It's Official: Asheville Restaurants Are Ready for Diners to Return

It was my first time back to Asheville since Hurricane Helene. My mind fumbled over if it was safe or even ethical to be there as a visitor. I stood in line at Cúrate, the beloved downtown restaurant from 2015 F&W Best New Chef Katie Button, and my thoughts swarmed: Is the water clean? Would I have to face a hollow, sad iteration of Asheville? Do they want me here?

The answers came quickly and clearly when I entered the restaurant’s Pintxo Party that early December night: Yes, no, yes.

“We want the world to know that we are here,” Button said. “We are ready for them to visit.” Water has returned, and Asheville with its nationally recognized restaurant scene is open once again.

In late September 2024, Hurricane Helene pummeled Asheville, cutting off water and power for weeks, leaving a wreckage of loss and shuttering businesses. Many restaurants couldn’t swing the cost of water tanks; they waited anxiously for safe, potable water to return. Some couldn’t make it.

Though this reality naturally incited some internal hesitation, something still nudged me to go to this hurricane relief dinner hosted in collaboration with gleaming, fish-fry newcomer Good Hot Fish. Maybe it was the prospect of eating a few or more gildas or sipping some Rise Over Run wines. Or maybe it was just the tantalizing idea of a party — a revolutionary assertion of joy amid the hardship.

Entering, I expected a somber energy. And while there was an underlying tenderness, the air was quite the opposite. It was celebratory and beaming with support — locals had made it through the initial emergency.

At the party, people snaked down the street and chefs celebrated other chefs, as Ashleigh Shanti promoted her new cookbook, Our South, right there at a restaurant that wasn't her own. The joint affair was galvanizing and contagious. I thought to myself how distinctly Asheville this all is — grassroots and unreasonably generous and just so cool.

I wanted everyone ever to be there (and to eat Shanti’s trout roe sandwiches and Button’s mejillones) and mainly, to witness this community’s resilience. But, beneath the residues of celebration was the reality that this was a packed room of locals, not visitors.

And if travelers don’t visit soon, restaurants in Asheville could face a second crisis. “We can't wait till spring,” said Molly Irani, the chief hospitality officer at Chai Pani Restaurant Group.

Tourism fuels Asheville's economy

There is an urgent timeliness to the world knowing Asheville is open. Restaurants are actively asking whether they push through a few more weeks or shut down now. Some have already closed their doors permanently, like Vivian, from James Beard Award-nominated chef Josiah McGaughey. The physical damage, the financial loss from being closed, the lack of tourism — it’s catching up to the restaurants.

In truth, the city lost its busiest season. According to Asheville Watchdog, 13.9 million tourists visit the North Carolina destination each year for its iconic leaf-peeping fall and the festive holiday months. Restaurants are scaled around this onslaught of tourism. Travel and hospitality make up 20% of the county’s GDP, according to Tourism Economics, and food and beverage workers comprise over 12% of the city’s workforce, per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Button said tourism is “the reason that all the passionate independent makers and businesses can survive here.”

2024 F&W Best New Chef Silver Iocovozzi agrees. “We have this symbiotic relationship between restaurants and tourists.” Iocovozzi had to close his restaurant Neng Jr’s for 75 days in the wake of Helene.

Restaurants are the cultural heart of the city

The prospect of losing restaurants really matters, not just for the sake of the city and its peoples’ financial livelihoods, but because restaurants are the centerpiece of the culture here. “Good Hot Fish feels like a community space where everyone is welcomed … doing that in a former Black business district feels very powerful,” Shanti said.

Asheville has been and continues to be a marvelous rare breed of a hospitality city, made up of a forward-thinking, rag-tag crew of artisans (restaurateurs included). It has shined light on Appalachian cuisine and its many intersections — from Black, Southern foodways to Filipinx cuisine — which are given a stage at Good Hot Fish and Neng Jr’s, respectively.

These restaurants fuel an ineffable essence that is Ashevile’s “wild, independent spirit” — one worth the fight to preserve, Irani explained. Restaurants also fueled so many of the post-Helene recovery efforts.

“When we go through these tragedies … people typically look to the folks that know how to feed others,” said Shanti, who cooked warm meals with Iocovozzi and their partners. “People that work in service [can] anticipate need,” Iocovozzi said.

Shanti started a free community meals nonprofit, Sweet Relief Kitchen. Asheville breweries donated clean water to World Central Kitchen. Botiwalla converted its downstairs into a storefront for a demolished Christmas store. “I've never in my life experienced hospitality before until now,” Shanti said.

While these leaders believe in their Asheville neighbors, they also really believe in the power of tourists, the power of people being of service to the service industry workers.

“If they show up, these businesses that are right at that tipping point, they will hold on,” Irani said. If they don't, though, “it will forever change this community.”

The silver lining

Aside from preserving a culture and an economy after devastation, tourists have a somewhat surprising, additional reason to visit Asheville — a sense of renewal, “a new chapter” in the industry, as Iocovozzi put it.

The city’s forced closure offered an unforeseen period of rest for hospitality folks, giving some a fresh perspective on their work. “We’re different because of what we’ve experienced,” Iocovozzi said. “For the first time, I felt like I had recovered from restaurant burnout.”

Related: When You're a Chef Who Runs on Adrenaline, How Do You Calm Down?

He’s ushering an anti-burnout, more sustainable work environment at Neng’s. The sentiment rings true for Shanti, who is exploring a new leadership style, doing daily check-ins for her staff, and building a more focused team. They expect that internal work to naturally translate to more positive guest experiences.

And that night at Cúrate, this new chapter — a wise, warm, wonderful display of hospitality that came from a collective hardship — is exactly why I overstayed my welcome. I drank the very clean, very safe water and toasted to a reemerging Asheville, one that’s holding on to hope and ready for you.

“I do not think we will return to exactly how things were before the storm,” Button said. But that's not a bad thing. “Asheville will come back stronger and wiser.” This “Asheville renaissance” — as Shanti called it — is teetering on whether or not tourism returns.

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