Local Area - Winter Announcements

It's been a little while since I've added to the blog, but we've been busy here at Derbyshire through the winter. We had three closings during a time when families are normally just regrouping from the holidays and planning for the new year. Over the past few months we've welcomed the new property owners, worked on planning our 5K race in May (www.DerbyDash5K.com), and given enough tours of the community to keep things hopping at the office.

Over the next few posts, I want to share a little more about where Derbyshire is located. One really great thing about this community is that you have the ability to enjoy a more rural, less-rushed life and still be near enough to all of those things that you would expect from a larger city. The proximity to gas, groceries, hospitals, shopping, and airports is closer than you would probably expect when you first drive through the rolling hills, horse farms, and beautiful wooded spaces that this area is so well known for.

However, in this first post, I wanted to share two really wonderful announcements that came out this winter. Both are of interest to the equestrian and the non-equestrian, although the first announcement will be a bit more exciting for the horsey folks.

We had heard some rumors regarding the purchase of White Oak Plantation. It turns out the rumors were true, and we will be welcoming a new "world class equestrian venue" just a few miles from the Derbyshire entrance. You can read more about the announcement here in the Tryon Daily Bulletin article that came out in January. Not only will this be a tremendous boost for the local equestrian competitors, businesses, and organizations in an already incredibly equine-focused community, but it will also provide an increase in the local economy in general in the form of additional revenue, sales taxes, hotel taxes, etc. as it brings more people into the area.

The second announcement, which is on a much smaller scale that the first, is the one that is probably having the most immediate impact on me and all of the other big-chain coffee shop fans. We officially welcome our first Starbucks last month. Derbyshire is less than ten minutes from the Ingles Market where the new Starbucks in located. I've already visited more times than I care to admit. I think this is a really great example of how this area offers the best of both worlds. You can enjoy a rural drive where the only thing that might slow traffic down is a carefully driven horse trailer and still be just a few minutes from picking up your grande mocha frappuccino (not to mention a bunch of great organic, unprocessed, healthy grocery finds at Ingles).

Next week I'll go into more detail about the local area and how close all of those important shopping/health/travel places are so that you can get your bearings, but right now I'm going to head out and pick up a latte. Have a great weekend!

Local Town - Landrum, SC in Southern Living

This week we'll be visiting Landrum, South Carolina. It's a great little town that is located only ten minutes from the main entrance of Derbyshire. Landrum is the nearest downtown area for grocery shopping, drug stores, good restaurants, boutique shopping, and less expensive South Carolina gasoline!

The town was recently featured in Southern Living magazine. I think it's a great little starting point for the week. You can read more about it here.

Friday Photo - 10 North Trade Lunch

I stopped at 10 North Trade Cafe Bakery in Tryon for lunch today. As always, Friday was a popular day to go out for lunch, but I was able to squeeze in right before the crowd did. One of the quiches on the chalkboard was smoked salmon boursin. Well, they had me at boursin. I paired it with a cafe salad with housemade thousand island, and they added a little slice of the banana blueberry bread. Everything was fabulous, as usual. 

If you would like to learn more about this great little restaurant that is located only twenty minutes from Derbyshire, you can jump over to my original post by clicking here.

Local Eats - 10 North Trade Cafe Bakery in Tryon, NC

One of our favorite places to eat in Tryon is the 10 North Trade Cafe Bakery. It is always one of our top four restaurants that we recommend. They serve breakfast and lunch Tuesday through Saturday and are conveniently located right downtown, mixed in with all of the little shops and fun places to visit on Trade Street.

 

Yesterday, I met up with mother and grandmother for lunch, and 10 North Trade was just as good as ever. Their lunch menu features salads (with amazing housemade dressings), soups, sandwiches, and a quiche of the day (which is actually always a choice between two). 

