Asheville Wine & Food Festival founder and director Bob Bowles says he faced challenges in securing a suitable location for this year’s event. In the meantime, a group of local chefs and business owners are making headway with plans for a new food and beverage festival with an experiential focus for 2019.
Entering its ninth year, the Asheville Wine & Food Festival will take place at Pack Square Park. Also: Taco Throwdown and Tequila Tasting returns to The Grey Eagle, Table hosts Service Industry Luncheon, Noble Cider teams up with OWL Bakery and Looking Glass Creamery for an evening event and more in this week’s Small Bites.
The local libation celebration kicks off Monday, May 1, with a lineup of events featuring 30 distilleries, more than 20 mixologists and eight chefs at 20 venues throughout Asheville.
A new effort from the organizers of the Asheville Wine & Food Festival, Asheville Cocktail Week highlights the local and regional craft cocktail scene with a week of competitions and workshops. The region’s growing distilling industry will also take the spotlight at the Southeastern Distilling Expo.
Luella’s Bar-B-Que will duplicate its pork-purveying efforts with a new location in Biltmore Park; Asheville Wine & Food Festival has announced its first Asheville Cocktail Week; Local Provisions is serving Italian wines with the flavors of winter at a pairing dinner; and The Hop Ice Creamery is celebrating its first year with free kiddie scoops for all.
A standing-room-only crowd was on hand Saturday to watch four top local chefs battle to impress judges at the 2015 Asheville Wine & Food Festival’s Chefs Challenge. A photo gallery by Cindy Kunst shares scenes from the competition and the festival.
“In the city of Asheville, with its wealth of social capital and talent, a mecca for aging boomers looking to be relevant and to leave a legacy of social change, we are also a community struggling to build bridges between races and heal divisions of poverty generations old.”
Asheville’s bartenders battled it out Thursday evening for top honor in this year’s Asheville Wine & Food Festival’s Elixir craft cocktail competition. Story by Jonathan Ammons and photo gallery by Cindy Kunst
Webo’s BBQ moves to River Ridge, the Asheville Wine & Food Festival dishes out its annual carnival of edible delights, Mela opens a new restaurant at UNC Asheville, The Fresh Market celebrates Hatch chiles and the Henderson County Cooperative Extension offers a workshop on preserving tomatoes.
Sunny Point Café is well-known for its breakfast and brunch offerings, but for the past few months, Noah Hermanson, the restaurant’s self-described “libations engineer,” has been crafting a new bar program inspired by his passion for food.
Crowds of people, people and more people — more than 3,000 — made their way to the annual Asheville Wine & Food Festival at the U.S. Cellular Center downtown on Saturday, Aug. 23. At the end of the evening came the highlight of the festival: the final competition in the annual Chefs Challenge, a cooking competition that pits regional chefs against each other in an Iron Chef-style battle.
About 30 area bakers, chocolatiers, pâtissiers, vintners, brewers and distillers lined the corridors of the Grove Arcade the evening of Friday, Aug. 22, for Sweet, an event of the 2014 Asheville Wine & Food Festival. (photos by Hayley Benton)
Asheville may be Beer City, but that’s not the only libation local residents enjoy. Consider the continuing success of the Asheville Wine & Food Festival. Now in its sixth year, the annual celebration of the region’s winemakers, wine shop owners, chefs and restaurants is expanding its focus on local wines.
A vibrant restaurant, brewery, wine, spirits, and boundless downtown scene have placed Asheville in the national spotlight time and again. Underground supper clubs, James Beard-nominated chefs, nationally recognized distilleries, and boasting more breweries per capita than any U.S. city, Asheville is the culinary destination. And there’s no better opportunity to sample it all in one place than during the 6th annual Asheville Wine & Food Festival, held August 21-23 at the US Cellular Center in downtown Asheville, say organizers.
