S5, E41: Asheville Food and the Growth of a Farm-to-Table Town | The Travel Guide

This is the fourth stop on our five-part audio guide to Asheville, North Carolina, and it may be the tastiest one yet. In this episode of Unpacked by Afar, host Aislyn Greene digs into Asheville food, and the surprising reason this mountain city punches so far above its weight at the table.

Aislyn joins a walking food tour with Sita of Eating Asheville, eating her way through a town where farm to table isn’t a slogan but a fact of geography.

It’s a scene built on tight relationships between kitchens and the farms a few ridges away, where the rice on your plate might have been grown just up the road, and where a devastating hurricane the year before only deepened the sense that these restaurants belong to their community.

But great Asheville food is also a question of who gets to make it, and whose history gets remembered. In a segment on the region’s Black foodways, Aislyn talks with two of the city’s most celebrated chefs, Ashleigh Shanti of Good Hot Fish and Rakim Gaines of Capella on 9, about Affrilachian cooking, representation behind the stove, and the stories layered into every plate. Their conversation is a reminder that a food town’s story has to include the people history has too often left off the menu.

It all adds up to a rich piece of cultural travel and a portrait of one of the best small food towns in the country. Whatever you come hungry for, consider this your guide to where to go and what to know.

Transcript

Aislyn: I’m Aislyn Greene and this is Unpacked by Afar. Most weeks we roam 2 different topics. This week we’re staying in one place. And in fact, we made you a guide. Five episodes, one city, all of it reported on the ground in Asheville, North Carolina this year. So think of this as your audio guide to Asheville, where to go, what to know, and everything worth unpacking in between. And today we are going to take a seat at the table. That’s after the break.

Asheville has more good food than 1 person should attempt in an afternoon. So I called in a professional. Eating Asheville runs a 2.5 hour walking tour. It has at least 5 stops, includes cocktail and wine pairings, and if you’re lucky, a chef might pull up a chair. So I did not pace myself on this tour. I would end up with two full bags of to go boxes, but I had a great guide to help me take it all in.

Sita: My name is Sita and I am the operations Manager and a tour guide for Eating Asheville walking food tours.

Aislyn: Sita and I meet at my hotel downtown and before we take a single bite, I wanted to ask her one question. Everyone keeps telling me that Asheville is a great food town, and my own research over the last week has proved that to be true. But why? Why here? In this midsize city? In the mountains? Turns out Sita had the same question, at least at first.

Sita: One of the first things that Chefs would tell me when I first started doing the food tours and would ask them, you know, why did you decide to open up a restaurant here in Asheville? Was the availability of high quality, raw ingredients to work with, because we have nearly a year round growing season here. There’s so many different little microclimates, you know, in the mountains, in different places that you can grow really a wide assortment of different kinds of things. You can raise all different kinds of livestock. So it’s just really amazing, everything that you can find within, you know, just like a 50 mile radius.

Aislyn: So that’s one answer. By the end of the tour, we’re going to hear a second answer, one that gets more into the heart of Asheville. Sita says that they look for a specific kind of place for the tour.

Sita: We look for locally owned restaurants. Chef and family owned or chef driven restaurants. You know, a big part of the community also, especially restaurants that are using those wonderful local ingredients but also unique concepts. Restaurants celebrating diversity in Asheville. We have lots of really amazing international restaurants here too. That’s the other thing. You don’t come to a little mountain town and expect to see so much international food.

Aislyn: Our first stop of the day might sound relatively typical, an Italian restaurant with pasta and other Italian goodies in a historic building, but stay with me, because Strada is hiding the first real surprise of the day.

Sita: So here we are at Strada Italiano. This is a chef and family owned and operated Italian restaurant. This building is one of the historic buildings downtown, which nearly all of them actually are. But this one dates back to the 1870s, when the railroad first came to town. Strada has been open just a little over 13 years, which makes you a mainstay and a family favorite. You’ve made it that far. You’ve really made it. Hi.

