Chef Peter Pollay Expands Posana: How Asheville’s Green Pioneer Built His Next Chapter

By Eric Barton | Nov. 2, 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.

When Peter Pollay was a kid in New Jersey, his mother let him flip the potato latkes. That small act — the thrill of watching oil sizzle, the joy of watching them sizzle into golden-brown — might not have seemed prophetic at the time. But it was there, somewhere between the shredded potatoes and the frying pan, that Pollay’s lifelong fascination with food began. “I truly enjoyed putting the potatoes in the pan, flipping them, and taking them out,” he says now. It wasn’t about precision yet, or artistry. It was about creation.

Years later, in college at Arizona State University, Pollay became the guy who cooked for everyone. “Good food options were scarce around campus,” he says. “So when Costco opened nearby, I got a membership and started making meals for my roommates and friends.” It was the sort of revelation that arrives not through a lightning bolt of inspiration but through repetition — dinners shared, compliments received, the quiet pleasure of making something well. By the time he graduated with a political science degree, Pollay had decided his real future was in kitchens, not campaigns.

What began as a college hobby has since become one of Asheville’s most enduring culinary institutions. Fifteen years after Posana first redefined what a sustainable restaurant could look like in the city, Pollay has opened a second location in South Asheville’s Biltmore Park Town Square — expanding his vision while keeping it rooted in the same principles that made the original a model for conscious dining.

Chef Peter Pollay

Among a food scene in Asheville forever chasing the next reinvention, Pollay’s story stands out for its steadiness: a chef who built a following not with flash or ego, but with the radical notion that food should be both inclusive and responsible.

It helped that his family had a friend named Larry Levy — the Chicago restaurateur behind a dining empire that fed both financiers and baseball fans. “Larry called me and laid out my future,” Pollay remembers. Levy told him: “‘If this is truly what you want to do, move back to Chicago, work with me for six months, and then attend the Culinary Institute of America.’” Pollay did exactly that, washing dishes and prepping at Levy’s City Tavern before earning his letter of recommendation. Then came Comiskey Park, where he cooked in the luxury boxes for White Sox games, feeding thousands with Caesar salads and seared salmon — an early masterclass in scale and discipline.

Chef Peter Pollay Posana Asheville pasta

From there, his education expanded outward. At the Culinary Institute of America, he split his time between Park Avenue Café, where David Burke emphasized creative technique, and the Hudson River Club, where Waldy Maloof preached the gospel of local sourcing. But it was in Malibu, working at Wolfgang Puck’s Granita, that Pollay’s food philosophy clicked into focus. “Wolfgang stopped in the middle of a busy Saturday night service because he noticed a couple of tears in the romaine lettuce I was preparing for a Caesar salad,” Pollay recalls. “He came behind the line and showed me how to fold the dressing into the leaves without damaging them.” It was a lesson in reverence — for ingredients, for process, for care.

Mafaline with sunday sauce

Chef Peter Pollay Posana Asheville pork chop

After years spent launching restaurants across Chicago, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas, Pollay and his wife, Martha, began craving a different kind of life. “We wanted a place to raise our children and grow our family,” he says. They found Asheville — then on the cusp of becoming a culinary destination — and saw potential in its farmer’s markets and mountain rhythm. In 2009, they opened Posana, a modern American restaurant that married their twin obsessions: sustainability and inclusivity.

Pork chop, brown butter sweet potatoes

Chef Peter Pollay Posana Asheville salmon

Salmon with mascarpone polenta

The concept was personal. Martha had been diagnosed with celiac disease, and Pollay wanted to create a place where she and others could eat safely — without compromise. “Our meals at home just happened to be gluten-free,” he says. “We wanted to bring that same ethos to the restaurant.” Posana became North Carolina’s first certified gluten-free kitchen and its first Certified Green Restaurant, achievements rooted in Pollay’s belief that sustainability isn’t a trend but a moral obligation. “Restaurants use a lot of products every day and generate a lot of waste,” he says. “We wanted to minimize that impact.”

Peter and Martha Pollay

Over time, Pollay’s influence extended beyond his own kitchen. As part of the Asheville Independent Restaurant Association’s Green Team, he helped other chefs pursue certifications, ultimately earning Asheville the title of America’s “Greenest Dining Destination.” Yet, despite the accolades, he never lost sight of the ingredient-driven simplicity that first drew him in. “The love, hard work, and attention to detail required to grow and deliver the product to our door must be continued by us,” he says.

Dessert Chef Peter Pollay Posana Asheville

This year marks that next evolution: a second Posana, this one in South Asheville. It’s a neighborhood spot designed for locals — with curved booths, a sprawling bar, and a menu that invites regulars to drop in for a smash burger and a beer before a movie. “Building relationships with staff, purveyors, and customers is truly the best part of the restaurant business,” Pollay says. “We’re looking forward to being part of this community.”

French silk pie

Chef Peter Pollay Posana Asheville dessert

And even as Posana grows, its roots remain firm. Pollay and Martha still travel widely — he’s taken cooking classes in Chiang Mai and studied produce markets across Europe — but every journey reinforces the same belief: freshness above all. “Ingredients grown with care and harvested as recently as possible simply taste better,” he says. That ethos, carried from a Malibu kitchen to the Blue Ridge Mountains, has become the foundation of a career — and a movement — defined not by spectacle, but by doing things differently.

Warm apple spice cake