Asheville Food Scene: A long goodbye or a determined comeback? It's up to you.
It’s been quite the past 6 months!! If you’ve gotten our newsletter before you may notice updates have been few and far between; it’s been a long fall and winter.
First the local business update: In 4 words—“It’s tough right now.”
Six months after Helene and the area still has mountains of rubble and debris being moved away, the bleak of winter was dusty, starker than usual, and the cold spells more intense. Restaurants continue to close or consolidate and at markets there are fewer people spending less money. We see signs of spring but it has been a long winter.
Will warm weather and more vegetables at farmer’s markets turn things around? Maybe, but the area is still recovering and changing. Urban Peasants is grateful for all of you, our loyal customer base, helping keep our commitment to quality gluten-free sourdough bread going, but it’s been slow even for us.
If we want the fabled restaurants, truly local farms, breweries and food entrepreneurs to stick around there will have to be renewed steady demand for all things local food this spring.
Ok, onto less somber updates.
In February we got to return to Brazil! It had been 12 years since I’d returned to my childhood home (Flavio) and the trip exceeded expectations. From warm weather to an even warmer culture, dinners at 11 pm, and re-connecting with my Brazilian family we basked in the welcome. We also got to drive around sampling some of the best GF foods out there including the bakery cafe pictured above “Peace, Love & Gluten-Free Food”. Because much of Brazil didn’t use wheat until recently in its culinary history, many traditional recipes are already gluten free. We picked up some more great ideas but realized again that we are doing a lot of things right already!
Brazil is an enormous and complex country with many challenges but many many amazing cultural and physical realities as well and IMHO has the best language and music on the planet.
I came back inspired to continue to taking on Brazilian GF classics. The first one: Pão de Queijo, aka Cheesy Grits bread. While sticking close to the standard recipe I’ve added a Brazilian backcountry twist (and local to WNC!) by including yellow grits in the dough, along with 2 kinds of grated sheep cheese and EVOO. These tasty bites are now available every week at market and may eventually make the pre-order list if I can figure out how to keep up with demand. Pictured below in all their cheesy goodness….
There will be other Brazilian themed things coming as well as our always popular summer focaccia series with lots of different Italian flavors.
And last but not least I’m posting the very boring picture below— it’s the RAD market location on the AB Tech Campus. Yes it’s boring, but it shows an incredible feature of the market location: You can literally walk from your car to the market in less than a minute! There are parking spots all around and if that wasn’t enough that steel & concrete structure behind me is a parking garage (usually completely empty). Compare that to 1/4 mile hike at UNCA for their Saturday farmer’s market. The location has lots of space for vendors and is not dusty. Did I say it has great parking??? The address is 24 Fernihurst Road. Stop by and say Hello! (or Ciao, or Oi, or Hola).
See you at market!
Flavio and Beth for the Urban Peasants