Savory Avery: a favored summer locale for the wealthy, Banner Elk relies on education, golf and cuisine to retain an elite reputation.

• Author: Mildenberg, David
• Position: TOWN SQUARE

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In a state with its share of James Beard award winners and a television-star chef, the best restaurant you've never heard of is in a college town of 1,200. Banner Elk has attracted wealthy tourists since the Presbyterian Church sent minister Edgar Tufts to evangelize Avery County locals in 1895. That was just the starting course compared with the billionaire boys club that is Diamond Creek. The golf development is so exclusive there are no signs of entry or fairways along Dobbins Road, a winding byway dotted with modular homes, including one bearing a Confederate flag.

It's said more moguls congregate in the summer in Avery than any other N.C. enclave, though per capita income of the 18,000 residents trails state and national averages. About 20% of residents have poverty-level incomes, and median family income is about $38,000. Contrasts of rich and poor are common in Appalachia, wealthy in beauty and natural resources that often have kept job-creating industries at arm's length.

Diamond Creek has a solution for mountain inconveniences: The club offers helicopter service to ferry members and their friends from Charlotte and other airports to a Banner Elk landing strip. Two miles east, Florida billionaire Wayne Huizenga, who made his fortune building Waste Management and Blockbuster Video, started Diamond Creek in 2003 on 1,000 acres. Huizenga, 78, sold the club to billionaire Toyota distributor Dan Friedkin of Houston in 2012. It's mostly about the golf at Diamond Creek, which has fewer than two dozen homes, some valued at more than $3 million. But Huizenga's lasting legacy could be convincing Bill and Anita Greene to move their Artisanal restaurant beside a Banner Elk Rite-Aid to an elegant bam-like structure adjacent to Diamond Creek in 2009. Twenty-five-foot ceilings greet visitors, with a large horse sculpture dividing a bar from the 75-seat main dining room. Wood reclaimed from barns covers walls and floors. The open kitchen impresses diners and promotes professionalism by discouraging shouting and other kitchen drama, says Bill Greene, who has missed one serving in Artisanal's 11-year history.

Greene was adopted as an infant by a military family that moved to Avery County. He started busing tables at age 14, attended the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., and eventually worked at New York City's Le Cirque 2000, the Waldorf Astoria, the Phoenician in Scottsdale, Ariz., and others. Anita is a former...