Inside Highlander Mountain House
Join Today’s Paige the Podcast as we sit down with hotelier Jason Reeves and unpack the layers of history behind Highlander Mountain House, its design, the Highlands-Cashiers Plateau and how he created the perfect place to stay.
Let’s step into Appalachia with Highlander Mountain House hotelier Jason Reeves.
The New York real estate developer-turned-hotelier is an expert in design and historic preservation and blends his talents beautifully within his mountain masterpiece, Highlander Mountain House.
Reeves created the 18-room hotel in the heart of downtown Highlands to be that marvelous home base for your next mountain adventure - an English Country House hotel with a rustic bunkhouse and charming tavern, The Ruffed Grouse.
“Imagine generations of ownership here, that the house - through generations - had traded hands and this collection, the furniture, antiques and the art is what have you would’ve accumulated and what does that look like in 2022? We didn’t want it to be too precious and be focused on one specific period. We wanted it to be kind of cozy and approachable and to feel like this might be your zany family members’ estate up in the mountains,” said Reeves.
Once you get comfortable at Highlander Mountain House and The Ruffed Grouse, you won’t want to leave. The main rooms and restaurant areas are incredibly inviting with fireplaces centering each space.
“I, as a hotel lover, the hotels that I always responded to that resonated were the ones that you didn’t go to the room to get away from everything. You went to the room to sleep, but you lived in the common areas and you spent your days in the common area. And you were immersed in the surroundings. You were inspired by the design of the place, but you also got to meet interesting people. You got to cross pollinate with different walks of life. And so the design idea here was… let’s obviously have an amazing restaurant, but don’t forget about these little seating vignettes. This is where the leisure time happens, right? People sit down and they eat and they break bread and share amazing experiences. But what happens in between those times? Between breakfast, lunch, and dinner? So we wanted to provide a space where you can sit in front of the fire, read the paper, have a cup of coffee, work on your laptop in the morning and in the afternoon. You can sit by the fire, pick up a book, or have a have a cocktail. And then at night you can have a pre or post dinner drink. And the most gratifying part about all is that because of proximity to other people for whatever reason, the way we’ve laid this out, it disarms people and the walls come down. So you have people from different families, from different geographies, from different walks of life that sit next to each other and strike up a conversation. And I’ve been to a million hotels and I don’t see that very often. So what happens is, a solo traveler will sit next to a couple, or a family will sit next to a couple and they talk for an hour and a half in front of the fire. They end up making dinner plans either here or elsewhere. They come back and all have a drink and the next thing you know, they’re planning to meet here a year from now. And as a hotel guy, that’s just probably the most gratifying part of the whole situation for me,” said Reeves.
The guest rooms are designed in the English Eclectic style. There are five different room types: Main House Deluxe King, Main House Standard King, Main House Deluxe Queen and Junior Standard Queen. Sprinkled throughout the hotel are pieces of Cherokee history and beautiful work from Black Mountain College artists to help tell the tale of the region and its beginnings.
“My goal was to make it feel authentic, like the sum of the parts. It’s a bunch of periods and inspirations merging into one spot,” said Reeves.
The Ruffed Grouse boasts a regionally-influenced menu that relies on seasonal ingredients from Blue Ridge farmers and growers. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are served Wednesday through Saturdays at The Ruffed Grouse as well as a very popular Sunday brunch.
Highlander Mountain House also hosts entertaining Supper & Song events during festivals like Highlands Food & Wine and Bear Shadow Music Festival as well as occasional Salon Series programs throughout the year.
“Highlands has all the ingredients of that beautiful, inspiring, upscale weekend trip. It has amazing food. It has some of the most amazing natural beauty of the Appalachian Mountains from waterfalls and mountain vistas and hiking and mountain biking and rock climbing, you name it. And it’s all at your beck and call. It has this amazing immersive history that the locals have so much pride in and then you have this food and wine scene and the shopping is amazing… but it hasn’t lost a sense of itself. You don’t see any franchises in this town. You walk through Main Street and it hearkens back to that bygone era of when Main Street was all that mattered. And the shopkeepers know one another and the residents know the shopkeepers and they look out for one another. It’s the best side of that idyllic, 1940’s-50’s Norman Rockwell idea of just the perfect main street. We have that and we are blessed with that. And it’s going to be a draw regardless of what the rest of the world is doing,” said Reeves.
