You don’t need to travel to the aquamarine waters of Jamaica or the Punjab heart of the Sikh faith or the towering peaks of Argentina to taste cuisines from around the world. Six emerging international chefs are working to bridge the gap between the spices and flavors of their youth and the Asheville mountains they call home.
Words by Jasmin Pittman Morrell | Photos by GROWL
Bridging shores from Thailand to Argentina, these Asheville, North Carolina, chefs keep their home fires burning through food, creativity, and community. Grounded in the magic of the southern Appalachians, they offer Southern hospitality through the flavors of global cuisine, celebrating the ways the region has transformed over the years as well as the connective roots that remain.
“Every culture has their version of something like a dumpling,” Cecilia Marchesini, of Cecilia’s Kitchen, remarks as we chat about empanadas. Could it be that dough stuffed with any number of fillings — meat, cheeses, spices, vegetables, or fruits — has the universal power to draw us together for a meal?
If the dumpling is practically universal, many cultures seem to have their own versions of the french fry, too. Gypsy Queen Cuisine’s Lebanese fare features fries drenched in an earthy tahini sauce. Little Chango, a Hispanic craft kitchen, dishes out hearty yuca fries that might be a meal in themselves (though I absolutely recommend trying the rest of the menu, too). Thai Pearl’s fries, sprinkled with chili lime seasoning and tickled by a spicy mayo sauce, bring the heat.
One thing is certain: Asheville loves food. And for these chefs, food is an invitation into belonging.
Chef Sujitra Chubthaisong sits outside Thai Pearl, the restaurant she co-owns with her husband, Travis Queen.
In the heart of downtown, Mëhfil beckons locals and visitors alike to linger around the table for a taste of traditional Punjabi cuisine. Punjab, Mëhfil co-owner Al Singh tells me, is a northern state of India known for its rich, dairy-based dishes and tandoori cooking. Punjab is also the center of the Sikh faith and home to the Golden Temple, a major pilgrimage site that regularly greets 100,000 visitors through its doors each day. Any visitor, regardless of faith or social status, may receive a free meal from the temple’s community-run kitchen. With hospitality a bedrock of Sikhism, Singh aims to bring a similar sense of welcome to the diners who choose Mëhfil. The word itself — mëhfil — speaks to the intention Singh and co-owner Raj Manaise have for the space: a festive gathering, and the tagline “yaaron ki … apno ki,” translating to “of friends and loved ones.”
Mëhfil has been open only since the first week of April, but it already appears to be an established favorite. It’s well-positioned, located steps from highly celebrated Asheville favorites like Cúrate’s Spanish tapas, Rhubarb’s innovative take on southern Appalachian cuisine, and Chai Pani’s Indian street food. Each chef — Cúrate’s Katie Button, Rhubarb’s John Fleer, and Chai Pani’s Meherwan Irani — have been recognized multiple times by the James Beard Foundation. Mëhfil is in good company.
On a Sunday evening inching toward summertime, I’m expecting the dinner rush to be winding down like an old clock. But perched at my high-top table, I watch as people pour in from Biltmore Avenue, naming their reservation times or asking for a table, almost as if to proclaim, the weekend isn’t over yet. Whimsical mini-umbrellas hang upside down from the ceiling over guests in the front room, while rectangles of phulkari-embroidered scarves line another portion of the ceiling and teak wood doors transported from homes in India mount the dining room’s walls. The space is bright and approachable, comfortable in its own skin.
As the host leads a couple back to their table, I overhear one diner remark to the other, “Have you been in here yet? The food is amazing.”
For lunch, Mëhfil offers a $9.99 buffet, a price point important to Singh, who says he wanted to offer something affordable for Asheville workers. Mëhfil’s dinner menu boasts meat, vegetarian, and seafood dishes, as well as gluten-free and vegan options, alongside 11 different types of naan or other breads. To start, the lamb chops Afghani, marinated overnight and then suffused in the high heat of a tandoor oven, fall away from the bone as easily as one shrugs out of a coat on a sultry day. Aloo paratha, a whole wheat bread stuffed with potatoes and green peas, follows suit with a surprising, chewy tenderness. Cardamom pods fleck dishes of basmati rice. Pale gold slivers of fresh ginger garnish butter chicken, or chicken makhani, and Mëhfil’s kormas are generously bolstered by creamy cashew gravies. All of Mëhfil’s spices — South Asian signatures like cardamom, cinnamon, and turmeric — are imported from India.
After moving from his home in Punjab, Singh lived in Mississippi and Georgia before eventually settling in Asheville. When I ask what it’s been like to move throughout the Southeast and land in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Singh says he appreciates nature’s abundant beauty on display, and that Asheville’s eclectic, creative community is always welcome to gather at Mëhfil.
