How Eric Scheffer Built Restaurants Out of Childhood Memories

By Eric Barton | April 2, 2026

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.

The best restaurants, the award-winners and the bread-winners and the longtime staples, they nail the basics, sure. But there’s something more in the truly great spots, and it speaks to nostalgia. Not in design or menu items but in the way the good chefs build something based on their own story.

Which is the idea Asheville chef Eric Scheffer had recently for The Majestic, his new Chinese restaurant. He imagined it to be like the ones he went to as a kid, especially on holidays. “Growing up Jewish, Chinese food held a special place in our culture,” he told me. “On nights when my Christian friends were celebrating their holidays and the city seemed to pause, Chinese restaurants remained open and welcoming, offering a place for families like mine to gather.”

It’s the same idea that has defined much of Scheffer’s career. For more than 25 years, he has been one of the defining figures in Asheville dining, first by helping prove the city could support serious restaurants, then by building places that felt less like business plans than extensions of his own background. He is the restaurateur behind Vinnie’s Neighborhood Italian, Jettie Rae’s Oyster House, and Gan Shan, and he also co-founded the Asheville Independent Restaurant Association. Plenty of people open restaurants. Fewer help shape the city around them.

Scheffer

Scheffer grew up in Brooklyn and on Long Island in what he calls a wonderful childhood, though not a simple one. His mother was doting, and his father was a well-known advertising executive—think the characters from Mad Men and you’re not far off. The family’s life gave him access to travel, good food, and the kind of hospitality that leaves an impression before a kid fully understands why. “From an early age, I had the chance to see what the world of food and wine had to offer,” he said. That sounds nice, and it was, but there was another side to it. His parents worked and traveled constantly, and as a teenager he was often left to his own devices.

Instead of drifting, Scheffer started cooking, taking inspiration from cooking shows of Graham Kerr, Jacques Pépin, and Julia Child. “I had cash in my pocket and access to amazing grocery stores, so I started buying ingredients, cooking for myself, and experimenting in the kitchen.“

Vinnie’s

Then came the moment that made the whole profession click. Scheffer was out to dinner with his parents at Lutèce in Manhattan when he became fixated not just on the food, but on something less tangible. “I remember being completely enamored by the way the waiters seemed to glide effortlessly through the dining room,” he said. More than that, he was struck by the kindness. The polish. The sense that everyone at the table, including him, mattered. That is the thing great restaurateurs understand early: people remember how a restaurant made them feel almost as much as what it fed them.

Gan Shan

Jettie Rae’s

Before he made his mark in Asheville, Scheffer spent time in Los Angeles working in television and advertising, producing concerts and films. Then in 1995 he came to Asheville looking for a quieter life and landed in a city that was just starting to imagine itself as a dining destination. He saw an opening. In 2000, he bought Savoy and turned it into a fine-dining restaurant that helped raise the ceiling on what eating out in Asheville could be.

Scheffer with wife Heidi and daughter Jordan

Then the economy took a nosedive in 1998, and Scheffer served his last yellow cake martini at the Savoy. He opened Vinnie’s, a more relaxed, more affordable place inspired by the old-school restaurants he grew up with in New York. The shift was driven by economics, but also by responsibility. He wanted to keep people employed. He wanted a restaurant where guests could forget, for a couple of hours, whatever trouble was waiting outside.

Jettie Rae’s

The portfolio kept widening. Jettie Rae’s opened in 2020 and gave Asheville a seafood house built around oysters, fish, and Lowcountry-influenced thinking. He acquired Gan Shan in 2023, keeping chef Ray Hui in place while leaning into the restaurant’s easy, counter-service, Asian-inspired identity.

Throughout these openings over the years, Scheffer says he’s most proud of the fact that many of his employees stay with him. “I believe the way you do that is by genuinely caring about the people who work for you. You recognize them as part of your extended family, and you take the time to learn their stories. You greet them with kindness and gratitude every time you see them, and whether they’re a dishwasher or the head chef, you treat everyone with equal respect.”

Vinnie’s

Which brings him back to The Majestic. He talks about growing up Jewish, about Chinese restaurants being the places that stayed open when other doors closed, about Sunday rituals and neighborhood spots on Long Island and in Manhattan that offered comfort with no need for explanation. He talks about those places as “comforting, familiar, and always delicious.” He is building a new restaurant, sure, but he is also chasing something older than that. The best restaurateurs do not just create places to eat. They spend their lives trying to return to the tables that first made them feel welcome.

Scheffer