Aislyn: We enter into what used to be Strada’s only dining room. They’ve since expanded to 4. Not to mention the rooftop bar area where Sita and I are headed. But here’s what really excites me. I have to eat gluten free. And if you have ever tried to eat gluten free Italian food, you know it has the potential to be a sad affair. But not here because Strada’s chef also has celiac disease. So the gluten free pasta isn’t an afterthought. It’s made by someone who has to eat it too, and who loves food.

Chef: And we have our gluten free rigatoni. It’s actually vegan and gluten free. But then we did actually do shaved Grana Americana on there, so it’s not no longer vegan.

Aislyn: This pasta is delicious.

Sita: Isn’t it amazing? If I didn’t tell you it was gluten free, you might not even guess that it was. And that’s what’s really, you know, incredible about this place.

Aislyn: So one of the things I’ve discovered over the course of my week here is that for a city of this size, the number of places that can genuinely feed someone with a food restriction, whether that’s vegan, gluten free, is a little shocking. And if you’ve spent years reading menus like a hazard map, Asheville feels like a breath of fresh air. I’ve told all my gluten free friends about it. I tell Sita as much as I move on to one of the other many dishes that crowd our table.

These mushrooms are amazing.

Sita: Isn’t it wonderful? Yeah, I think I have to take both of these. Yeah.

Aislyn: So that’s box number one. And we’re just getting started. Now on to our next stop.

Sita: This is Mehfil Indian Restaurant, which in Hindi means a gathering of like minded people. The idea behind that is that when you’re eating and drinking together, you become a little more like minded.

Aislyn: It’s a local favorite, owned by a man named Raj, who by his own account, is no chef.

Sita: He’s a funny guy.

Aislyn: All right.

Sita: This has come up a couple and he might tell you this is that he’s he was never a restaurant person before he decided to open a restaurant. You know, he’s like, I’m an IT guy.

Aislyn: Mehfil, aside from smelling amazing, is also eye catching. Painted a dazzling lime green accented with Indian patterns and artwork, Raj soon joined us to feed us and share his story.

Would you mind telling me what we’re about to eat?

Raj: You’re having the lamb chops. That is one of the most popular dishes in in whole of North Carolina. I kid you not. Okay. And, uh, this is, uh, you know, lamb marinated overnight in yogurt and cooked in the clay oven tandoor, so that flavor of smoky flavor, that’s the thing. And this pairs very well with alcohol. Any, any, any alcohol, you know.

Aislyn: Do you have a favorite alcohol?

Raj: To me, everything is favorite for me. I have a bartender who doesn’t drink. So I make up for him maybe at times. Four times make up for him. So great.

Aislyn: There’s mint chutney for dipping. There’s Gobi, Manchurian, and Indo-Chinese dish from the part of India that borders Nepal. Because Raj’s main goal is to highlight food from all 24 Indian states, taking diners far past the usual 20 dishes you’ll see on an Indian food menu in America. As I attempt to eat this delicious food, which is nearly impossible while juggling a microphone, Raj tells me he moved here in 2019. At the time, he handled IT for a convenience store company, but a friend wanted to open a restaurant.

Raj: And my deal always was that I will take care of the IT part, like in terms of the menu, online ordering system and all that. Then one one day he wanted to leave And that’s how I am. I am, I am, I can only boil an egg and that’s what I can do. And I intend to keep it that way.

Aislyn: Raj says that he originally liked Asheville because it was so accepting in a community that several locals described to me as a melting pot. He genuinely felt embraced. But what really cemented this place in Raj’s heart was Hurricane Helene, which devastated parts of Asheville in 2024.

