to wine, comfort food to fine cuisine, with recipes and destinations – and we’ll be continuing those stories in a special series in 2008, our 20th anniversary year.

I am not a cook – though I appreciate the work of those who are. And what wonderful memories have their roots in food – my grandmother’s pumpkin/cranberry muffins, my great aunt’s butter cookies, fondue feasts on birthdays, church homecomings with five kinds of deviled eggs and Nellie Painter’s coconut cake.

And food makes travel that much more delicious too. Some of my favorites: Tari’s Premier Café in Berkeley Springs, W.Va.; the Laughing Seed and Tupelo Honey in Asheville, N.C.; Panacea in Waynesville; the Purple Foot in Waynesboro, Va.; The Tavern in Abingdon; Oddfellas in Floyd. And in Charlottesville – well, I could eat there for a whole year.
So pour a mug of coffee, a cup of tea or a glass of Blue Ridge wine, and feast on our third annual special issue – Mountain Flavors.


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