Chef Sujitra Chubthaisong grew up working in her mother’s village restaurant and later trained at the Royal Palace in Bangkok, Thailand. Now, she incorporates the spicy, sour, and salty flavors of Isaan into all of the dishes at Thai Pearl.
Chef Sujitra Chubthaisong of West Asheville’s Thai Pearl hails from northeastern Thailand, a region of 20 provinces called Isaan. “Isaan food is different than other food in Thailand,” Chubthaisong tells me over the phone. “It’s spicy, sour, and salty all in the same dish.”
Chubthaisong and husband Travis Queen’s voices stretch thin across the miles between Asheville and Thailand. They’ve been visiting Chubthaisong’s home but are eager to talk about the fire that breathes through Chubthaisong’s cooking.
“She’s taken the best of Isaan cuisine, and the best of Thailand’s other regions, and kind of mashed them all together,” Queen, Thai Pearl’s co-owner, explains.
Chubthaisong is careful to note that the spring rolls on Thai Pearl’s menu aren’t normally what you’d find at other Thai restaurants — she’s added mozzarella cheese to the filling of chicken and sweet chili sauce, and they’re a favorite of Thai Pearl patrons. But other dishes — like Thai Pearl Drunken Noodles Isaan, bedazzled by red pepper flakes, and the green papaya and larb salads — are doused in equal waves of umami and sweetness.
“I’m born with food,” Chubthaisong says about her mother’s restaurant in the village where she grew up. Working beside her mother, Chubthaisong learned the importance of preserving the freshness of her ingredients. And Thai Pearl’s signature larb and papaya salads, along with the noodle dishes, share roots stemming from her mother’s kitchen. The restaurant passed out of her mother’s hands when she moved to the States, but the love of food Chubthaisong cultivated beside her mother lit the way of her culinary journey. After she graduated from high school, all she wanted to do was experiment with creating dishes and master technique.
And a master she became. Out of a wide pool of applicants, she was among just a few chosen to train at the Royal Palace in Bangkok, Thailand. At the Royal Palace, Chubthaisong learned the intricacies of coaxing flavors out by layering ingredients in the high heat of a wok, which takes precise timing and an eye for detail. Her time in the palace eventually led her to Brisbane, Australia, where she helped open Longtime, a top-rated Asian-fusion restaurant (since renamed Same Same). She eventually landed in North Carolina, with dreams of opening her own restaurant.
Thai Pearl’s menu is expansive, featuring fresh spring rolls, salads, soups, noodle dishes, stir-fries, curries, and more. “She’s taken the best of Isaan cuisine, and the best of Thailand’s other regions, and kind of mashed them all together,” Travis Queen, Thai Pearl’s co-owner and Chubthaisong’s husband, says.
Right off West Asheville’s main artery, Haywood Road, Thai Pearl sits between Caribbean-inspired restaurant Nine Mile and Seven Swords Tattoo Company. Queen is quick to mention how well-received they were by the neighborhood, and as they navigated opening a new restaurant shortly before pandemic shutdowns, the community rallied in support.
“West Asheville is full of people who were backpacking through Thailand in the ’70s and ’80s. … Now they can resample this cuisine they haven’t had in decades. It’s proven to be a great hit,” Queen tells me.
On visits back to Thailand, Chubthaisong relishes collecting seeds of the herbs from her family’s garden and brings them back to share with West Asheville friends and neighbors. When their neighbors have grown enough for their own families, they’ll often bring cuttings back to the restaurant. Chubthaisong then uses the herbs in her dishes, perpetuating a cycle of cultural exchange. So if you find yourself dining in Thai Pearl, the perfect blend of Asheville and Thailand might just be in the holy basil infusing your dinner.
An Asheville staple and go-to for traditional Lebanese street food, Gypsy Queen Cuisine glows with warmth and charm. The building echoes Lebanon’s place along the Mediterranean Sea, painted in sun-soaked earth tones with hints of aquamarine. Gypsy Queen has drawn locals for a long time, a fact I’m reminded of when I pop into the restaurant and run into a friend who sits waiting for takeout.
“I’ve been eating here for years,” he smiles, cradling the brown paper takeout bag on his way out. “It’s so good.”
Chef Suzy Phillips is the heart of Gypsy Queen. At a young age, she began cooking with her mother, who still inspires her today. “Cooking runs in our veins,” Phillips says. “We love to eat, and we get serious about our food.”
When I asked her what it was like bringing the flavors of Lebanon to Asheville, she answered somewhat wryly, “At first some people would say, this is not Lebanese food, but I brought it as we eat it at home. I did not shy away, nor did I Americanize my flavors … but after a while, people started loving it.”
