ASHEVILLE | NORTH CAROLINA

Inside The Refinery—and Why It Deserves Dinner Service

The Foundry Hotel’s restaurant serves an inventive brunch, with cardamom fritters and a gravy-smothered strata

Article and photos by Eric Barton | July 9, 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.

Asheville is a breakfast town. People here will wait 45 minutes outside Hole Doughnuts for a weekly glazed surprise. Brunch at Sunny Point Café is a half-day commitment, complete with sunscreen and a backup plan if the line gets out of hand. At the Saturday Tailgate Market, you’ll find people eating egg sandwiches off compostable plates, standing next to a jazz trio while sipping cold brew and pretending the tomato guy isn’t already sold out.

So when The Foundry Hotel reopened its restaurant as The Refinery, a brunch-only concept (for now), it wasn’t just a safe bet—it was a gamble. The space was once home to Benne on Eagle, which closed, almost prophetically, three days before Hurricane Helene hit in 2024. Now the space has a new breakfast-only-for-now concept, a new team, and a menu that doesn’t try to mimic what came before. It simply nails what people here want: a breakfast worth leaving the house for.

The Refinery Asheville Restaurant Foundry Hotel breakfas

Strada du Jour

Let’s first talk about that Strada du Jour, which reads like brunch casserole but eats like the comfort food your Southern aunt would serve if she had a CIA degree. It’s cut into squares, stacked and doused in a gravy rich enough that, if you’re like me, you’ll cancel those plans for a ride up Town Mountain later.

The Refinery Asheville Restaurant Foundry Hotel omelet.

The omelet came fluffy, tri-folded around just-wilted mushrooms, a nice salad on the side as a sharp contrast to the cheesy, buttery grits.

Mushroom omelet

We got the Blueberry Ricotta Fritters for the table, and they arrived crisp and golden, with a lemon-cardamom curd that somehow stole the show without overpowering the dish, a nice punch of spice to an otherwise rich dish.

My wife ordered a nicely spiced Bloody Mary that came dangerously close to being a salad, so full of pickled vegetables skewered like a kebab. She loved it, and I was happy to steal an okra.

Blueberry Ricotta Fritters

The Refinery Asheville Restaurant Foundry Hotel bloody mary

The Refinery’s Bloody Mary

Chef Shawn Cameron, formerly of Corner Kitchen, is running the back of house here, and his sense of balance—between the inventive and the expected—is on full display. Danica Norris, now leading food and beverage, brings some fine-dining pedigree of her own. The PR team tells me they’re considering dinner service, which makes sense; this space begs for candlelight and a bourbon-packed bar.

For now, The Refinery is brunch only. But even so, it already feels like the restaurant this hotel—and this historic neighborhood—has been waiting for.