Foothills goes all in with Black Mountain expansion

The Overlook to revive historical ice house building from deep freeze

Fred McCormick
The Valley Echo
November 28, 2023

Casey and Amanda McKissick, owners of Foothills Meats, will open The Overlook, an elevated dining experience with a large rooftop bar, in the historic Black Mountain Ice Co. building in spring of 2024. Photo by Fred McCormick

A prominent downtown Black Mountain building that has been vacant since 2017 will open its doors to the public next spring, as Foothills Meats has announced plans to launch a new restaurant in the historic ice house. 

The Overlook, which will feature a rooftop bar with elevated cocktails and exclusive small plates in an intimate setting, represents the business’s latest investment in the town it has called home for 21 years, while complementing The Grange, the popular outdoor eatery adjacent to the 1930s brick structure.

Foothills, which began as a local farming cooperative, began selling its locally sourced meat and produce at the Black Mountain Tailgate Market in 2002. Owned and operated by Casey and Amanda McKissick, the operation grew into a Black Mountain butchery a decade ago, before launching The Grange in September of 2022.

While the couple was confident in their vision to bring a family-friendly venue serving their signature burgers and hot dogs to Broadway Street, they underestimated the community’s appetite for the product.

“We didn’t think we would sell so much food,” Casey said of The Grange. “We thought it would be more an outdoor bar with food, but it is selling as much, if not more food than a regular restaurant.”

The steady flow of hungry patrons applies significant pressure to the 160-square-foot food truck that services the venue, while the neighboring brick building enticed the McKissicks.

Foothills, which launched The Grange in September of 2022, will open The Overview next spring. The restaurant will feature cocktails, small plates and rooftop patio with sweeping views of the surrounding mountains. Photo by Fred McCormick

“We refuse to compromise the quality of our food, so we won’t pre-cook and hold anything like a fast food place,” Casey said. “So, when you have, on a busy day, a ticket per minute coming in, it obviously impacts how long customers have to wait for their orders.”

Last summer, the couple decided to revisit an idea they had before the COVID pandemic forced them to restructure.

“I’ve looked at this building every single day since we opened over there,” Casey said. “We actually looked at it in 2019, but we backed off because of the pandemic. In mid-summer, we had these long lines for the food truck and people were upset, and we knew we had to do something.”

They closed on the recently remodeled $1.3 million building, which seats approximately 50 diners on the first floor and features an indoor bar area and 1,700-square-foot patio on the top level, earlier this month. The McKissicks are designing a custom 1,100-square-foot kitchen that will allow table service for The Overlook and The Grange.

“The food truck will come out of The Grange property, which will allow for more tables and play area for the kids, and we will bring the food out to you,” Casey said. “We’ve been doing business here for so long, and we try to be very sensitive to the experience of our customers, so this should create a much more efficient system that we think people will appreciate.”

The patio of the tentatively named Overlook provides panoramic views of mountains in three directions, lending itself to a cozy “date night” atmosphere for diners, according to the owners, who will also offer the venue as an event space.

Casey and Amanda McKissick purchased the historic Black Mountain Ice Co. building at 128 Broadway Street earlier this month, allowing Foothills to expand its Broadway Street presence. Photo by Fred McCormick

“The Grange is the place you would bring your kids and family, and this place will be more for date nights or special occasions,” Casey said. “(The Overlook) will allow us to bring back some of the more elevated dishes a lot of the locals remember from the old Butcher Bar on Black Mountain Avenue.”

The restaurant will begin the latest chapter for a building that was constructed around 1933 to serve as the Black Mountain Ice, Co., which delivered blocks of ice to local residents and seasonal visitors before electric refrigeration became widely used by the public. The structure was built by Cyril E. Huffman and his wife Virginia, and operated as an ice and coal business for nearly three decades. Prior to its construction, the site was the first home of the town’s fire department in 1919. The property held a town hall and a jail by 1924, according to the National Register of Historic Places.

The McKissicks anticipate a spring of 2024 opening date for The Overlook, with kitchen service for The Grange set to begin around March of next year. Foothills’ second major Black Mountain project in the last 18 months reflects their relationship with the community that has supported their family and business, which last weekend moved its final food truck operation from Asheville.

“Black Mountain has been so good to us,” Casey said. “We started 21 years ago at a little farmers market right over there. We now have a commercial property in the middle of downtown. I think that’s a small town success story.

“Our kids grew up here, and while we live in Old Fort, we’ve spent much more time in Black Mountain,” he continued. “We’ve shared a lot of great moments with these other business owners and families over the past few years, and we have customers who have been with us a long time. We’re choosing to do this because this is our hometown.”