Raj: My house is a little up the hill, so while coming down, I could come because my car came down the slope, but I couldn’t go back. So I stayed on that couch for like 10 days. I couldn’t go back and there was no internet. We had power and we didn’t have water, but the restaurant was open, so people were coming in. Since there was no internet, we were cash only. We stayed cash only for about 2 hours. And then because people were with families, children hungry, they had the money, but it was in the car. We couldn’t turn them back. We said, okay, let’s start taking cards offline out of good faith. We processed cards worth 14,000 or 15,000, all in good faith. I remember 2 days. You know, I feel I begin to cry. Then after 3 days when the internet came and when my printer started printing those tickets, not 1 card got rejected. 15,000 I got. Plus, I got tips. I got tips for 2,000 on that period of 2 days. That is what carried us through. Otherwise we had 100 dollars in the bank.

Aislyn: And while the city has recovered, for the most part, you’d never know a storm had ripped through here. Raj is still affected in a good way.

Raj: You know, so this town genuinely changed me. I mean, I was okay, happy go lucky guy and all that, but this actually hit me. You know where it affected me.

Aislyn: And when I ask him to describe the Asheville food scene, he doesn’t talk about ingredients at all.

Raj: I think Asheville became a good culinary place, not because of good chefs moved here. It is the people who came never left because this place is so accepting. This is the place to move because I can at least live in peace and people will let me be and make a difference in my skin color, my hair color, my, you know, my clothes. I think that is what made Asheville what it is today.

Aislyn: So the rich soil, the year round growing season, they’re all reasons that the food here is excellent. But another reason is that there’s a strong sense of community here. People come and they stay because they feel supported.

Raj now donates food every month. His whole staff insists on it. So he came for a job and the city changed him into someone who now feeds people for free. So now I’ve got another to go box to add to my pile, and a whole lot to think about as we walk to our next stop.

Sita: Yeah. So this restaurant Table now is actually this is one of the, um, early, you know, actual farm to table restaurants, but 20 years, over 20 years, they’ve been open.

Aislyn: The chef de cuisine, Kate Smedley, brings out a spread and one dish really tells the entire restaurant story.

Kate: One of the things that we’re so proud of is our ability to source and use ingredients from local farmers. So I wanted to bring you guys a dish that has been on the menu since we kind of updated to this new menu format, but it’s our Lee’s green rice and their greens. So it’s rice that’s grown here in western North Carolina by Lee’s One Fortune Farm. It is their green light rice, and it’s also their greens that they grow on their farm as well. And so right now we’re using their beautiful baby bok choy. And so I kind of treated the rice almost like a congee to kind of stay in that vein, maybe congee meets risotto. And then on top of it is mayu, which is just a really slow garlic, just roasted garlic oil that you commonly see in pork ramen. So just bringing like that umami depth to it. Yeah.

Aislyn: From my travels over the years, I have a handful of dishes that haunt me in the best possible way. There was a salmon crudo from Lutece in Washington, D.C., my first kouign-amann in Rennes, France, a Japanese soup from Nisei in San Francisco. And now this dish of rice grown in the North Carolina mountains. Kate has only been here 6 years, but she talks about each dish and each farmer like they go way back.

Kate: Another thing that we’re just we’re super stoked to have here. We have our own wood fired grill that was made for us by another local artist collective here, The Iron Maidens. And so I wanted to bring something from that section, which is our grilled mushrooms. They’re from Jay over at a Black Trumpet Mushroom Farm. These are his black pearl mushrooms. So just like a really meaty, delicious mushroom. And then finally, I brought you our carrots, which are from Evan over at the Culinary Gardener. Also his cress with that as well. A little citronelle, a little grapefruit and a little hazelnut. Just a, you know, a nice earthy little bite.

Aislyn: Kate leaves us because she’s been called to the kitchen to make some gnocchi. And with that, I have maybe 4 or 5 takeout boxes. I’ve started to lose count. Our next stop is more Appalachian in origin. That’s after the break.

Our 4th stop is inside Asheville’s Flatiron Building. Built in the 1920s. It once held Asheville’s first radio station, which makes me chuckle since I still have a mic in hand. Downstairs is Luminosa, where Appalachian food gets run through an Italian lens. The menu here is rewritten every single day, and almost everything on our plate comes from within about 100 miles of our chair, including our server, Jamie. More on him in a second.

