Food news to go: area restaurant news in small bites

Little Iron Man’s Big Night Out


On Tuesday, Aug. 10, The Universal Joint in West Asheville will hold a benefit for Marough Gardner, a local boy who is battling cancer. During the evening, guest servers — including Xpress food writer Mackensy Lunsford — will take over table-side duties. At the end of the evening, they’ll donate their tips to Gardner’s medical funds, along with a portion of beer sales from the event.

Gardner, 3, is a resident of West Asheville. He is battling neuroblastoma, a form of cancer which attacks the adrenal glands, neck, chest and spinal cord. Gardner recently wrapped up a 16-day radiation treatment in Jacksonville.

“Marough is the son of T.J., our beer representative from Empire Distributing,” said Jason Allison, the manager of the Universal Joint. “When I learned of Marough’s battle, I knew that the U-Joint could help out. All proceeds from the event will be given directly to the Gardner family to help with their medical and travel expenses.”

The benefit will begin at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, and end at 10 p.m
. For more information, call the Universal Joint Bar, located at 784 Haywood Rd., in West Asheville, at 505-7262. For more about Marough Gardner, or to make a donation, visit littleironman.org.

Say goodbye to the late-night menu at the Admiral

The Admiral is no longer serving their late night menu, but will be extending dinner hours until 11 p.m. On Saturdays, the kitchen will stop serving at 9 p.m. to accommodate the ever-popular dance party. According to the restaurant, it simply wasn’t profitable to turn out food from the kitchen after midnight.

The chefs toyed with a few creative late-night ideas, including a choose-your-own adventure menu in which guests were asked to circle a price range, a protein and a series of rather abstract words. Pork, Dixie Chicks, biodeisel and General Mao, anyone?

The late night menu instructed guests to “disregard any apprehension with this non-traditional approach — embrace it.” According to one of the Admiral chefs, Drew Maykuth, the concept, although fun for a bit, had the tendency to become a bit too unwieldy at times to also be fully embraced by the kitchen staff.

For more information, visit theadmiralnc.com

New dive bar opens on the west side

A new very casual and bare bones — in a comfortable way — bar is opening on the west side of Asheville.

Mikki and Sam Fox, both well-experienced in Asheville’s bar/club scene, are opening the Get Down with Frank Merenda, who calls himself a computer “coding monkey.”

“It’s going to be a dive bar, but safe,” says Merenda. “We want everyone to feel welcome here. We want people to come in after work, relax and have a good time.”

The Get Down is located where Cowboy’s Nightlife used to be, a spot with a bit of a checkered history. Call it street cred, if you will. Without losing too much of the original grit — at least the honest-to-goodness shabbily charming part of it — the Get Down team has dialed the atmosphere up.

The Haywood Road club is going to be a beer-and wine-only joint, at least at first. Obtaining a liquor license will depend somewhat upon customer demand. The bar will house pool tables, at least one pinball machine and a foosball table.

A small stage in the front corner of the bar will host local bands of all genres, and a jukebox in the corner will hold plenty of local music. “That’s something that’s really important to us — the really creative music scene around here,” says Mikki. “We want to support that, and converge all the cool scenes into one spot.”

For more information, visit getdownasheville.com.

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One thought on “Food news to go: area restaurant news in small bites

  1. Louis Lange

    Way to go U-Joint! Both Doc Chey’s and you show that when little people fall through the cracks of our health-care system,there is someone out there to help pick up the pieces.Bravo! & God Bless Marough.

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