Flooded before opening day, much-anticipated RAD restaurants seek high ground

On a warm afternoon, nearly a month after Tropical Storm Helene engulfed much of Western North Carolina in floodwaters, Katie Grabach and Peyton Barrell are standing amid clouds of swirling, brown dust near the Foundy Street spot where their brick-and-mortar dream used to be. 

Part of the wooden railing they had just installed for the deck of their then-soon-to-open French rotisserie and wine restaurant, Gourmand, is still oddly in its place. But the tiny building itself, a box of just over 600 square feet, detached from its foundations in the 24-foot deluge and floated over the surrounding walkway to rest haphazardly against nearby Wedge Brewing Co.’s brick structure during the Sept. 27 flooding. 

As Grabach and Barrell watch, crews with heavy machinery test the building to see if it can be moved back to its foundation. “If it had not hit the Wedge and got stuck between it and that telephone pole, it would probably be in Marshall,” says Barrell. “In some ways, we were very lucky.”

One takeaway from Helene seems to be that luck is relative. Among the countless businesses completely washed away or suffering varying degrees of crippling damage were a number of infant enterprises poised to debut amid the bustle of a typical Western North Carolina leaf season. 

Three of those were keenly anticipated, women-led restaurants, including Gourmand, originally set to open this month in the River Arts District (RAD). But now, all three eateries are, at least for the moment, stranded.

‘Floated away’

This is not the first tangle with unforeseen calamity for Grabach and Barrell. The pair were working in restaurants in New York City — Grabach in events at the New York Marriott Marquis and Barrell with a French restaurant in Tribeca — when COVID-19 shut the industry down. 

They relocated in 2020 to New Orleans, where they opened Gourmand as a charcuterie business operating out of their home. In August 2021, Hurricane Ida made landfall in New Orleans, ultimately shuttering Gourmand when the city’s economy shifted in the wake of the storm.

The couple then moved to Asheville and relaunched Gourmand as a wine and charcuterie shop in the S&W Market downtown. They closed it in October 2023 to focus on the buildout of their RAD wine bar and French rotisserie concept, which they planned to open early this month.

Grabach and Barrell were at a friend’s wedding in New Orleans on Sept. 27 when the worst of the flooding hit the RAD. They watched on their phones via a video from a friend as their restaurant, in the final stages of renovation and due to open Nov. 7, filled with water, disconnected from its foundation and swirled away.

In addition to the relative good fortune of the building snagging on Wedge’s corner, the couple count themselves lucky that they hadn’t yet hired a full staff when the disaster happened. They also note that about $120,000 worth of their kitchen equipment was due to be delivered the following week, and they were able to cancel those orders. 

But the loss is still crushing — nearly $300,000, including the buildout plus about $40,000 of equipment and supplies in a storeroom on Riverside Drive that also flooded.

“Ida was very punishing, but in comparison to now, we didn’t lose that much money; we recouped those losses over like a year of hard work,” says Barrel. “But this is a different scale. We basically bought a house with a four-year mortgage, and it floated away.”

Grants, not loans

Just up the hill at 375 Depot St., restaurateurs Suzy Phillips and Dave Campbell are also struggling to pick up the now-dusty pieces of what’s left of their nascent eatery, Black Cat Sandwich Co. Originally slated to open this month, the Black Cat space still stands, though muddy water saturated the fully furnished, equipped and stocked dining room and kitchen up to a height of at least 6 feet. 

The contents of the restaurant — from the $5,000 espresso machine down to the food in the refrigerator — were lost to the water. By the time Xpress visited in late October, the entire interior of the building — which also housed Trackside Studios and other businesses — had been stripped down to the studs and floor joists below the watermark. On a wall in the dining room area, just one eye and ear from a black cat mural by artist Hannah Dansie peek out at the empty room.

Phillips, who is also working amid the water outage to reopen her other two restaurants — Gypsy Queen Cuisine and Simple Cafe & Juice Bar — estimates that the losses from Black Cat total around $75,000, much of which was borrowed against her longtime investment in Gypsy Queen Cuisine.

“I’m not a rich person; this was my investment,” she says. “And the hard part of digesting this is that we’re getting no aid. The only thing that’s being offered to us as a small business is a low-interest loan. … I’m stubborn and resilient, yes. But, man, a part of our hearts has been ripped to shreds.”

She says the disaster loans she and Campbell are aware of offer zero interest for the first 12 months, then low interest thereafter. But any type of loan, she says, just puts small businesses — especially those not yet opened — deeper in debt. 

“If anybody is listening out there that has any influence or power or voice, we don’t need loans. We need grants,” she says. “We need assistance like we had during COVID. I know this is not a nationwide thing, but this is a historical catastrophe, from Florida all the way up here.”

