How to travel like a local: Downtown Asheville

Traversing downtown Asheville, North Carolina, like a local means walking. And, since you can’t be underdressed in Asheville — running shoes, flip-flops, boots of any kind and age are the norm — ambling blocks between food and drink stops can feel like an escape from the norm.

Live the Asheville life with a stop into All Day Darling.

I’m asked weekly where to go in Asheville. So much is notable, both old and new, that I’ll focus here on downtown with a promise to highlight other districts soon.

Rooms at The Foundry Hotel include lots of details — and fantastic lighting.

So, you want to go to Cúrate? Yep, locals love Katie Button’s mecca of tapas too. Here’s how to get in: go at 2:30 p.m. Sit at the bar and chat with a sous chef and enjoy the skill of this staff at its best.

Stoneware with a wood-fired alkaline glaze by Matt Jones, part of the permanent collection at Asheville Art Museum.

A skip away is the reopened Asheville Art Museum. The expansion is wrapped in glass with collections of 20^th and 21^st century American Art, including 15 newly acquired works from the opening exhibit Appalachia Now! If it’s Thursday, then Perspective Café (on the fifth floor) is open until 9 p.m.; plan for fantastic small plates, noteworthy cocktails and mountain air on the sculpture deck.

Handmade empanadas from Perspective Café.

No trip to Asheville is complete without a lap through Tops for Shoes; the store, nearly a block long, carries every brand you covet in every imaginable size. The sale room is the stuff of legend.

5 Walnut wine bar offers a fantastic by-the-glass list and feels just right after brewery stops. Live music is on the calendar every night, and there is usually a sociable dog or two under a table and a knot of locals who will dance with friends and tourists alike.

End a day in Asheville at The Montford Rooftop Bar. Chef Philip Bollhoefer runs a stellar kitchen with a smart, delicious cocktail program and the views are everything you drive up the mountain for.

Stay

The Foundry Hotel, Curio Collection (in the restored Foundry & Supply Co. complex and home to Benne on Eagle)
Hyatt Place Downtown
Cambria Hotel Downtown

Beer

Thirsty Monk
Burial (because you need a donut hole with your stout)
Bhramari (order the pickled eggs with marmalade)

Soul shopping

Cultivated Cocktails (sip a cocktail and then buy the ingredients to make it at home)
Battery Park Book Exchange and Champagne Bar
High Climate Tea

Breakfast

All Day Darling (what we’re missing in Greenville in so many ways)
Over Easy Cafe
Button & Co. Bagels

Brunch

Limones
Posana (you’ll never know this is a dedicated gluten-free kitchen)
Chestnut

Lunch

Chai Pani (delicious plates each and every time by the dream team of Meherwan Irani)
67 Biltmore
Aux Bar

Easy dinner

White Labs Kitchen & Tap (a fermented kitchen means yeast dough pizza, pickles and shrubs)
Salsas
Red Ginger Dim Sum

Reservation dinner

Cucina 24 (start next door at their sip and snack purveyor: Contrada)
Rhubarb
Benne on Eagle (Chefs John Fleer and Ashleigh Shanti pay culinary homage to The Block)

Newly notable

The Greenhouse, by Noble Cider
Antidote
The Times (order the inexplicably good Talking in Cursive)

Cocktails

Sovereign Remedies (food and drink driven by farmers, foragers and chef Graham House)
The Imperial Life
The Montford Rooftop Bar

Get a membership

Little Jumbo (perfectly priced, perfectly made cocktails and parking, practically downtown)
Top of the Monk
The Crow and Quill (unmarked bar with a wall of whiskey)