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Community Dinner | Highlands NC
Written By: Luke Osteen | Issue: March 2023
Highlands Community Table is saving a place for you – 6:00 P.M. on the first Tuesday of every month at the Highlands Community Building.
From its earliest days, Highlanders have enjoyed gathering for a delicious meal and the promise of lively conversation.
Highlands Inn and Old Edwards Inn offered family-style meals for their guests and boarders and residents. Later, Bill’s Soda Shop and The Mountaineer Restaurant filled the niche.
True community meals found their true expression with the establishment of Highlands Community Table in 2016. Local kitchen wizards Debbie Grossman and Kristy Earp Lewis and a platoon of loyal volunteers shepherded these gatherings that offered delicious meals (with dessert, always dessert!) and the aforementioned conversations. The ambient chatter was spirited, sometimes raucous, and always good natured. Friendships were kindled, confidences were whispered, and on one occasion I told an entire table a joke that had made my friend, the late Hedy Okolichany, wet her pants.
But the good times were shuttered with the arrival of Covid. All of those meals, all of those earnest conversations, vanished from the landscape, and we were all diminished for it.
Well, somebody ring the bell – Highlands Community Table is back on the calendar!
You – whether you’re a year-rounder, or a seasonal resident, or someone just passing through – will find a place at the table, at 6:00 P.M. every first Tuesday of the month at the Highlands Community Building. You don’t need reservations, there’s no entry fee (although donations are gratefully accepted) – show up prepared to eat well, chat with old friends and make new ones, come armed with tales of children and grandchildren, and see if you can make someone wet their pants.
