Xico
ASHEVILLE | NORTH CAROLINA
These Spots Will Remind You Why Asheville Is a Great Restaurant City
By Eric Barton | Dec. 13, 2025
AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.
I’ve been spending my summers in Asheville for 20 years, which means I remember the era when you could do a nice downtown dinner your first night in town and then kind of run out of options. Back then, the city’s “food scene” was a couple of dependable restaurants near Pack Square or the chains on Merrimon and Hendersonville Road.
Now the good stuff is everywhere. You can eat your way across town—from the South Slope to West Asheville to Biltmore Village—and keep running into chef-driven places that cook with the kind of confidence that travels well. The menus feel intentional. The service has a pulse. The ambition goes beyond being charming in the mountains.
And because I live here part-time now, this is the list I’ve been quietly building, editing, and re-editing—one summer, one meal, one “you have to try this” text at a time. Here then are the best restaurants right now in Asheville, one of this country’s best food scenes.
The Admiral
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There’s a reason The Admiral is considered a West Asheville legend. When you pull up, you might think you’re in the wrong place—it’s unassuming, maybe a little too low-key for such a hot spot. But trust me, this is where magic happens. The menu rotates often, so you never quite know what you’re going to get, but it’s always a blend of the unexpected, with dishes that feel both familiar and adventurous at the same time.
Best for: Fine-dining-level cooking in a dive-bar-like dining room
All Souls Pizza
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I was once halfway up an incline in Bent Creek when I stopped to ask a guy with a strange bag what he was up to. He was a mushroom forager, he told me, for All Souls Pizza, which should tell you about the lengths that this place goes to source local ingredients. Those toppings, like cheeses from North Carolina growers, go on pizzas made from a naturally leavened sourdough that spends days fermenting. Along with them are salads full of things just delivered from farms and reasonably priced wines. If there’s a better way to spend a warm Asheville night under the twinkly lights hanging over All Souls’ picnic benches, I haven’t found it.
Best for: Sourdough pizza on a terrace that feels like an escape
Chai Pani
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It had become just too hard to get into Chai Pani until this Asheville mainstay moved to the South Slope into the former Buxton Hall Barbecue space. The vibrant new location looks like the set of a Bollywood wedding, a perfect display for the always colorful and deeply flavorful Indian street food served here. It’s impossible to go wrong with anything Chef Meherwan Irani is cooking, but grilled cheese skewers, a new item since the move, and sloppy jai, essentially Indian sloppy joe sliders, are highlights. More good news: Irani’s order-at-the counter concept Botiwalla took over the old location.
Best for: Indian street food served in a Bollywood-looking dining room
Cúrate
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Out of the dozens, maybe hundreds, of times I’ve been to Cúrate, there’s one single visit where things didn’t go perfect. While we had to wait 20 minutes past our reservation time, a manager came over with a free round of appetizers, a ton of apologies, and a reminder of one of the things that makes this place special. Chef and owner Katie Button has infused her restaurant with Southern hospitality just as much as she has authentic Spanish recipes. The result is a place where the knowledgeable servers will graciously lead you through a meal of small plates like clams in a broth that demands being sopped up with crusty bread, leading up to larger ones like the absolutely incredible braised oxtail atop a Spanish tortilla, ending ideally with fried eggplant topped with rosemary ice cream (trust me on this one). I often say Cúrate is my favorite restaurant in the world, and every time I go, I’m reminded why.
Best for: A night of Spanish tapas and service that never misses
Finest
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Founder Mike Bean turned his farmers market hit into a neighborhood hangout with co-owner and beverage lead Gabriela Bonfiglio and chefs Brooke Adams and Danny Cairo leading the kitchen. They’ve channeled Northeastern deli swagger and red-sauce comfort into egg sandwiches by morning and big, saucy subs by lunch—like a chicken-parm cutlet nearly twice the size of the roll it barely fits. There’s cheap beer and Italian wine, and Bean says a full dinner menu is coming; brunch already draws a line down the block. For anyone who says Asheville lacks great sandwiches, West Asheville now has an answer.
Best for: A deli run of egg sandwiches, big subs, and cheap beer
Jargon
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Owners Shelly and Sean Piper created a West Asheville restaurant that feels both like a neighborhood bistro and a chef-driven hotspot. Drinks and dishes here are both inventive and approachable (not an easy feat), like the Old Fashioned served in a smoked ice sphere and the chicken confit served with pearls of hot sauce. Both the dining room and courtyard out back are charming, but the chef’s counter turns a meal here into dinner theater.
Best for: A West Asheville date night with clever plates and stiff martinis
Jettie Rae's Oyster House
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This quaint spot in North Asheville is a raw bar first, and it’s serious: rotating oysters, crudo, ceviche, and stacked towers, plus a cocktail list built for brine. The Charlotte Street room runs on seafood classics done clean, while The Pearl—an on-site Airstream—starts shucking and pouring outside when late afternoon hits. It’s the place you book for a seafood fix that feels like a Charleston house party, from the ice on the trays to the pacing of service. Owner Eric Scheffer keeps the operation tight; reservations help, but the vibe stays easy enough to make a weeknight feel like a trip.
