The rumors are swirling.
Due, in part, to an article about the change in ownership at the Wedge building in the River Arts District, some people believe that: 1. The Admiral is moving to the River Arts District and 2. Drew Maykuth, former chef of the Admiral, is involved. We reached Maykuth — in Maine, where he now lives — for comment.
“It’s not me,” Maykuth tells Xpress. “It’s sort of funny. I’ve heard this from five other people.” Maykuth suggests that perhaps people mean Drew Wallace.
Wallace is the other Drew at the Admiral, one of the co-owners of the restaurant. Whether Wallace is opening a second restaurant in the Wedge building has not been confirmed, at least by Wallace himself. However, we do know that something food-related is going on down there — and we also know that the Admiral is staying put where it is. When we can be more specific, we will.
In other news, Blind Pig Supper Club’s Battle Food Truck was a great success. About 200 people enjoyed five different dishes from five different food trucks, with each diner voting on his or her favorite.
The Tin Can Pizzeria‘s “Fuzzy Pig” pizza, with bacon and peaches, was a major highlight and favorite of our table. If you haven’t been to the Tin Can Pizzeria yet, we highly recommend you try it. They’re down in the RAD next to the Pink Dog building, Monday through Saturday, for lunch.
Also, the Lowdown food truck had a great showing with pork belly over a pimento cheese-grit cake and curly fries with mushroom ketchup, fried kale, mustard-seed caviar and a rhubarb barbecue sauce, all with mostly local ingredients.
The winning dish belonged to Marni Graves (from Our Taco Truck), who brought it street-style with a puffy taco shell filled with Hickory Nut Gap pork chorizo and fresh, local veggies (including radishes), served with elote, a Mexican street-style corn on the cob on a stick — everyone likes food on a stick. Graves won $500 for her efforts.
We also felt kind of sorry for artist Tommy Lee’s pet pig, D.O.G., who reportedly stole a few too many beers (hey, he’s a festival pig, his owner says!) and dozed off on the lawn before the Critters even took the stage (that’s D.O.G. in the picture above). We hear that D.O.G. is just fine, he’s just “moving a bit slow today” (according to the Blind Pig’s Facebook page). There’s no word yet on whether he’s upset he missed the party. Lee says that D.O.G. gets “plenty of love, food, and the occasional brew,” which is better than many of can say, right? Right.
Battle Food Truck marked the (almost totally finally) end of Beer Week, a solid 11 days of celebrating everything beer. The Beer City Festival was a huge hit and a good time on Saturday, with soon-to-be Asheville breweries Sierra Nevada and New Belgium among the many brewers. The two mega-crafters offered some of the unique offerings we can expect to enjoy soon, namely Sierra’s Knock on Wood, an Imperial stout brewed with cocoa and chili peppers and aged in bourbon barrels.
As an attendee of the Blind Pig event I was disappointed to see that 2 of my favorite trucks were omitted from the article…Pho Ya Belly and the Flying Falafel Brothers. The article mentions that there were 5 trucks but only 3 were named.
Is there some kind of bias against certain trucks? Or is this just poor journalism? If this event was newsworthy then all of the trucks should have been equally reported on.
All of the participants produced amazing food and all deserve to be acknowledged.
Hi Pixxylite. This is just an opinion blog post wherein I talk about my favorite dishes from the event. Pho Ya Belly and Flying Falafel were also quite good. I simply thought Tin Can and Lowdown offered standout performances. All five food trucks will be mentioned in the print version of this article, and all five food trucks were mentioned in the May 31 edition of Xpress. Thanks for your input!