Small Bites

Tupelo Honey: At press time, Tupelo Honey Café was slated to open its much-awaited southern outpost Tuesday, Feb. 2, at 7:30 a.m. The location at 1829 Hendersonville Road will offer the same menu as the popular downtown venue, but a massive dining room with seats for 170 means the new restaurant will be able to accommodate reservations. Since opening-date predictions are notoriously optimistic in the food and beverage industry, it might be wise to call 505-7676 before paying a visit to Tupelo Honey II. The restaurant's also accepting online reservations at www.tupelohoneycafe.com.

Blue Water Seafood: One of Hendersonville's most popular restaurants will open a storefront in Asheville this spring, offering fresh fish and seafood to diners and retail customers.

Blue Water Seafood will open alongside City Bakery on Charlotte Street in early April.

"We're going to have a full-fledged fish market with fish, oysters, clams and everything," confirms Tracy Griffin, who co-owns the operation with her husband David.

The market will also house a small café with seating for 25. The menu's slated to include steamed shellfish, soups, beer and wine.

"As plans stand now, we're not going to be doing any frying," Griffin says. "It's a Boston-style fish shack."

Blue Water Seafood in Asheville will be open from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. every day. Griffin says she hopes the market attracts many of the customers she acquired while running a tailgate stand at Reynolds Mountain last summer. Some of those Blue Water fans' devotion was so fierce that the Griffins have delivered to their homes during the winter months.

"Where my little girl goes to school, they'll ask me to bring clams when I pick her up," Griffin says. "So there's definitely a need."

Blue Water Seafood will continue selling wholesale fish and seafood to Asheville restaurants and running its restaurant in Hendersonville.

"We'll keep everything the same in Hendersonville," Griffin says. "I'd be a fool not to."

To reach Blue Water Seafood, call 697-0503. 

Sugar Momma's: A fixture — albeit a nomadic one — of downtown Asheville's sweet scene recently shuttered its retail location, becoming a delivery-only service. As a note pinned to the cookery's door (and Facebook wall) explains, "Sugar Momma's needs to downsize and will no longer have a retail storefront." Sugar Momma's cookies will continue to be available in restaurants around town; for more information, call 251-7277.

Curras Nuevo Cuisine: Curras Dom, the Woodfin restaurant whose imminent closure was reported in this column last month, has reinvented itself as the more-affordable — and still open — Curras Nuevo Cuisine.

According to a release, co-owners Marco and Amy Gracia collaborated with a team of customer-investors to save the restaurant by making it more appealing to diners on a budget.

"The goal of the menu going forward," chef Steward Lyon says, "is to maintain our unique and creative approach to pan-Mexican cuisine, but to add some new entrées in the $12 to $20 range."

Those entrées include such rustic classics as tacos al pastor, pozole and enchilada suizas.

For more information, call 253-2111.

Martin's: Proving that even pizza isn't recession-proof, a two-year old east Asheville pizzeria recently closed.

Martin's Pizza and Pasta in 2007 took over the space previously occupied by Little Venice, pitching itself as "Home of the Square Pizza." Calls made to the phone number listed on the restaurant's Web site were unanswered.

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