Motorcycle Destinations: Greenhouse Moto Cafe

I believe we do an excellent job here at Motorcycle.com to bring you news and reviews of nearly every street motorcycle sold in North America, along with a plethora of product information, general news and interesting stories from around the world. However, we aren’t as well versed at providing information about great places to ride motorcycles.

To help redress this balance, we’re kicking off a new type of revolving feature at MO that will semi-regularly highlight locations that are appealing to riders for a variety of reasons, whether it’s the nearby roads, some sort of notoriety, or just their sheer interestingness for motorcyclists. If you’d like to make a suggestion for a location to highlight, please send us an email to contact@motorcycle.com and put Motorcycle Destinations in the subject line.

This first one kicks off via the suggestion of longtime MO reader, Kurt Bartlein, who visited the Greenhouse Moto Cafe last September and wanted to share this moto-friendly spot with you all. It’s a pub located in Mills River, NC, near the breathtaking roads outside Asheville, NC, about 10 miles south of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

“If you are ever in the area to enjoy some of the best motorcycle roads in the Eastern U.S., give this unusual and cool spot a visit,” Bartlein recommends. “You’ll be glad you did.”

The Greenhouse Moto Cafe opened in March 2016, and its eclectic setting inside an old glass greenhouse has several vintage motorcycles on display. The cafe also has a large stage which hosts unusual local and regional musical acts. Bartlein says the cafe serves a variety of liquid libations from the local breweries, of which, he says, there are more per capita than any U.S. city.

Bartlein was visiting the area “to terrorize the awesome local roads” and got to meet the Cafe’s owner, Jeff Herold. Bartlein rode up from Florida with his buddy, Martin Milanese, the former owner of Corsa Moto Works, a race and repair shop in Clearwater, who had done work for Jeff on some of his bikes when he lived in Tampa a few years ago.

“Jeff was kind enough to take time to give us a short tour, which included his “Yellow Submarine” food truck which is a converted school bus, and showed us some of his bikes and cars. You may want to check out Greenhouse Moto Cafe’s Facebook page, where Jeff posts a lot of fun motorcycle-related items including articles from Motorcycle.com itself.”