Jamie: I am super proud of what we do here. Chef Graham and Chef Sean are incredible talents. They put together this menu that explores our traditional Appalachian foodways via an Italian lens. We are hyper seasonal. This menu is updated daily to reflect the freshest offerings that the farmers literally brought in this morning. The farmers are on a first name basis with. We work very closely with 2 wild foragers. My pizza crust, my breads, my pastas are all made fresh every morning by Shankara. It’s all cooked over the beautiful oak fire, blazing dramatically and somewhat conveniently behind me. We are the only restaurant in Asheville practicing whole animal butchery. Snout to tail using the entire animal.

Aislyn: It turns out that Jamie knows just a little bit about Appalachian cooking.

Jamie: I’m a 9th generation hillbilly myself. My people have been here since the Revolutionary War. The foraging tradition, you know, is something that goes back all the way using what we had available and enjoying the bounty of what’s there. Um, same for the whole animal butchery. You know, my grandmother used to always say that you can eat everything but the squeal. And we try our very best to, to make her happy. We go through a hog a week.

Aislyn: His grandmother would also be happy. Or maybe just befuddled, I don’t know, to know that I’m drinking a zero proof sumac soda made from foraged berries that they dry and grind in house.

Jamie: You’re gonna see sumac on almost every other dish that comes out of the kitchen here this evening has a nice bright acidity. Uh, a citrus note. Mima used to make a Sumac-ade, a kind of tasted like lemonade. On top of that, it’s super delicious.

Aislyn: It does taste a little bit like lemonade. If lemonade grew wild on a hillside and then were served gluten free bone marrow tater tots. Wow. Making me fall just a little bit more in love with this city. But I think the dish that surprises me the most is one that includes a humble little plant called a ramp.

Jamie: They’ve become very popular. I’ll be honest, my family never ate them. We were like, oh, ramps. I, I, there was when I grew up a kind of a cultural stigma to them. They were poor people, food and the change of the view from that mainstream acceptance that instead of something that only poor people ate because they had to go out and forage their food. It’s a culinary item that people will seek and quest for and really enjoy.

Aislyn: For a little cherry on the Appalachian sundae, Chef Sean McMullen sits down with us for a few minutes to share his thoughts. He and Chef Graham grew up in the mountains, and they’ve known each other since they were kids.

What do you feel like you’ve done? Like, what’s your stamp that you’ve placed on the Asheville food scene?

Chef Sean: I mean, I think the biggest thing we’ve done is just try and always work with like preserving ingredients. Like I do a lot of vinegars. We do a lot of ferments, like striving for a zero waste kitchen. Um, and then a lot of that comes from the whole, only working with what’s in season is like if you don’t put away ferments or pickles or things like that, then you don’t have all these bright flavors in the winter months and you’re just stuck with root vegetables and like the occasional brassica. So like, I think just thinking about what Appalachian cuisine has always been about, and it’s about what using what you have and then trying to preserve it to get through the colder months. So just bringing more of that into focus again is what we’re trying to do. And then it’s like, it’s kind of the standard that we’ve always held ourselves to.

Aislyn: So good. Are there a couple of other dishes on the menu that you feel like represent that?

Chef Sean: Uh, yeah. I think one of the biggest dishes for representing like Appalachian and Italian fusion kind of situation is the [...]. So we get in a whole hog a week as part of our whole animal butchery and take the shanks from that, and then I’m carrying those and discarded olive brine instead of just pouring it down the drain, since it’s got like all that great flavor and salt and everything. So we’re curing the shanks on the olive green that could be seen as trash, and then roasting that in the pizza oven, braising it. That becomes the filling for the pasta. And then we’re raising the cranberry beans in that liquid. So it’s a play on like Appalachian soup beans. And then we’re garnishing it with some cornbread crumble. So I think that’s a good representation of like traditional Appalachian and then like this new modern view of it. But like, it’s it’s all over the menu. It’s like all the pickles, it’s all the. Vegetables, like Graham always says it. And like, I fully agree with him. It’s like we try and think of vegetables as like the main attraction to a dish, it’s not just like an afterthought. It doesn’t have to be a garnish. Like vegetables can be like the most important part of a dish.