The lamb kibbe wrap is cooled by a mint cabbage slaw. Brussels sprouts and cauliflower are brightened by a lemony tahini sauce, and the plate-sized pita bread has a cracker-like snap, perfect for dipping into hummus or baba ghanouj.
Phillips notes that her cooking elicits nostalgia for the Middle East in almost anyone who has ties to the region.
“I love it when someone says, this food reminds me of my téta [grandma] or mama,” Phillips says. “That is the best validation!”
In bringing the flavors of Lebanon to the United States, owner Suzy Phillips says she cooked food “as we eat it at home. I did not shy away, nor did I Americanize my flavors … but after a while, people started loving it.”
By the time I arrive at Queen’s Island Cuisine’s food truck, parked for the springtime festival at Haw Creek Commons in East Asheville, the popular shrimp curry is already sold out. Queenie Mcleod, Queen’s Island owner and chef, looks down at me from the truck’s open window and smiles, asking if I’d like to try the vegan stew instead.
The stew is a symphony of green peppers, onions, red peas, coconut milk, mushrooms, dumplings, “and a lot of love,” Mcleod adds. She adds a heaping mound of macaroni and cheese to the plate because she knows how much people like it, even if it isn’t authentically Jamaican.
Mcleod’s truck is in rotation three or four times a week. Miniature Jamaican flags and a mural adorn the truck’s exterior: a young girl with nutmeg-brown skin drinks water from a flowing faucet, with verdant mountains as her backdrop.
Mcleod says she does “typical Jamaican food” like curried goat and chicken, jerk chicken, red snapper, brown stew, rice and peas, white rice, and plantains. “This is what you’d find if you pulled up to a restaurant in Jamaica.” She laughingly notes that she doesn’t quite believe Asheville is the market for chicken feet or gizzard, though she’s confident she can cook just about anything.
Her favorite flavors revolve around jerk seasoning and escovitch fish — fish rubbed with garlic and allspice, then sauteed until the skin is crispy, drenched in vinegar, Scotch bonnet or habanero peppers, onions, and carrots, and left to sit out so the flavors meld.
Mcleod was 9 years old the first time she made Sunday dinner in Jamaica. Though the rice and peas were soggy and the fried chicken too heavily breaded, “the flavor was there!” she maintains. “And I’ve had a love for cooking ever since.”
Her company started in 2018 when she made a Facebook post about selling plates of her delicious cooking, and slowly but surely the business grew by word of mouth. In June 2021, she was able to buy the truck, and that September she participated in Asheville’s Goombay Festival. With the support of Mcleod’s girlfriend, children, and faith in God, Queen’s Island Cuisine is thriving.
“I’m a rolling stone,” Mcleod says, “and with the food truck, I move how I want, when I want, and have family time. I am free.”
Chef Iris Rodriguez and her husband, Jose Busto, moved to Asheville from Puerto Rico and say they easily found community in the city’s South Slope district.
You can’t miss South Slope’s Little Chango. Painted a buttery deep yellow, the diminutive Hispanic craft kitchen invites passersby to stop and peer in its large windows.
“We love the South Slope,” chef Iris Rodriguez tells me. When Rodriguez and her husband, Jose Busto, moved to Asheville from Puerto Rico, they easily found community working in the thriving spot just south of downtown Asheville’s center.
There was something about the mountain town — an ineffable way the people lived their lives and the values they embraced — that Rodriguez found inspiring. She’d been cooking from childhood, but banking was her profession until Asheville helped her realize she wanted something different. Enrolling at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College, she pursued her long-held hobby and turned cooking into a career. Rodriguez had honed her culinary skills at Asheville’s popular, Spanish-inflected Cúrate by the time she, Busto, and business partner Luis Betances snatched up the lease for the spot that would become Little Chango.
Rodriguez’s heritage is both Puerto Rican and Cuban, and the Caribbean-inspired menu reflects her roots.
“All of our recipes somehow start with a base of sofrito. Every Hispanic household has a different sofrito recipe. Sofrito is the heart of my kitchen, my culture,” Rodriguez tells me.
Sofrito — an aromatic sauce that can be made up of onions, peppers, garlic, and cilantro but is easily adaptable based on use — is the backbone of countless stews, braises, and bean recipes.
Little Chango offers Caribbean-inspired dishes such as yuca fries, arepas, escabeche, and mamposteao.