All of their sandwiches are served on bread from the bakery. They even have a make your own sandwich option which includes a ridiculous amount of choices, all the way from housemade pimento cheese to artichoke hearts. By the way, we finally decided on a Reuben, a chicken club, and a salmon wrap. The creamy pasta salad won out as the favorite side that day, but if you go and the apple walnut salad is in season, you should definitely get that. Guess we'll just have to go back again, darn.

One very neat thing about their menu is that you can always order a half of a salad or a half of a sandwich, which is great for smaller appetites (or those who are trying to save room for dessert)!

Speaking of dessert, we ordered the Chocolate German Cake. It was just as good as it looks! They always have at least ten cakes to choose from, not to mention the entire other bakery case with cupcakes, brownies, scones, and all other kinds of incredible.

If you're in the area, make sure you stop by 10 North Trade. It's just about twenty minutes from our office, and it's certainly a trip that we like to make often. Oh, and pick up a loaf of the sweet potato pecan bread while you are there!

Local Eats - Giardini in Columbus, NC

We are so lucky to have quite a few great restaurants near the Derbyshire community. One of those is Giardini, a wonderful farm to table Italian restaurant location about twelve minutes from the Derbyshire main entrance. The owners, Joe and Mary, focus on using locally produced foods in their dishes, and many of those foods come straight from the Giardini garden located behind this quaint yellow cottage.

I chose this past Tuesday to stop by the restaurant because I knew it was officially Pizza Tuesday. Of course that is one of the first things you see as you walk in, along with the tempting list of desserts (look closely at the bottom of the chalkboard) and the hard-to-resist cookies on the counter. Never has it been so difficult not to embrace the "eat dessert first" philosophy.

I resisted, however, and continued my photo tour through the restaurant. Giardini offers both indoor and outdoor seating. (They also have a pavilion that can be used for groups of twenty-five or more, but you'll see that in a bit.) Normally they have quite a busy dining room, but I chose to go right during the golden time between lunch and dinner so that I could be guaranteed to see the next part of the tour.

This is the built-in brick oven that stays very busy on Pizza Tuesday. The temperature stays at over 800 degrees, which allows these eleven inch pizzas to cook in just three minutes. For your information, this was a Drunken Fig pizza that belonged to someone else. I became overwhelmingly hungry after seeing this and headed upstairs to order my own.

While I was waiting a few minutes for my pizza to cook, Joe, who you will remember is one of the owners, sat down to have a little chat. They are such friendly, fun to be around people. We've had them cater several events and dinners at Derbyshire, and we always enjoy having them there!

One thing I would like to point out is the list of local suppliers that they use. If you'll notice at the very top of that list is the Giardini Garden. One really neat thing about that is that if you look at the top of the pizza menu it lists the Drunken Fig pizza, which you had just seen in the brick oven. Well, it's about time to be harvesting figs from the Giardini garden, and those will go into the pizza, and, well, I just thought that was pretty awesome. There aren't too many restaurants that I've been to that are able to say they grow their own figs that go in to a fabulous woodfired pizza.

This picture makes me hungry just looking at it. That was my portobello and porcini mushroom pizza with goat cheese. It has to have been the best pizza that I have ever eaten, and, yes, I ate it all.

After I finished trying to strike a nice balance between inhaling my pizza and savoring the delicious flavors of that pizza, Joe took me on a tour of the rest of the property. There are two more really unique things to point out about Giardini. One, they also have a portable woodfired pizza oven that can be taken to events for catering. You can enjoy any of their pizzas, or create your very own combination, anywhere!

 

The other very cool offering at Giardini is their tennis court! Joe plays tennis several times a week, and decided that a private tennis court would be a perfect addition to the back of the property (behind the garden). They even offer a tennis club where local residents can become members and play as much as they like.

Sidenote, the covered pavilion on the right of the tennis courts is the area I had mentioned before which is used for larger catering events. Right in front of that, which you cannot see in this picture, is a lighted bocce ball court. I told you Joe and Mary were fun.

Giardini creates wonderful, authentic Italian dishes, not just the pizza that I have fallen in love with. If you are in the area, stop by, check out their menu, and order something that you will be telling your friends about later.