Aislyn: The chefs here, while very innovative, aren’t inventing something totally new. They’re taking what these mountains always provided back when eating was more about survival. And I think that’s the real preservation, not the pickles and the ferments, though. Yes, there are a lot of those and they are delicious. Our tour has one stop left dessert and we will get there. But there’s a meal that wasn’t part of the tour that had a big impact on me.

A few nights before I met Sita, I, along with my F.R. colleagues, sit down at tables inside a brick building on a downtown street called The Block. The building dates back to the 1890s. It’s called the YMI Cultural Center. And it’s one of the oldest African American cultural centers in the country.

We’re gonna have a funky good time. We’re gonna have a funky good time. We’re going to have a funky good time. We’re going to take you high. Yeah, I dare you.

Aislyn: We’re here for a night of music and a family style dinner that includes oxtail on the bone. Mac and cheese and, yes, those beef ribs. The dinner is jointly hosted by three local chefs who, in their own ways, are focusing on the long history of black Appalachian food. Kiara and Rhonda Wynn of Sistas on Montford and…

Rakim: Hi, my name is Rakim Gaines. I’m the executive chef at Capella on 9 here in Asheville, North Carolina.

Aislyn: Rakim was born and raised in Asheville.

Rakim: My mom’s African American, so we grew up on soul food. A lot of that. A lot of fried pork chops, baked chicken, rice and gravy. green beans, collard greens, mac and cheese, cornbread, stuff like that.

Aislyn: I asked him about where we had just eaten.

Rakim: There’s this place called The Block, right where we were for the event, the YMI Cultural Center and stuff like that. The ladies that own Sisters. It was her grandmother, a very delicious soul food restaurant. That whole block right there kind of was like a bunch of black owned businesses selling clothes. You could go and get your hair done or, you know, shoes, food, even a bunch of events just right on the block outside took place around there. Um, but a bunch of businesses kind of came in and bought the buildings and now there’s like office spaces and it all kind of got ran down and ran out. And it’s just, I mean, it’s, it’s not much at all around here anymore.

Aislyn: Now. Rakim runs the kitchen at Capella on 9, a fine dining restaurant with Spanish American vibes on the 9th floor of a downtown hotel. But he holds tight to his roots.

Rakim: I try to, you know, some of these soul food backgrounds that I have, try to throw those in there as much as I can without it being like, too much, but I don’t know. It’s stuff like, you know, our braised short rib. I kind of make it similar to my mom’s Mississippi pot roast, just like pepperoncinis and cooking it for 3 hours in this, like, it’s more of like a Spanish, I use a Spanish wine, tomato paste, beef broth and just like cook it down with the pepperoncinis. So you still kind of get that Mississippi pot roast vibe taste.

Aislyn: But while black Appalachian food may not be as common in the city anymore, it hasn’t disappeared entirely.

Rakim: There’s so many people on the outskirts, born and raised here, and they just kind of like they call it selling plates and you can go to their house on like a Sunday and they have like this menu and you can fry fish and whatever side or pork chops or chicken, and you can go and just simply buy a plate from them. And it’s, that’s kind of, that’s kind of how we do it around here without like them owning a restaurant or whatever. So those types of people put out some tasty, tasty food.

Aislyn: Yeah.

Rakim: And I, I think it would be super successful if they could get in the building or had a chance to own a restaurant or just a pull up or whatever it is.

Aislyn: Rakim would like to see more investment in chefs like these because he has a vision.

Rakim: My main goal is to teach the town soul food, get people familiarized with it, hopefully get some cooks around here, a chance to get into a building and help them out. And even myself, if I can get there and go that route, then I’d be happy to do that as well. And just to elevate it as well, to like teach it, get people to know it, but elevate it as well. Make beautiful plates and just have something that somebody can remember or come back into town and want to go to and have again, you know.

