RESTAURANT NEWS | ASHEVILLE

The Majestic in Asheville Makes Old-School Chinese Takeout Feel New Again

Chef Eric Scheffer revisits wonton soup, lo mein, sweet-and-sour chicken, and the fried rice he grew up eating.

THE MAJESTIC | MAP | INSTAGRAM

By Eric Barton
7:25 a.m. ET, July 14, 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 fried rice arrived near the end of my meal at The Majestic, after I had already tried enough food to fill most of a Chinese takeout menu.

“This is the fried rice of my childhood,” I said as the server set it down.

The rice itself was light in color and dry, as it should be, full of bean sprouts, boiled shrimp, chunks of pork, egg, carrots, and peas. This wasn’t the chefy recreation that arrives with truffle oil or wagyu steak or some other expensive ingredient dropped on top. It was familiar. It was nostalgic.

That is the idea behind The Majestic, chef and owner Eric Scheffer’s Chinese-American restaurant in north Asheville. Scheffer has spent more than 25 years opening restaurants around the city, including Vinnie’s Neighborhood Italian and Jettie Rae’s Oyster House, often building them around the food and experiences that shaped him. At The Majestic, he is recreating the Chinese-American restaurants of his childhood. At some points, the dishes arrive as full portions of nostalgia. At others, they become new creations that show what he can do.

Roast pork wonton soup

After the meal, Scheffer told me that was the point: to serve dishes that will be new to some people alongside the ones that bring others back. “Yeah, I had to put a chef spin on some of it,” he said with a laugh.

That was most evident in the salt and pepper shrimp, large shrimp in a light batter, punchy from the seasoning, with slices of jalapeño providing heat. The Chinese chopped chicken salad brought back the one from California Pizza Kitchen and, for Scheffer, his years working on the West Coast.

Chinese chicken salad

From there, the meal headed into familiar territory, the kind of food I ate from paper takeout containers as a kid. Wontons stuffed with tender roast pork floated in a clear soup. Beef and broccoli came in a dark sauce punched up with orange rind. There was beef lo mein in a light sauce and sweet-and-sour pork coated in something red, gooey, and unapologetically sweet, with chunks of pineapple scattered throughout.

Salt and pepper shrimp

Beef and broccoli

Then came that fried rice, which had me thinking about childhood drives home with takeout in the car, smelling dinner through the bag and knowing somehow that the ride was taking longer than usual.

The Majestic Chinese American Restaurant Asheville Egg rolls

The Majestic’s 36 dishes are printed on one long sheet, the kind of menu old Chinese-American restaurants used to staple to takeout bags or stuff into every mailbox in an apartment building. I tried 10 of them during a preview dinner, enough to see the balance Scheffer is after. Some dishes stay close to the food he remembers. Others give him room to move beyond it.

New York-style egg rolls

Scheffer hopes to open The Majestic on Thursday, though he told me it may be Tuesday before the first customers come through the door. He wants to make sure the staff is ready before committing to a date.

Cold sesame noodles

Pork potstickers

As I ate, the conversation turned to authenticity. This isn’t traditional Chinese cooking. It is authentically Chinese-American, an offshoot of two cuisines that became something of its own in restaurants across the country.

For Scheffer, that means returning to the places that fed him as a kid while giving himself permission to move beyond them. For me, it meant one more spoonful of fried rice, then another, and the sudden memory of a paper bag perfuming the whole car.