You know you’re in a small, sleepy North Carolina town when the headline on lead story on the front page of the local paper, The Highlander, reads—in 72-point type—“Town Tackles Pothole Fix.”

    Still, while the town of Highlands has only 3,200 year-round residents—up from 924 in the 2010 U.S. Census—come summer the population swells to 18,000, despite being an almost three-hour drive from Atlanta and two from Greenville. In winter the town tries mightily to attract visitors with events like Root Bound (left), a celebration of Appalachian food, craft and music culture, which I attended last month in venues spread over 6.2 square miles. Along with The Bascom: Center for Visual Arts, the cross streets of town are lined with galleries, boutiques, restaurants and a first-rate wineshop within the Mountain Fresh Grocery.
    One of the town’s principal draws is that it’s not so hot, by which I mean climatically. But it's very cool. For centuries wealthy North Carolinians escaped the brutal summer heat and humidity of the rest of state by ascending to 4,118 feet in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where summer temperatures in Highlands average 76 degrees. And those deep, piney mountains are very beautiful, punctuated with hollows and waterfalls, rivers and lakes that filled in for upstate New York in the 1992 movie The Last of the Mohicans, which was filmed nearby Bridal Veil Falls (below).

            The Root Bound festival, spread over a weekend, had workshops in everything from biscuit making to whiskey tasting, salt tasting to songwriting, and at each night’s dinners top-flight bluegrass bands performed, including the Forlorn Strangers, Nitrograss, the SteelDrivers and the Dixie Bluegrass Boys.
    Sadly, the updated Appalachian food served at the luncheons and dinners by young restaurant chefs failed to please many of those Southerners who attended. The chefs insisted on cooking up grub like souse (headcheese), rabbit liver mush and grits soup that North Carolinians gave up eating as soon as they had money enough to eat better things. Even one of the attending great Southern chefs, Louis Osteen, told me he never grew up eating that kind of food.
    One of the best events I attended was a fascinating conversation between Kentucky-born food historian Ronni Lundy, formerly of the Louisville Courier-Journal, and best-selling author Sharyn McCrumb (below), whose books The Ballad of Tom Dooley and The Unquiet Grave brought to life the reality behind the folklore.  McCrumb explained that the enduring tradition of Appalachian people cherishing their own ghost stories goes back to Scottish immigrant folklore brought to the misty hills of North Carolina with names like “The Story of Boojum and Hootin’ Annie,” “The Moon-Eyed People” and “The Demon Dog of Valle Crucis.”  Hiking the extensive trails of the region is always finished before twilight.
    During the festival I stayed at the Old Edwards Inn and Spa, whose elegance depends on a décor well adapted from Appalachian and European traditions wed to all the modern amenities. One of the most comfortable and comforting places to loaf over well-made cocktails is at the Inn’s Hummingbird Lounge or in the beautifully appointed library. One of the Inn’s principal virtues is its bucolic quiet, maintained by an enforced policy for a “sleep-friendly environment” and “zero-tolerance noise policy,” with too-loud revelers booted off the property.
    The Inn also has one of the finest restaurants in the South, Madison’s, with a menu that features sustainable, local provender from purveyors with regional names like Sunburst Trout Farm, Painted Hills Farm, Anson Mills, Benton's Country Ham and Sequatchie Cove. Executive Chef Chris Huerta uses them all to create the sumptuous menu backed by a first-rate wine list overseen by the ebullient sommelier Philippe Brainos.
    At breakfast, as the sun dissipated the morning mist outside, I enjoyed hot buttermilk biscuits with pan gravy and housemade sausage.  At dinner, I stayed close to the kitchen’s North Carolina roots with a potato-and-ham hock soup with bacon jam, cheddar, a fried egg yolk and green onions ($9); very well-wrought charcuterie; and what is possibly the best rendering of sunburst trout I’ve ever had in the South, with spaghetti squash and andouille cream, roasted beets, baby bok choy and almond-beet pesto ($27). Lobster bisque is touched with American caviar ($9), and beer tartare is graced with balsamic vinegar, an egg and grilled bread. Seared sea scallops ($15) were superbly rendered, with creamy cauliflower, and acorn squash, farro, dried raisins and cashew jus ($16). Pheasant breast is stuffed with mushrooms and accompanied by a lentil ragôut, squash ratatouille and hen-of-the-woods mushrooms ($28), and short ribs are braised slowly for 48 hours and sided with root vegetable risotto and cheddar ($30). Dishes can be too complicated, confusing flavors, but largesse fills every plate, not least in pastry chef Vinzenz Aschbacher's  desserts like English toffee pudding. seven layer cake and the warm seasonal fruit cobbler.
    The Inn also runs a sprawling nearby property called Half-Mile Farm (right) overlooking Apple Lake, offering both contemporary lodgings and several still rustic cabins set close to the woods.
    I can’t say that Highland gets overrun with second homers and tourists in summer, but spring is breaking out just about now, reminding me of the old folk song “Wildwood Flower” as sung by the Carter Family: 

I will twine, I will mingle my raven black hair
With the roses so red and the lilies so fair.
And the myrtle so bright with it's emerald hue
The pale amanita and the hyssop so blue. 

