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DISH ON DINING: Bakeries find sweet success, Green River BBQ comes back

Clockwise from top left, Charlotte Tanner mixes cake batter at her Fletcher bakery, Emily Roper displays a sweet treat at Bake Me House on Church Street, the Taco Block is open in the 100 block of South Main and Tom Haas presides over Green River BBQ in Saluda.

By Bill Moss, Published: May 14, 2025

There is science in cooking, of course, plus chemistry, ingredients, heat, plating. But in the end, it’s more about the heart than the head.

For this installment of Dish on Dining, the Lightning’s occasional update on new food purveyors, we interviewed two bakers and a barbecue restaurant owner who told stories of overcoming trauma to start a sweet business, a romance across the globe culminating in a wedding in Hendersonville and a comeback after a Hurricane Helene mudslide.

Sugarcane & Shepherd

It’s not every day you get a bakery named for a dog. But not every dog is as special as Ravioli.

“I’ve unfortunately been through quite a lot in my life,” says Charlotte Tanner, the founder and owner of Sugarcane & Shepherd. “I have anxiety and PTSD from trauma I had to go through in my life, and it got to the point where I couldn’t hold a job because I couldn’t leave the house.

“I ended up purchasing the service dog, and he changed my life,” she says. “He gave me strength and he made me feel powerful again. I had him for about three years before I opened this place.”

The bakery is in a small strip center on Hendersonville Road in Fletcher, a couple of doors down from a Subway. Opened in 2020, the shop has been thriving ever since, serving up cookies, pies, cakes, scones, cupcakes and more.

“Unfortunately, six months after I opened, Ravioli passed away” of an inoperable twisted intestine, Tanner says. “They did emergency surgery. It was the worst day of my life. Losing him was the hardest thing I’ve been through.”

The spirit of Ravioli lives on, though, in the bakery’s name, and Tanner has two new service shepherds, Saga and Rizzo, to keep her company.

“I started just with my mom when I was a young kid,” she says of her cooking roots in Connecticut. “I tell people I just never outgrew the play kitchen — you know, with the plastic food. I just always loved food and cooking and baking.”

After high school, she earned a bachelor’s degree in pastry arts from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, then made the bold move south.

“I knew Asheville was a huge foodie area,” Tanner says. “I figured it would be pretty easy to get a job, because the food industry here is so big. I figured, if I didn’t like it I wasn’t gonna stay but I love it. I own my own business and I’m not going anywhere.”

What’s the secret to baked sweets that keep customers coming back?

“I’d say it’s 50 percent the recipe and 50 percent your energy that you put into it,” Tanner says. “The formula has to be sound; otherwise your product’s not going to turn out right. But I am a firm believer that you can taste love in products, and if somebody makes something that they care about, it’s going to taste 100 percent different than somebody that just threw something together.”

The shop’s best? Chocolate chip cookies.

“I compare it to a cheese pizza,” says the baker, “because if you can do something simple but phenomenally, you don’t need all the frills. I worked so hard on that recipe, and my customers love it. That is like my masterpiece.”

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Sugarcane & Shepherd, at 5585 Hendersonville Road, is open 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday and 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday. Contact: sugarcaneandshepherddesserts.com/ or 828-318-4108.

Bake Me House

Will Roper’s travels to see the world three years ago produced a storybook ending. Her name is Emily.

“I went to Thailand on a solo adventure,” says Roper, a 2009 graduate of Hendersonville High School. “Long, long story short, she was my tour guide around Bangkok. And after two weeks in Thailand, I’m like, ‘Hey, I really like this girl.’

“We stayed in touch for two years, texting every single day, and after two years, I was like, ‘You know what? I gotta go back to Thailand and see if, like, it was real.’”

It was.

After her visa came through — it took 20 months — Emily joined Will in Hendersonville. They married on July 15, 2023, at a private home in Kenmure.

“She really likes to feed people,” Will says of Emily, who is not yet fluent in English. (Emily’s name in Thailand, by the way, is Thipayapa Thanyadolchanokdech.)

“She’s self-taught,” Will says. “She would just bake for her friends and bring it to work, and after a while all her friends were offering to pay for it. And she said after a while, ‘Why not?’”

The “why not” attitude led Emily to open her bakery on Church Street just south of the city parking deck. The products are Thai influenced, in part, but also come out of cooking cultures Emily studies from around the world. Since the shop opened on March 4, people have discovered it.

“Especially the first three weeks — she sold out every day,” Will says. “There was one Saturday we opened at 11 and everything was gone by 11:45.”

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Bake Me House, at 414 N. Church St., is open 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Friday. Contact: Facebook or 828-388-8902.

Green River Barbecue

The morning Hurricane Helene ravaged the Blue Ridge Escarpment, Tom Haas got a call from Saluda’s police chief.

“He said our propane tank was moving so if we could come turn it off that would be great,” he said.

Tom waded through the mudslide to reach the tank and disconnect it.

“It moved the outbuildings out toward the road quite a bit, and then we had to dig out 40 dump truck loads worth of dirt,” he said.

Tom’s wife burst out in tears the day Helene struck, but soon they put their shoulder into the job. Haas and crew reopened the Saluda landmark on April 1. The Helene rebuild was a heavier lift by far, but it was the second time Haas had to revive the rustic dining spot on the river just over the bridge from downtown Saluda.

After the business changed hands, it became idle. A sale fell through, and Haas stepped into buy it — and save it. Rescued a second time, the barbecue joint still serves fried pickles, house-fried pork rinds, fried green tomatoes, the Carolina Texan BBQ sandwich, beef brisket and 16 sides. The restaurant also features 16 beer and hard cider taps, wine and mixed drinks.

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Green  River BBQ, at 131 U.S. 176 in Saluda, is open 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Sunday. Contact: greenriverbbq.com or 828-749-9892.

Taco Block

Between the (locally known) El Paso locations around town and other Mexican restaurants and food trucks, it’s debatable whether we needed two more spots serving the same fare, side by side, no less.

But there we have it: the new downtown Taco Block. And both promote — or imply — that they serve the standard Mexican drink. Tipsy Taco and El Paso Tacos & Tequilla have both opened in the past couple of months, and both appear to be doing well. And, come to think of it, before the two new arrivals we had no Mexican restaurant on Main Street.

Greenville-based Tipsy Taco offers the Mexican dishes you’d expect — 21 Taco flavors alone! — and also touts its famous Margarita flights.

El Paso — not related to the incumbent family of Mexican restaurants here — has an even longer menu than its next door rival — 12 combination platters, 10 seafood plates plus lunch specials. The new downtown location is the chain’s 12^th site; others are in South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana and Florida.

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El Paso, 117 S. Main St., elpasotacosandtequila.com/store-locator or 828-595-3424. Tipsy Taco, 119 S. Main St., tipsytaco.net/ or 828-595-3057.