Raleigh Most Influential Chefs

NORTH CAROLINA | THE SOUTH

Everyone’s Talking About Raleigh Restaurants—Here are the Six Chefs Who Made It Happen

By Eric Barton | Oct. 10, 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.

Eric Barton The Adventurist

Raleigh didn’t quietly evolve into one of the South’s most talked-about food scenes—it was built, dish by dish, by a handful of people who refused to settle for good enough.

You can trace the city’s rise through many names, but we narrowed it down to the six most influential, the chefs who did much to build up North Carolina’s capital. They opened restaurants that made national editors look up from Atlanta and Charleston, that convinced travelers to add a detour off I-40, that gave locals something to brag about other than barbecue. These chefs turned Raleigh into a food city worth arguing about.

Their menus look nothing alike, but the through line is ambition—the kind that forces a town to keep up. When you talk about why Raleigh matters now, these are the names that float to the top.


Chef Bhavin Chhatwani Tamasha Modern Indian

Bhavin Chhatwani

Tamasha Modern Indian

If you want to understand Raleigh’s fascination with modern Indian cooking, start with Bhavin Chhatwani. His restaurant, Tamasha, translates traditional Indian flavors into a fine-dining format the city hadn’t seen before. In 2025 he earned a James Beard semifinalist nod for Emerging Chef, recognition that placed both him and Raleigh on the national radar.

Chhatwani treats Indian cuisine not as a category but as a toolkit—regional techniques, spice calibrations, layering of acid and heat—applied with modern precision. His tasting menus balance the recognizable with surprise: paneer paired with citrusy reductions, biryani textures reframed in small plates, desserts that chase subtlety over sugar.

Chef Bhavin Chhatwani Tamasha Modern Indian Raleigh

His influence comes from proving that ambition and authenticity can coexist. Tamasha opened at a time when Raleigh’s restaurant scene risked becoming predictable—another steakhouse here, another Southern-lite concept there. Chhatwani reminded diners that a new generation of chefs could build identity without leaning on nostalgia. His presence expands the city’s definition of “Southern,” reminding everyone that global and local aren’t opposites when the cooking is this confident.


Chef Ashley Christensen Raleigh

Ashley Christensen

Poole’s Diner | Death & Taxes | Beasley’s

If you trace Raleigh’s modern food identity, you’ll find Ashley Christensen not just at ground zero but at several high points. She launched Poole’s Diner in 2007 and used that modest shotgun-space to prove that comfort food could be serious and locally rooted. From there she built out AC Restaurants—Death & Taxes, Beasley’s Chicken + Honey, Fox Liquor Bar, and Bridge Club—each one exploring a different facet of Southern hospitality.

Chef Ashley Christensen Raleigh Poole's Diner

Christensen won James Beard Awards for Best Chef: Southeast in 2014 and Outstanding Chef in 2019, but her real influence is how she made Raleigh a food city with range. Death & Taxes brought the discipline of live fire to downtown fine dining. Beasley’s redefined fried chicken for a generation raised on fast food. Fox Liquor Bar, tucked beneath Beasley’s, is part cocktail laboratory, part tribute to her father. Even Bridge Club, her events space, feels like an extension of her ethos—warm, confident, unpretentious.

Her newest move, a dinner series called AC’s Table, feels like a summation: small, precise experiences built on connection rather than scale. Christensen’s influence isn’t about empire. It’s about permanence—the rare ability to open a restaurant and make the city feel more like itself.


Chef Cheetie Kumar Raleigh NC

Cheetie Kumar

Ajja

Cheetie Kumar’s return to the kitchen with Ajja was one of the biggest stories in Raleigh dining. After closing Garland in 2022, she reemerged a year later with a new vision—an open-air restaurant in Five Points serving Mediterranean and Middle Eastern-inspired food that feels at once familiar and startling. Within months, Ajja landed on Esquire’s list of America’s Best New Restaurants, and Kumar was once again in the national spotlight.