Aislyn: The ramp that I ate at Luminosa already made that trip from, according to Jamie, poor people’s food to the thing that people drive in for and Rakim’s betting that soul food will soon be the thing that people drive for as well. And after our dinner at the YMI Cultural Center, yeah, I think that’s a pretty safe bet. And now back to the tour.

By our last stop, I am structurally speaking, mostly to go boxes with a person attached, but you have to have something sweet at the end of the night. And dessert is at Asheville Chocolate. And the owner here has maybe the most surprising origin story of the day.

Melissa: I’m Melissa Quinn. We are an Asheville Chocolate and I’m the head chocolatier slash owner. I had been teaching high school, high school biology, um, and needed to transition to something else. I still loved it, but needed to do something new. So we were talking over the fence one day between our houses, and they mentioned they were selling the shop, and that became a kind of an apprenticeship with them. I knew nothing about chocolate when I started. I’d eaten it religiously every day of my life, but knew absolutely nothing about working with it. And there’s a lot to learn. Um, and yeah, they moved to England, sold us the shop, and we have been doing this for 9 years now.

Aislyn: So I didn’t realize when you said neighbor, you meant literal neighbor, like over the fence, literal neighbor.

Melissa: Yeah. We about a mile away in downtown. Yeah.

Aislyn: She swears her secret is the scientific method. Change one variable, write down what happens. Eat the evidence.

Melissa: Chocolate is so forgiving. If you make a mistake, you melt it down or you give it away. And then you have a friend for life. Yes. At least until you run out of chocolate.

Aislyn: So do you just have like a crowd of people following you around everywhere you go?

Melissa: No, but I did. I did realize after the first. After the first few months, everywhere I went, people would look at me and smile, and then they would look at my hands to see what I was carrying. And if my hands were empty, there was this momentary microexpression of disappointment and then they would be nice about it.

Aislyn: Then she creates a little Willy Wonka moment. She sets me loose and tells me to choose whatever chocolates I want.

Melissa: So we’ve got one called a Bellini, where we do a spiced pear. We do a pear fruit layer with some, um, cinnamon, a couple other spices in there, and then top it with a champagne ganache, please. Yeah, we’ve got one. We’ve got them out in the case right now.

Aislyn: Melissa shows me everything. There’s a truffle with a blend of North African spices. Another uses pink peppercorn. There’s salted caramel, chai, bourbon. There are so many options. And not just for chocolates, because I also notice a very handsome gelato case. Decisions made. I’m nibbling on a Bellini truffle and taking bites of kettle corn and chocolate gelato. In between, I asked Sita why she keeps going on these tours. Aside from the obvious.

Sita: I feel really blessed to live in a place that’s just full of of places like this, you know, where people are so passionate about what they’re doing and just feel so much pride and connection to what they’re doing and all the people that are involved. It’s like infectious and they feel it too. And it’s just, you know, it’s so good. Perfect ending to a perfect tour.

Aislyn: By the way, Eating Asheville donates a portion of every ticket sold to Manna Food Bank, a local organization dedicated to feeding the hungry here in Asheville. So by eating with them, you’re also helping to feed Asheville. And there were so many restaurants I toured and interviewed that we didn’t have space for. Cúrate, run by chef Katie Button, which is one of the most famous restaurants in Asheville. Little Chango, a Latin American fast casual spot. Golden Hour, which gave me another dish for my haunted foods list. The purple and green salad. So good. So my main advice is to come hungry and stay long enough to eat your way through the city. And please check out our other Asheville episodes in the feed. Next time we head for the trees, waterfalls, trails, and the oldest mountains you’ll ever stand on.

I’m Aislyn Greene and this is Unpacked by Afar. We’ll see you in the mountains.

Unpacked is a production of Afar. This episode was hosted by Aislyn Greene and produced by Nikki Galteland and Kendal Perkinson. Music from Chris Collin and Epidemic Sound. This podcast is part of the Airwave Podcast Network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to their other fine shows like Culture Kids and The Explorers podcast.