Stretch Your Dining $$ with AIR’s Main Course Dining

The Asheville Independent Restaurant Association (AIR) has a great plan to help you save money when you dine out at a number of great restaurants. Here’s the deal: you can purchase a dining booklet for $50 at AIR’s Website or pick one up at the Asheville Visitor’s Center. The coupon booklet offers $600 worth of coupons at 18 restaurants:

The participating restaurants in the 2010 Main Course Dining Guide are:
~ Blue Ridge Dining Room
~ Bouchon
~ Burgermeister’s Kitchen & Tap
~ City Bakery
~ Corner Kitchen
~ Ed Boudreaux’s Bayou Bar-B-Que
~ fig
~ Fiores Ristorante Toscana
~ Frankie Bones
~ Grovewood Cafe
~ Horizons
~ Laughing Seed
~ Mela Indian Restaurant
~ Pomodoros Greek and Italian Cafe
~ Savoy
~ Sunset Terrace
~ Vincenzo’s
~ Westville Pub

While ALL of these are great places, I have some personal recommendations: Blue Ridge Dining, Horizons and the Sunset Terrace at the Grove Park Inn offer exceptional food and service. I’ve never had a bad meal here. Always exquisite.

I love Burgermeister’s — food and atmosphere. It’s just a fun place.

Also, I have some great friends who have created stunning restaurants:

High school pal Kevin Westmoreland owns Corner Kitchen in Biltmore Village and he always gets rave reviews. Another high school friend, Sandy Waldrop and her husband, Larry, own Grovewood Cafe. And, my former WLOS co-worker, and good friend,  Tommy Tsiros gets great applause for his Pomodoros Cafe. The food is consistently wonderful at all of these places!