Among the pageantry, beauty, and charm of Asheville, North Carolina, writer Betsa Marsh and her friends found themselves “noshing among the Vanderbilts.” Get a taste of where they went.

The Vanderbilts are in, and they are receiving guests.

This is exactly what the Ladies want to hear, after a long drive deep into the Appalachian Mountains. We’re returning to America’s largest private home, Biltmore, and resuming the lives of genteel nobility that we were destined to lead.

It’s easy to slip into an aristocratic reverie as soon as we cross onto Vanderbilt property. It will take us miles and minutes before we catch a glimpse of the grand Norman château, time we can well spend shedding our mundane lives and donning the airs and graces of society ladies.

This is the place for fantasy, stepping into the 250-room mansion that George Vanderbilt built in 1895. We take it as our due to be welcomed into the library, music room and baronial dining hall. We’re even such close friends of the family that we wander through their bedrooms and baths and even peek into the servants’ quarters. It’s just the price of an admission ticket paired with overactive imaginations.

Biltmore and its century-plus sister across town, the Grove Park Inn, reign as the wonderfully immutable monuments of Asheville. They stand like the mountains themselves, having received generations of travelers who want to slip through time and social strata.

So what does change here? Gloriously, the food scene. Asheville is a competitive tourist town, with some restaurateurs drilling deeper into their Old South heritage, and others launching into another stratosphere of the New South.

Here are some recent successes, sampled and approved by members of the Ladies Discoursive and Digestive Society. It was always a tossup whether eating or talking would come first in our title, so you know that we take our food seriously.

On Biltmore property

Some travelers love to stay close to the mansion and its winery in Antler Hill Village. For tradition, start with breakfast at the Inn on Biltmore Estate, and, if you can, snag the demi-lune dining room area downstairs. Here, the view over the gardens out to the mountains will be at least as fabulous as your frittata, Eggs Benedict, or banana bread French toast.

Footsore travelers who have just tromped through the mansion often collapse for lunch at the next-door Stables, the practical part of the estate when everything was fueled by horse power. This is the place for a salad and maybe roasted rotisserie chicken. And don’t skip the Biltmore Blooms Pound Cake, cubed cake with lemon curd, strawberries, bourbon-roasted granola, and basil ice cream. After climbing the stairs at Biltmore, you’ve earned it.

Of course, it’s always fine to take dinner in the elegant Inn, but it’s a bit more fun to head to Antler Hill Village and Cedric’s Tavern, near the Village Hotel. The pub is named for the Vanderbilts’ loyal St. Bernard, Cedric, a big boy who met the guests at the door and went along on every shooting and hiking adventure. After your oversized fish and chips or bison burger, be sure to admire the display case that still spotlights Cedric’s massive collar, all 22 inches of it. Bless his heart.

Biltmore Village

Just outside the gates of the 8,000-acre Vanderbilt estate, Biltmore Village sprawls out in shops and restaurants like little Monopoly streets. Lots of trees, lots of sidewalk, lots of shopping and noshing.

One of the best bets is Corner Kitchen on Boston Way, where the Obamas ate one evening during vacation in 2010. “We didn’t have much notice,” one manager confides. “The Secret Service wanted them to eat upstairs for security reasons.” History records that Barack, good Hawaiian lad that he is, had mahi-mahi.

The Ladies, however, are enjoying glorious weather on the patio, zeroing in on trout, scallops, and Crispy Corner Calamari.

Downtown Asheville

The city is famous for its big gooey Southern breakfasts at Tupelo Honey, Early Girl Eatery, and Sunny Point Café. The travel tips are always the same: Get up early and get in line. Locals and travelers love the funky vibe over hominy, fried green tomatoes and biscuit French toast.

The city center has scores of shops, full of handmade jewelry and flowy clothes. You can lose an entire day drifting from storefront to storefront and not even realize you’re hungry, until you spot a Thai restaurant or a vegetarian hotspot. We stumble into Strada Italiano on Broadway, a good little bistro for a Greco salad and a well-crusted pizza.

Then it’s back to the street for something a little sweet. Kilwin’s is ready, pouring fudge and dipping buckeyes. Try a sample of their bestsellers, salted caramel fudge and ice cream.

Just a few doors down Battery Park Avenue, it’s even sweeter at the Bee Charmer, a precious little spot devoted to all things apiary. There’s plenty to sniff in beeswax candles, soaps and lotions, and to sample, too, at the tasting bar. The “bee tender” will pour little samples of honey from around the world. I try the local sourwood and wildflower, and soon have jars in my basket. It’s just as easy to snap up something from Ireland or New Zealand – bees are busy all around the world.

For dinner, Market Place is tucked in among the shops, all burnished metal and globe chandeliers. Cocktail-of-the-night trophy goes to the gin and tonic sparked with the South’s killer Jack Rudy small-batch tonic. For my main, the Prince Edward Island mussels shimmer in one of the best wine sauces ever, a bit tart with roasted garlic and Lusty Monk mustard. The only thing better? The three slabs of grilled ciabatta to soak up the sauce.

A half-mile away, Rhubarb shakes things up on Pack Square. The old tile floors and stripped walls suggest the menu might be granny chic, but none of our grannies ever did these things with trout, pork belly and grilled goose beans. Yes, it’s all local ingredients, but they’ve been twisted and turned on their heads in a sensory kaleidoscope.

During our visit, there’s not much rhubarb on the menu, since the restaurant follows each season. But there’s always rhubarb sorbet spiced with lemon and orange, and topped with meringue crumbles. Our evening’s drop-dead dessert was Dreams of Summer, an “R”-branded wooden plank staged with sage-chocolate ganache, burnt marshmallow panna cotta, and sage and marshmallow ice creams. Like most everything else at Rhubarb, it’s hard to describe and even harder to top.

Apres dinner

As mountain days warm and days lengthen, nobody wants to go back inside. Maybe it’s just a glass of wine out on the loggia at the Inn or a drink around the fire pit at Antler Hill Village. But if you’re off Biltmore property, it’s so much more fun to roll up the hill to the Grove Park Inn, a grand dame of a hotel that has been seating visitors on the Sunset Terrace since 1913. It’s a tradition to either dine here with the views off to the mountains, or stop by later and make sure to catch a sorbet sunset. Isn’t this what Prosecco was created for?

Other nights, we stay downtown and zero in on the most infamous nightcap in Asheville: the French Broad Chocolate Lounge. While the name of the French Broad River may be a bit off-putting, who doesn’t like the sound of a chocolate lounge?  Right up to 11pm, people wander in for hot chocolate, ice cream, brownies and truffles, all made nearby with devilishly dark chocolate.

Locals know to pace themselves at dinner elsewhere, so they can go “lounging” with a good conscience. Visitors like us, though, often dive into dessert at our restaurants and then somehow end up wandering through the French Broad’s door right into a chocolate lullaby. The Ladies are strangers in these parts and we don’t know the roads, so we can’t help it if our GPS somehow locked onto “Chocolate Decadence.” Blame it on a sort of folie du groupe, our fantasy of living large a la Vanderbilt. — Story and photos, except where noted, by Betsa Marsh

Hungry for more? Learn about the quintessential dessert that can be found in North Carolina, a cute little ‘cue place to check out in Asheville, and a nearby Brews & ‘Cue Trail.