Two Years After Helene Washed the Truck Away, Guajiro Finally Has Walls

At its new brick-and-mortar home inside Asheville Cotton Mill Studios, the family-run Cuban restaurant is serving all-day comfort food in the same River Arts District spot the flood took from it.

By Eric Barton
6:25 a.m. ET, Oct. 7, 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.

Most restaurant openings are a beginning. Guajiro's feels more like a return.

Guajiro Cuban Comfort Food recently opened as a brick-and-mortar restaurant inside Asheville Cotton Mill Studios in the River Arts District. It's the same spot where, almost exactly two years earlier, Tropical Storm Helene sent the French Broad River over its banks and washed away Guajiro's food truck, its prep kitchen, and El Patio, the bar the team had opened only about a month before the storm.

What the flood didn't take was the following the truck had built. Guajiro's a family-run operation built on recipes from owner Christian "Chris" Barroso's grandmother, Rosa Montenegro. Even the name's family history: a guajiro is a Cuban countryman, a farmer, and Barroso's said it honors his great-grandfather.

Pastelitos

The road back wasn't quick. The team spent months clearing mud and debris from the Cotton Mill by hand before contractors could start work. In the meantime, Guajiro did what it'd always done and cooked from a truck, setting up at Hi-Wire Brewing in Biltmore Village while the River Arts District rebuilt around it.

It's also a change in scale. After four years as a food truck, Guajiro's got a permanent kitchen and a much bigger space, and Barroso asked early guests for patience while the team learned both. “After everything it took to get here, we don't want to keep the doors closed any longer,” he said in the restaurant's opening announcement. “We're ready to welcome people in.” Chef Joel Morales, who's been cooking since he was 18, is now a partner alongside Barroso.

Guajiro Cuban Comfort Food Asheville North Carolina Pan con bistek

That food is Cuban comfort food in the most literal sense, served all day. The bestselling Cuban sandwich — ham, roast pork, Swiss cheese, mayo, mustard, and pickles on Cuban bread shipped in from Florida — is still the centerpiece. Alongside it are a steak sandwich with grilled onions and shoestring potatoes, roast pork plates with black beans, beef empanadas, and pastries in the baked goods case.

Steak sandwich

Breakfast runs until 11 a.m., and the coffee's properly Cuban, built around café con leche and cortaditos. Daily specials like ropa vieja — shredded beef in a Cuban-style Creole sauce — are exactly what a truck struggles to sustain and a real kitchen can turn into a fixture, which is the plan here.

Croquetas

Guajiro Cuban Comfort Food Asheville North Carolina Flan

Coconut flan

A full bar is planned, pending permits, which would complete the reunion of the two concepts Helene split apart, the restaurant and El Patio, now under one roof.

Asheville's told a lot of resilience stories since Helene, and Guajiro's has the advantage of being edible. After months spent clearing the Cotton Mill by hand, there's something satisfying about the reward: a pressed sandwich on crisp Cuban bread, eaten inside the building the river tried to take.