Hops & Hillbillies

Saturday five us loaded up the car and headed all across the Piedmont of NC for beer and food!  Chris, Sam, Shane, Ben and me started our day off at Natty Greene’s for lunch in downtown Greensboro.  It was our first time as Chris, Sam and Shane went to UNC-G and discovered Natty Greene’s several years ago.  I am always amazed at the local breweries we have in our state – so many fun places to eat and try new craft beer. 

Natty Greene’s has so many beers on tap we could not decide, so we opted for the sampler tray of 6 different beers to start with.  After sampling the Old Town Brown, Hessian Hefe-weizen, Elm Street IPA, Autumnfest Vienna Lager, Full Moon IPA and New Garden Milk Stout, Ben decided on a pint of the Elm Street IPA.  I was enjoying taking sips from each, so I kept the sampler for myself!

The food was just as good and we all got something different.   The portions are enormous and I got the Smokin’ Turkey Wrap: oven-roasted turkey with crisp applewood smoked bacon, lettuce, tomato, provolone cheese and chipotle raspberry mayo wrapped a sun-dried tomato tortilla.  They have several sides, but I highly recommend the pesto pasta salad.  Ben got the Chipotle BBQ sandwich with fries.  After lunch we headed west to Foothills Brewery in Winston-Salem for Beer School and City Beverage for a beer shopping spree.  They have a class complete with power-point presentation, quiz, beer-tasting, brewery tour and graduate certificates they developed for their employees and are now offering to the public.  We all thought it was well taught, but being pretty knowledgeable about beer already most of it was a refresher, especially for Chris who recently completed real Beer School!  For $10 to taste all of their beers on tap, it was a good deal and pretty fun.  We wrapped up the night with dinner at the Hillybilly Hideaway in Walnut Cove, NC.  This amazing homestyle, all-you-can-eat restaurant located in the middle of no where is about 20 minutes north east of Winston-Salem.  It is only open Fri-Sun. and was completely packed, but the wait was worth it.  We stuffed ourselves to the point of being miserable with fried chicken, bbq spare ribs, cream corn, green beans, pinto beans, creamed potatoes, slaw, cinnamon apples, country ham, biscuits, cornbread and the sweetest tea imaginable.