The Market Place Restaurant — New American / Farm-to-Table, Asheville
The Market Place opened in 1979 with the conviction that Western North Carolina's farms produced ingredients worth building a serious restaurant around. That conviction was forty years ahead of the mainstream, and the restaurant has been right about it every year since.
The menu is the most locally sourced in Asheville — specific farm attributions for proteins and produce that change with the season and with what the farms provide. The Appalachian sourcing (ramps in spring, pawpaws in fall, heritage-breed pork year-round) represents the region's biodiversity as a culinary resource.
The wine list is carefully assembled to complement the region's cooking — focused American producers alongside the European selections that the kitchen's techniques call for.
Chef William Dissen's kitchen has maintained the Market Place's founding philosophy through multiple decades of changing restaurant culture — a consistency that produces the specific trust that decades-long restaurants earn.
Best Occasion: Best for Closing Deals
The oldest serious restaurant in Asheville, farm-to-table before it was fashionable, and the most locally sourced menu in the Blue Ridge. For the Asheville deal that requires genuine authority.
Best Occasion: Perfect for Impressing Clients
A 1979 farm-to-table restaurant that was right about everything before anyone agreed. The historical authority of The Market Place is genuinely impressive.