Best for: A raw-bar fix, seafood towers, and a proper martini
Leo’s House of Thirst
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Leo’s House of Thirst is the kind of place where you show up for a casual drink and leave talking about terroir. It’s small, intimate, and lined with a rotating list of interesting wines that’ll have even the most devoted beer drinker pretending to detect hints of “wet river stone.” The regularly changing menu always includes lots of small plates like a tinned fish plate, sandwiches like meatloaf and a muffaletta, and larger plates like linguine with clams and Italian sausage. Inside, it’s tight but charming, the kind of cozy that makes you lean in. But if the weather’s right, grab a spot at the picnic tables outside—few places in town make a cool mountain evening feel this effortlessly good.
Best for: A neighborhood wine hang with stellar plates and bottles you haven’t seen
The Market Place
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The Market Place has been around since 1979, which in Asheville restaurant years makes it basically a historic landmark, and its James Beard Awards nomination for Outstanding Restaurant in 2024 and Outstanding Chef in America in 2025 were reminders of just how good it is. Chef William Dissen was a champion of farm-to-table before it became a marketing gimmick, and it shows in the menu: Appalachian trout with roasted garlic, perfectly seared scallops, and a rotating cast of seasonal dishes that always feel like they belong exactly where they are. If you want to taste what made Asheville’s restaurant scene what it is today, this is the place.
Best for: A downtown farm-to-table classic that does seasonal right
Mother
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Mother started as a humble bread and wine shop in the River Arts District, but now it’s got a full-blown café on the South Slope, holding its own among the breweries. The menu from chef Casey Ruiz leans heavily on sourdough from head baker Heidi Bass, with sandwiches and tartines that change often enough to keep you guessing. But it’s the more composed dishes—maybe a confit duck leg with lentils, celery root purée, and black garlic molasses—that prove this place is more than just a sandwich shop. Brett Watson’s wine list leans funky and natural, and the staff knows their stuff, ready to help you find the perfect pairing for that towering meatloaf sandwich you absolutely need to order.
Best for: A South Slope spot that elevates everything from avocado toast to wine pairings
Neng Jr.'s
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The back-alley door opens to an 18-seat, high-energy room where chef-owner Silver Iocovozzi and husband/co-owner Cherry run a Filipinx-Southern conversation in real time. The menu shifts with the day, but a few signatures endure: an adobo oyster capped with a cured quail yolk and sea grapes; bright kinilaw; lumpia; and a coconut-rich duck adobo that reads like a love letter to Manila and the mountains. After Helene, they were down for weeks and came back swinging, so book ahead. The accolades are nice; the reason you go is that every plate feels entirely original.
Best for: A tiny room serving audacious Filipino plates
Pure & Proper
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Head to Black Mountain for one of the more charming restaurants in the region. Pure & Proper took over a long-neglected gas station, filling the peaked-roof building with charm and warmth. Then chef Jake Whitman built a seasonal menu that both takes chances and nails crowd-pleasers, from an okonomiyaki with roasted lamb belly to a bone-in venison loin on cheesy potatoes.
Best for: A Black Mountain night out at what just might be your new favorite restaurant
Wildwood Still
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The restaurant atop the Moxy hotel in downtown could've taken the easy road: bar food menu, shots for the bachelor parties, simple sports bar decor. Instead the Moxy built what immediately became the best rooftop space in town, with accordion windows and doors that open onto a deck with expansive views of the mountains. The small plates are Asian-influenced and come from Asheville veteran chef Austin Tisdale: an umami-punch of an Asian pear salad, lucious lobster dumplings, and a robata grill menu that goes far beyond simple wood-fired meats. I would’ve loved this place just for the views, but with dishes like this, it’s a new favorite.
Best for: A sunset cocktail above downtown with bites better than they need to be
Rocky’s Hot Chicken Shack
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This is Asheville’s answer to Nashville heat, served the proper way: fried to order, dunked in spice from honey mild to extra hot, then parked on white bread with a pickle. The move is a plate with two sides—mac and cheese, oniony green beans, corn pudding, collards—or a sandwich like the Royale with Cheese or the Cheerwine BBQ. Save room for the Coca-Cola cake or banana pudding, both unapologetically sweet. Locally owned by Rich and Lauren Cundiff, the shack spirit lives in the food, not the building; the line proves it at both the Patton Avenue and Sweeten Creek locations.
Best for: Spicy, crispy chicken and sides that might steal the show
Xico
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Chef Scott Linquist built Xico around a raging Josper and a comal that keep steaks and tortillas coming, and the whole place feels calibrated for big-night dining on the South Slope. Start with the tuna tostadita, then let a server build the century-old Tijuana Caesar tableside like it is a ritual worth watching. The bone-in ribeye shows up pre-sliced after a sous vide bath and a hard Josper sear, begging to be tucked into warm tortillas with a dark, spicy salsa built from huitlacoche and black garlic. If you have the bandwidth left, finish with churros dragged through caramel and a stein of Mexican hot chocolate wearing an indecent amount of whipped cream.
Best for: A destination-worthy Mexican dinner when you want smoke, drama, and serious cooking
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