ASHEVILLE, N.C. — If you were wagering on two of the most unlikely words to be paired in the English language, “Appalachian” and “bagel” would be a pretty good bet. And yet, that is exactly what you find at Button & Co. Bagels here in Asheville.

The chef Katie Button, a native of New Jersey who made her name cooking Spanish food at her nearby restaurant Cúrate, makes the dough with locally milled, soft wheat flour — bolstered, because it must be, by higher-gluten stuff from the North — and sorghum syrup. The rings are hand-shaped, then boiled in water laced with more sorghum to give them a shiny, chewy crust.

Ms. Button knows a good bagel. She could have recreated a New York or Montreal version here. But she had an agenda: “I wanted to give the menu a sense of place.”