Happ’s Place in Glenville has a backstory worthy of a country song: old bones, a big renovation, a barn, a trolley, and somehow, a brick. That last item is not architectural – it’s culinary, and we’ll get to it.
The property’s earliest restaurant incarnation, The Brown Skillet, opened in the early 1980s and operated until the mid-1990s.
It then became the original Happ’s Place, owned and operated by Darrell Happ for roughly two decades before eventually closing.
The building sat empty for several years before current owner Rex Farrior purchased the property in 2019 and launched an ambitious two-year transformation.
Today, Happ’s includes a 225-seat operation with a 120-foot covered patio, a full bar, a stage for live music, and a private dining barn out back. The bones are old, but the energy is very much alive.
General Manager Derek Franks has been there since the doors reopened. An Asheville native, he spent 20 years with Carrabba’s Italian Grill – including a stretch overseeing 14 locations across Texas – before deciding it was time to return to Western North Carolina. His résumé suggests a man accustomed to keeping a lot of plates spinning simultaneously, which, it turns out, is exactly the job description at Happ’s Place.
The menu bills itself as elevated Southern fare, with a wood-fired pizzeria making a credible argument that Italy and Appalachia have more in common than anyone suspected. The menu’s heavy hitters include pizzas, steaks, wings with a loyal local following, and burgers that have won Cashiers Burger Week two of the last three years. Franks credits the burgers’ edge to quality, which sounds obvious until you remember how many mediocre burgers exist in the world. The pecan-crusted trout with brown butter is the kind of dish that makes you briefly resent every other trout you’ve ever eaten.
Desserts rotate regularly courtesy of an in-house baker. The house-made ice cream sandwiches and banana pudding have developed their own fan clubs.
Chef Kyle Shuy grew up in Key Largo, moved to Glenville in 1994, and caught the cooking bug in high school when he landed a job at Mountaintop Golf & Lake Club. He spent 15 years with the company’s parent organization, cooking at clubs in California, Montana, and Hawaii before settling back into the mountains.
The technique that changed everything for him was sous vide cooking, learned during his time at Montana’s Yellowstone Club.
Today he uses it for everything from wings to prime rib, building flavor from the inside out before finishing dishes to order.
His signature brick chicken – a half chicken slow-cooked sous vide in herbs and butter, then pressed beneath an actual brick in a cast iron skillet until the skin crackles – arrives with mashed potatoes, chimichurri, and caramelized lemon. The steak frites, a seven-ounce hanger steak sliced on the bias with hand-cut Parmesan truffle fries, is the kind of thing you eat and then quietly rearrange your afternoon around.
“I like to see people full and happy,” Shuy said, which may be the simplest and most effective restaurant philosophy in the mountains.
Live music runs three to four nights a week, industry night on Mondays comes with karaoke, and if your party needs a trolley – for weddings, rehearsal dinners, or even Clemson football games – Happ’s can arrange that too. Community involvement runs deep: the restaurant supports the Boys & Girls Club, sponsors Friends of Lake Glenville’s annual Fourth of July boat parade, and employs a staff made up largely of Western Carolina University students.
The place is open seven days a week from 11:30 A.M. to 9:00 P.M. on Route 107 in Glenville. The brick is waiting.
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