    Whatever you think of the overwhelming dazzle of today’s Times Square and the Great White Way, the restaurants in the area have never been better, especially when it comes to Asian food. In sheer numbers it would be hard to pass by more than half a dozen storefronts on any street extending east and west from Times Square and not find a sushi bar, Chinese restaurant, Thai, Korean or Indian eatery, at various price levels, usually with pre-theater menus.
    Sushi Seki Times Square—named for Chef Seki Shi—is the flagship of a group of three, with branches on the East Side and Chelsea, and it distinguishes itself by having a sushi bar and lounge up front, an omakase sushi room upstairs where Chef Seki works, and the six-seat Kappo Room to the rear, featuring both à la carte and a fixed price menu at a remarkably fair $75, as well as a sommelier of sake and wine.
    Chef Seki learned his craft and developed his knowledge of fish at Tokyo’s famed Tsukiji Market, moving to New York in 1991 to work at a series of Japanese restaurants that included Sushi of Gari, then opening the first Sushi Seki on First Avenue uptown. In 2014 the Chelsea branch debuted, and this past year Times Square opened.
    Yasuyuki Suzuki serves as both general manager and sake sommelier, having completed the Brewing Society of Japanese Sake Tasting Master Program to certify as an Advanced Sake Professional. So the array of sakes is superb, and “Yasu” happily provides information about all of them to match with your meal.  What Yasu does not provide, service and beverage director Rick Zouad does with wines, and I trust his judgment with pairings..  Both are very affable fellows, as is the whole staff.
    At the entrance  there is a “mini-omakase bar” sushi counter (above),  where Chef  Qing Yang (who is actually Chinese) shows a deft hand at seeming to do very little with delectable results to top quality seafood. The fat strips in the toro are evident, the red snapper glistens, and the rice is impeccably formed and seasoned—no need for soy sauce and wasabi dipping.
    My problem with sushi is I can’t get enough of it—which is why inferior sushi bars push “all you can eat” menus.  And after such delicacies as Yang’s toro taku (bluefin toro with pickled daikon tartare); hamachi of yellowtail with a sliver of jalapeño, garlic puree and ponzu; New Zealand King salmon with onion sauce and tomato sauté; tai shio of red snapper with lemon juice and Okinawa sea salt; and “Tofu Tofu” of lean bluefin tuna akami on pan-seared tofu topped with tofu sauce, I was both blissful and ravenous for more.
    But we were on our way to the Kappo Room (right)—kappo means to cook, and refers to a dining spot somewhere between the traditional kaiseki cuisine and the casual izakaya style cuisine.  There we sat at another counter in front of an open kitchen—not a particularly attractive or well-lighted one—to feast further on an array of modern Japanese seasonal cuisine, beginning with a fried Pacific oyster with tomato tartare, and slowly poached, velvety tender Hokkaido octopus with simmered daikon and pan-fried gyoza of pork and cabbage, accompanied by a 2014 Sauvignon Blanc from Soliste “Lune et Soleil.”
    Next was a crisp tempura dish of anago (sea eel), kuruma ebi (black tiger shrimp), wakasagi (lake smelt) and assorted vegetables, with a Domaine Ferret “Le Clos” 2013.
    Lustrous yuzu and miso-infused cod had its characteristic richness, which paired well with a Guy Breton Morgon Régnié 2015, then came a soothing hot pot of duck and tofu in sweet dashi broth with which a Choryo “Tarusake” Junmai Yamahai sake from Nara went beautifully.
    All of this food lay lightly on the stomach, so we were happy to try several desserts that were way out of the ordinary for a Japanese restaurant: creamy yuzu panna cotta; a honeyed crème brûlée; and mochi ice cream of matcha, salted caramel, Mandarin orange cream and double chocolate. All were part of the $75 menu, though all items are also available à la carte.
    I’m sure I’d be just as happy upstairs eating nothing but classic sushi made by Chef Seki, but I’d be missing so much more from the downstairs menus. What a happy dilemma to have!

Open nightly for dinner.