Southern Food In The Blue Ridge Mountains

On my last visit to North Carolina, my father took my family to lunch at the Pisgah Inn. It's a seasonal hotel at the top of of the Blue Ridge Parkway. The inn overlooks the the entire Blue Ridge Mountain range and has the most remarkable views.

The gift shop had the yummiest local toffee and it also had these locally made seed flowers. I would totally have held a bouquet of these at my wedding. I'm a sucker for flowers with buttons in the middle.
Now, while the hotel is not known for having the most remarkable food. It's restaurant is always packed with people. Because the views are worth the drive alone. Now, that being said, we actually got pretty lucky in the food department because we stuck with the southern classics, I mean come on, when in Rome.
We started with these beautiful corn fritters.
Inside they were like sweet, molten, corn surprises that just exploded when you ate them. Next we went super-southern with fried pickles! Yes, and guess what, they are not as gross as they the sound. In fact, they were kind of awesome.
Inside...
Sweet tea (actually half sweet/half unsweetened).
The most awesome thing that we ordered up there on the mountain, was my Dad's local baked river trout.
Our waitress had a brilliant way of de-boning our trout at the table.
She made a slice down the middle of the fish and with some tricky fork-work she took the spine and the bones right out.
It was an insanely buttery, fresh fish, cooked so simply but with a fantastic flavor. Not bad for a restaurant with a not-so-good reputation. I think it's reputation might need a revision. When we finished our meal our whole family hurried to the van (so I could make my flight home). The mountains said goodbye, and I started missing North Carolina the instant I turned my back on them.