Small Bites

Sugar Momma's Cookies:
Sugar Momma's Cookies (pictured here) has reopened in its new location at 13 Broadway, its third downtown-Asheville venue since its founding. The bakery offers cookies, ice cream, coffee, tea and bubble tea at its storefront, open Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-6 p.m., and Sat., noon-8 p.m. For more information, call 251-7277.

Photo by Jonathan Welch

Oktoberfest:
The Asheville Downtown Association is planning to mark one of the city's newest honors with an old-style tradition, announcing an Oktoberfest celebration on Wall Street. "With Asheville's recent recognition as 'Beer City USA,' the timing couldn't be better," organizer Adrian Vassallo says in a release. The Saturday, Oct. 10, event will feature local beer tastings; music from local gypsy-funk band The Goodies and polka kings The Stratton Mountain Boys; German food specials at Jack of the Wood, Cucina 24 and The Market Place; and a yodeling contest.

Tickets to the afternoon event, which include beer samples and a commemorative glass, are $25. To purchase tickets, visit ashevilledowntown.org.

Mountain Pie Company:
If real men flinch at quiche, as the early 1980s bestseller had it, they positively flee from sweets. So says Mountain Pie Company owner Merri Tyndall, who last month switched her Hendersonville bakery's name from the Front Porch Sweetery.

"It seemed like men weren't too crazy about coming in with the old name," Tyndall says. "We changed the name and they just run in, jumping up and down."

Tyndall and her husband, Bill, opened the shop at 3400 Asheville Highway last December. Although Merri Tyndall had operated numerous flower and antique shops, the Sweetery marked her first foray into the restaurant business.

"We knew we were going to make a lot of changes after we'd been open awhile," she says.

The Mountain Pie Company now offers more than a dozen varieties of homemade pies — "Today we have coconut cream, two kinds of apple, strawberry and bumbleberry," Tyndall reported when reached by phone last month — cakes and breakfast. To inaugurate its breakfast service, which includes strawberry crepes, blueberry blintzes, pancakes and waffles, Tyndall offered a free breakfast in early August. More than 130 people took advantage of the promotion.

"It was fun," Tyndall says. "There were four of us working, and we managed to make everyone happy."

Tyndall plans to hold more free breakfasts and a chili cookoff later in the fall.

Mountain Pie Company is open Tues.-Fri., 7 a.m.-2 p.m., and Sat.-Sun., 9 a.m.-2 p.m. The bakery's closed on Mondays.

To learn more, call 693-0501 or visit frontporchsweetery.com.

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