With liability insurance but no flood insurance and the fate of their structure still literally hanging in limbo, Grabach and Barrell are unsure how and on what timeline Gourmand will continue — though they’re determined that it will. “We have faith that we’ll get grants and FEMA money,” says Barrell.

Grabach agrees, but as the operations person for the business, she expresses frustration. “I’ve applied for countless things, literally everything. I’ve been on the phone with FEMA for hours and hours, and we haven’t really gotten anywhere yet as far as funding,” she says. “I have hopes, I would say, but so far we haven’t gotten a response from anyone.”

Support systems

Phillips and Campbell express deep appreciation for their building’s owner, Sam Hellman, who they say entered the building when it started flooding to rescue some of his tenants’ artwork and has been working hard on cleanup efforts. Likewise, the Gourmand owners say they have nothing but gratitude and “total positivity” toward the support their landlord, Dewey Property Advisors, has provided.

Across the street from Black Cat, pastry chefs Dana Amromin and Beth Kellerhals, co-owners of not-yet-open ButterPunk bakery and coffee shop, share similar warm feelings about the support from their landlord, Jared Kay. 

“You know, we had some panicked conversations right after it happened, but as the dust has settled — no pun intended — we’ve been able to get back to the drawing board and talk about how we can make this work,” says Kellerhals. “He has a vested interest in getting us up and running.”

She and Amromin point out that the bright yellow “#RebuildDepotStreet” banner draped over ButterPunk’s entrance promotes a fundraiser created by Kay to help the businesses at 372 and 408 Depot St. recover from the flood. 

ButterPunk wasn’t as far along with its buildout — the hoped-for opening date was around Thanksgiving — and suffered fewer losses than Gourmand and Black Cat. Still, floodwaters unexpectedly rose several feet in the space (their end of Depot Street isn’t officially in the main flood zone, says Kellerhals), and the walls are now stripped to the studs. They will have to start from scratch.

ButterPunk has set up a GoFundMe campaign to help with recovery, as have Black Cat and Gourmand. Kellerhals and Amromin plan to do Thanksgiving and Christmas bake sales and are keeping busy with volunteering and jobs with other local restaurants until they are able to open theirrestaurant.

Gourmand is planning to do pop-up dinners to raise funds and awareness in other cities, including New Orleans, Atlanta, Charleston, S.C., and Orlando, Fla. Phillips and Campbell are focusing on efforts to reopen Gypsy Queen and Simple and working with volunteers to attempt to salvage some of their equipment. 

As for possible new launch timelines? No one is entirely sure. 

The big question

“We’re hoping for February — we hope Valentine’s Day,” says Amromin of ButterPunk. But she acknowledges that with so much uncertainty right now, it’s still unknown. And she expresses concerns voiced by both the Gourmand and Black Cat owners: What’s the recovery timeline for the RAD and the local hospitality industry as a whole?

While Barrell and Grabach of Gourmand express deep love for the RAD and believe their business model would be successful there, they know the future is murky. 

“Let’s say the whole town is reopened Dec. 1, all the restaurants are open and the staff are back. But what is the market like? Where are the tourists?” Barrell asks. “Are local people really going to show up? Because, I mean, a restaurant is a luxury experience.”

Campbell of Black Cat, who is general manager at Gypsy Queen Cuisine and an industry veteran, also expresses worries. “How many tourists are we losing over the next year because they can’t get hotels or Airbnbs or they can’t take showers or they can’t go on the hikes they want to go on?” he says. “It’s all such a gamble right now.”

Post-Helene, many WNC food and beverage businesses have reached out to the N.C. Restaurant and Lodging Association (NCRLA) for guidance, says President and CEO Lynn Minges. In response, the Raleigh-based trade organization reactivated its COVID-era emergency relief funding for hospitality workers, though that covers employees rather than business owners, she says. It also collaborated with the state to create alternative water-use protocols and has been helping restaurants navigate operational changes and inspections for reopening. 

For more long-term aid to business owners, the NCRLA is focusing on policy. The Monday after the disaster, the organization started crafting a state policy agenda similar to what it requested — and received — during COVID-19, Minges says. 

“That was a great program that provided immediate cash to businesses,” she says. “Loans are nice, but loans have to be paid back, and [restaurants] need cash right now, during their busiest season.”

Minges notes that legislators may want to exercise caution to ensure funding is allocated in a way that will best help the region recover. But she feels hopeful that the NCRLA — a lobbying powerhouse representing more than 20,000 businesses that employ 9% of North Carolina’s workforce — has a good chance to win support for WNC hospitality businesses. 

“We’re a pretty powerful force,” she says. “Policymakers are listening and have expressed nothing but the greatest interest in what they can do to help businesses, in general, recover, people recover.”