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Restaurant Solace, an über farm-to-table restaurant in downtown Asheville, opened its upstairs Café and its Dining Room in May 2011 inside Haywood Park Hotel at One Battery Park Avenue in downtown Asheville. Executive Chef and owner, Bryan Kimmett, and his wife and business partner, Anne-Marie Kimmett, are dedicated to the slow food ethic of cooking and to source locally first for all produce and artisanal products. Click here to visit their Web site.
“Restaurant Solace is a community table where diners share comfort, conversation and food,” says Chef Kimmett. “Our seasonal menus will reflect our mindfulness of the delicate balance between the sustainability of mother earth and providing sustenance and solace for those who enter our doors."
The upstairs Café features an outdoor patio on a popular downtown corner, complete with “small plates” and full bar. The authentic European cafe experience provides a relaxing atmosphere that encourages locals and visitors to mingle and socialize. The Dining Room downstairs offers a different menu and an atmosphere of refined elegance. Both spaces will feature an eclectic display of rotating regional artwork.
Kimmett utilizes the bounty of Western North Carolina farms to create comfort food with a European flare. The Café’s small plates include savory cheesecakes, lime and ale braised local rabbit, duck and pheasant confit and basil fed snails. The Dining Room include entrees such as Black Buck Antelope, chilled Black Sea Bass with Sunburst trout caviar, coffee and spice roasted rib veal chop, cassoulet of Venison Osso Bucco and braised rabbit and a Solace seasonal vegetarian dish. Melt-in-your mouth artisan breads and pastries are baked in-house. The Restaurant also provides room service and catering for the hotel. Read more about Haywood Park Hotel.
In May, a local artisanal market will be added, featuring produce from farms that the chefs source and feature on the menus. You can purchase the same fresh food that you enjoy at Solace, while learning about preparation, presentation, and farms they can visit. There will be a series of winter cooking classes for those who want to delve deeper into learning about slow food preparation.
Kimmett set off on his culinary path at the ripe age of 15, when he began washing dishes in Annapolis restaurants. Growing up, he was in the kitchen with his mother and grandmother learning the family recipes. Coming from generations of farmers in rural Maryland, it is easy to understand his respect for the land. "Asheville is the perfect place for me to rejuvenate my farm roots with the abundance of community and all that Western North Carolina farms have to offer."
Peter Murphy, Chef de Cuisine, is working side by side with Kimmett in developing the menus and the overall experience of Restaurant Solace. Murphy is a graduate of Johnson and Whales in Providence, RI and has held Chef positions in Key Largo and most recently at The Cliffs and Biltmore.
They are open 7 days a week for lunch and dinner in the Cafe, with breakfast on Thursday thru Sunday. Dinner in the Restaurant 5:30 to 10 PM Tuesday thru Sunday (Monday Closed). Jazz Sunday Brunch Buffet is one the lower level 10:30 am-2:30 pm.
Click here to visit their Web site. |