Little Chango’s menu includes several types of arepa, a small disc of ground corn cooked on a skillet or grill and swathed in shredded meat or vegetables. Little Chango’s chorizo arepas sing with chimichurri sauce and Oaxaca cheese, and the chorizo itself hits just the right spicy notes. The lonchera (lunchbox), with rice and beans, pickled cabbage and onions, escabeche salad, and choice of protein (I chose a delicious ropa vieja, or flank steak), is rich without the usual accompanying heaviness, due to a bright acidity that lifts the entire meal. And Little Chango’s flan is a cloud of cardamom custard and caramel, beautiful texture, and a delicate sweetness not to be missed.
“It feels very exciting to bring a bit of Puerto Rico to the mountains,” Rodriguez says. “I love it here because we’re in the middle of the South and this city is an oasis of diversity … and we need to keep enriching and diversifying our cities so that our culture is richer. I wanted to contribute and offer Caribbean-inspired dishes, so I was happy to be able to come with that.”
Owner and chef Cecilia Marchesini of Cecilia’s Kitchen was born into an Italian family and grew up in Argentina.
At the intersection of French and Argentinian cuisine, North Asheville favorite Cecilia’s Kitchen reflects Cecilia Marchesini’s love of cooking and her community. She was born into an Italian family, making the importance of food non-negotiable. She grew up bonding with her dad over the “messy and rambunctious” meals they cooked together, often without her mother’s knowledge. “I loved it,” Marchesini says. “It was [our] thing to do together.”
Originally from Argentina, the empanada played a prominent role in her landscape of food. Marchesini compares empanadas to pizza — they are the party food of Argentina. “Everyone gathers around the table and grabs them from a box with their hands and has a good time,” she smiles. Once she’d moved to the States and found herself missing the comforts of familiar food, she decided to make them herself and share them with others as a point of connection.
“I know most people still eat empanadas with a fork and knife,” she laughs. “Would you eat a hot dog with a fork and knife? Just pick it up! I’m used to it now, but at the beginning, I thought, oops!” For the curious diner, she’s finally settled on explaining that the empanada is like a hand pie.
Perhaps the art of eating an empanada occasionally gets lost in translation, but Marchesini’s belief that cooking is the most important way to connect with people certainly does not. She speaks of cooking as an attempt to reach someone’s heart through food, and whenever she tries a new dish, or cooks for a new group of people, she still feels flutters of excitement and nerves.
Serving tamales and empanadas alongside crêpes and French onion soup, Cecilia Marchesini’s blend of French and Argentinian cuisine reflects her love of cooking and her community.
Marchesini and her then-husband opened a restaurant together in 2002. He is French, and the crepe played a prominent role on the menu. She gradually began to add Latin flavors like the nacatamal, a Nicaraguan-inspired tamale wrapped in a banana leaf, which lends subtle sweetness to the chicken, masa, and potato filling. Marchesini says her flavors are authentic, but she’s added her own flair to the menu. “I have an eggplant empanada [berenjena], which isn’t served in Argentina, but being in Asheville with so many vegan people, I want to have options and adapt my approach to food. I wanted to feed everyone, not only certain people.”
Traditionally, Argentinian food focuses less heavily on spices and more on the taste of fresh ingredients, and I found her ratatouille crêpe with sausage delightful, with just a touch of heat spiked throughout. The crepes are crafted from buckwheat flour, with fillings spanning the gamut of ham and Swiss, to spinach and onions, to smoked salmon and leeks.
Marchesini signed the lease for a new, larger Cecilia’s Kitchen location off Merrimon Avenue in February 2020, which turned into a nightmare shortly thereafter with pandemic shutdowns. She was grateful, though, for the new location, which enabled her to put a food truck outside and kept her business alive. “This whole neighborhood came to support me in an incredible way,” Marchesini reflects. “Food inspires me. My love for food inspires me, and the love of people. I’m so lucky and blessed for the life that I have, and an extremely caring and supportive community.” Cooking is Marchesini’s way of giving back and spreading the winds of generosity across the mountains she now calls home.
“Food inspires me. My love for food inspires me, and the love of people. I’m so lucky and blessed for the life that I have, and an extremely caring and supportive community,” Marchesini says.
Header image: Chef Cecilia Marchesini prepares food at her French and Argentinian restaurant, Cecilia’s Kitchen.
Jasmin Pittman Morrell is a writer and editor interested in narratives centering on and celebrating Black and Indigenous presence, food, and art. Her essays are included in Meeting at the Table: African-American Women Write on Race, Culture and Community and the forthcoming Bigger Than Bravery: Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic, edited by Valerie Boyd (September 2022). She's also written for The Bitter Southerner about mothering an interracial child and the biscuit Jedi, Erika Council. Alongside her family, Jasmin loves calling the mountains of western North Carolina home.
GROWL is the photo duo of Justin Weaver and Chris McClure. Together they make photographs, portraits, product shots, adventure, and documentary narratives that make people smile and wonder.