Ajja isn’t a rehash of Garland. It’s leaner, more focused, with dishes that show a chef in full control of her palette: roasted carrots with harissa vinaigrette, fish collars bright with lemon and sumac, flatbreads blistered in the oven and eaten with handfuls of herbs. The flavors are layered but never fussy.

Cheetie Kumar Raleigh NC

Kumar’s influence reaches beyond the menu. She helped define the rhythm of Raleigh dining over the last decade—one foot in rock-and-roll grit, the other in culinary rigor. Her restaurants have always felt like extensions of her: creative, global, restless. Ajja proves she can still surprise a city that thought it already knew her.


Chef David Ellis  Figulina Raleigh

David Ellis

Figulina

David Ellis brought Raleigh its pasta awakening. With Figulina, he built a restaurant devoted to hand-rolled, handmade, and regionally sourced pasta in a city that once considered it an afterthought. The results have been immediate: a James Beard semifinalist for Best New Restaurant and a packed reservation book from week one.

Ellis’s background reads like a passport—UK, France, New Zealand, Australia—and his plates reflect that breadth. At Figulina, he channels Italian technique through an ingredient-driven Southern lens: lamb ragù folded into fresh tagliatelle, sweet corn agnolotti, roasted mushrooms finished with local butter and herbs. The cooking is clean, exacting, and quietly confident.

Chef David Ellis Figulina Raleigh

But Ellis’s real contribution is psychological. He gave Raleigh diners permission to treat pasta as an art form, not a prelude. His dining room hums with the energy of people realizing something new is happening: that this city can sustain restaurants where flour and water become narrative. In a region built on slow food, Ellis made slowness modern again.


Chef Saif Rahman Peregrine Restaurant Raleigh

Saif Rahman

Peregrine

At Peregrine, Saif Rahman has created Raleigh’s most compelling argument for what modern American cooking can be. Named the NCRLA Chef of the Year in 2021, Rahman opened Peregrine soon after and established it as a destination for precise, globally influenced food that resists easy definition.

His plates carry hints of his international background—ginger, coriander, miso—but they’re grounded in local sourcing and classical structure. Rahman doesn’t treat “fusion” as a buzzword; he treats it as fluency. A scallop crudo might share the menu with duck confit in smoked broth, yet both belong to the same language of balance and restraint.

Chef Saif Rahman  Peregrine Raleigh

Rahman’s influence lies partly in how many chefs now cite him as proof that ambition doesn’t require leaving Raleigh. Peregrine feels urbane without being imported. It suggests that this city can be cosmopolitan on its own terms. In a decade defined by the rise of Southern food cities, Rahman’s presence keeps Raleigh in the conversation—not as a follower, but as a leader.


Chef Scott Crawford Raleigh NC

Scott Crawford

Crawford & Son | Jolie | Brodeto | Sous Terre

Scott Crawford is the architect of Raleigh’s restaurant maturity. Since opening Crawford & Son in 2016, he’s built a mini-empire that manages to feel both polished and personal. Jolie followed next door, a French bistro with rooftop tables and the smell of fresh-baked bread escaping onto Person Street. Then came Brodeto, a seafood-driven Adriatic concept, and Sous Terre, a subterranean cocktail bar that gives the city the grown-up nightlife it always wanted.

Crawford’s restaurants aren’t flashy; they’re disciplined. He builds teams, refines systems, and opens concepts that last. His 2025 James Beard semifinalist nod for Outstanding Restaurateur confirmed what Raleigh already knew—that he’s the city’s quiet backbone.

Chef Scott Crawford Raleigh

The hallmark of his influence is consistency. He’s shown that you can run multiple high-performing restaurants in a mid-size market without compromising quality or identity. Crawford’s cooking—whether it’s a perfect steak, a delicate brodetto, or a plate of roasted carrots with crème fraîche—embodies a kind of calm authority. He doesn’t chase trends; he sets the tone. In a city finding its footing among the South’s culinary heavyweights, that steadiness might be Raleigh’s secret weapon.


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