On the Blue Ridge
On the Blue Ridge features conversations with people shaping the Blue Ridge Mountains. Hosted by Asheville-based journalist Jon Page, the show explores the ideas, creativity, and vision driving Western North Carolina forward.
Through long-form interviews and on-location storytelling, each episode captures the evolving story of these mountains. The conversations focus on people doing meaningful and inspiring work across the region, from conservation and outdoor recreation to the arts, agriculture, food and beverage, entrepreneurship, and beyond.
On the Blue Ridge
Kevin Westmoreland and Joe Scully on Rebuilding Corner Kitchen
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Kevin Westmoreland and Joe Scully are the co-owners of Corner Kitchen, a venerable restaurant in Asheville, North Carolina’s Biltmore Village that reopened this August, nearly a year after Hurricane Helene flooded the entire first floor of the restaurant.
Prior to opening Corner Kitchen in 2004, Kevin had a background in corporate operations and management roles, and Joe was a seasoned, classically trained chef. The duo met through their sons in 2001, and a friendship blossomed into a business partnership that also includes Chestnut, a restaurant in downtown Asheville.
In this episode, Joe and Kevin discuss the long road back after Helene and the emotions they felt when Corner Kitchen re-opened this August. They also recall the early days of Corner Kitchen and how they rebounded from another devastating flood that shut down the restaurant just six months after opening in 2004.
Corner Kitchen
Chestnut
Theme Music
The song "Goa" was written by Lyndsay Pruett and performed by the Jon Stickley Trio.
There were people that have been coming to see us for 21 years. I don't remember, other than say at my wedding, I don't remember ever being hugged so many times that day.
SPEAKER_03The feeling of of joy, of abject happiness, at us pulling this thing off, of us hanging in there and doing this. I mean, it literally lifted us up.
SPEAKER_00Today, on the Blue Ridge, our guests are Kevin Westmoreland and Joe Scully, the co-owners of Corner Kitchen, a venerable restaurant in Asheville, North Carolina's Biltmore Village that reopened this August, nearly a year after Hurricane Helene flooded the entire first floor of the restaurant. I'm your host, John Page. Let's begin. Prior to opening Corner Kitchen in 2004, Kevin had a background in corporate operations and management roles, and Joe was a seasoned, classically trained chef. The duo met through their sons in 2001, and a friendship blossomed into a business partnership that also includes Chestnut, a restaurant in downtown Asheville. In this episode, Joe and Kevin discussed the long road back after Helene and the emotions they felt when Corner Kitchen reopened this August. They also recall the early days of Corner Kitchen and how they rebounded from another devastating flood that shut down the restaurant just six months after opening in 2004. To start the conversation, I asked Joe and Kevin to discuss the current state of things at Corner Kitchen and in Biltmore Village. Here's Joe.
SPEAKER_03There are still buildings in Biltmore Village that are unoccupied, some of which look uh less than attractive. And um that's a little puts a little bit of a hitch in our get-along. Um if we look at we're actually comparing 2023 to 2025 as far as numbers, etc. And we are certainly doing very well, and uh we feel like we're a healthy little company down there, but it it we are definitely off of 2023 numbers, to be perfectly honest. Um, you know, I hate to start on a down note, but it the you know, the reality is that there's a lot of work to be done. Um, there's several buildings that are for sale, uh, several buildings that are looking for a particular up uh particular lease opportunity uh that would uh benefit the area andor you know the lessees and the and the landlords, et cetera, et cetera. So some of that you know moves at the pace that it moves, and there's no real way to hurry that along. Um altogether, though, if we were to take a snapshot six months ago and take a snapshot now, visually, it is much, much better. Um, a lot of folks are um really, really looking close to opening. A couple places have opened quite recently. Um, so it's it's definitely on the mend, but not quite as aesthetically pleasing as Billmore Village is known to be.
SPEAKER_01And and I would say, um, you know, I'm when I go down, I sometimes take my dogs and we walk. And what you'll see is Joe, Joe's right. Um, there are businesses that will open in the next, well, probably before Christmas and definitely before spring. And then there are buildings that have, in essence, not been touched. Right next door to us, there's a building and across the street from that building. Those buildings have had a little bit of the mud uh taken out of the crawl space, and that's about it. And then they've been boarded up and they're sitting there. And uh, you know, that's a that would that'd be worrisome if I suppose if I were going to lease those buildings at this point. Um, and also the fact that I can go around the corner as you head toward the church from our restaurant, there is still silt from the flood on the sidewalks. So it's sort of like where we are, we burnished the sidewalks and the streets, and we keep them clean, and we keep the drains uh cleared, and um then you go around the corner and it's still remnants of last September.
SPEAKER_00I feel like that's a kind of a good microcosm for just in general around here, where you'll be driving around and think you know everything is normal, and then you go down towards a river bend and it's like, oh, right, there's where a house used to be. Um but you you guys are seeing that like door to door basically.
SPEAKER_01Yes, you go 50 feet, and it and it's not a lot different than uh in October of 2024. And um, you know, and it it is a I I think when we opened back up, it was normal see coming back to a corner of the Biltmore village where people drive because where we are, people drive by uh all day, every day. It's a cut through between Highway 25 and Highway 25A, and so there's a lot of traffic there that's just trying to get somewhere else. And they were driving by our building for 10 and a half months, and then it's all of a sudden it's up, we're open. All of a sudden, that's like being an overnight success. We were a 10 and a half months overnight reopening for some people.
SPEAKER_03The thing that um I think uh, you know, essentially I'm extremely hopeful about about the area, about Western North Carolina, about Asheville and Bilkmore Village in particular. Um, because when we look at our sister restaurant at Chestnut, um our numbers there are absolutely lovely. I mean, downtown Asheville is doing what downtown Asheville does in the months October, November, and then obviously Christmas season. And it's it's really uh lovely to see that. And um, you know, Biltmore Village is just going to be a little bit more of a little bit more of a slog, but we're getting there.
SPEAKER_00So do you feel like the like kind of tourism has gotten back to normal in downtown Asheville, but it's the Biltmore Village will just take a little while. Is that kind of the essence of it?
SPEAKER_01For me, I would say that's the feel of it. Um, I you know, I look at it, well, I think Joe and I both we probably um can obsess about the numbers and where we were and what's happened. It's possible that the corner kitchen is as busy as it is because there are no other independent restaurants open in Billmore Village. We're in. Um, I do know people we're happy that we reopen people. We have lots of uh really loyal guests and and and people that come see us. But if I were to think about the fact if everything was open down there, well, I can't even, it's hard to put in perspective. If everything were open, all the tourists would probably more tourists would be back. I mean, there's it's which came first, um, you know, the buildings are the tourists. Uh downtown does seem really busy, and that's that's great to see that. Uh the Gilmore State's you know fully open, um, which is great. That's the big, the big draw. Uh, now that the parkway's open for the big areas that are close to us, that's a draw. But I still think um, and and people, it's surprising how people show up and they have no idea that we had a hurricane and a flood. I mean, they just forget because they lived in Ohio or somewhere. And they go, What why is nothing open? And you have to explain. Remember in the news 12 months ago that and they go, Oh yeah, I remember that. And then they ask you how deep the water was, and then it's like their eyes really open because it's so shocking. But I I think I think we're still short. We're just taking we're taking everybody that comes down there that wants to eat. We're getting most of them, I think, right now. So that's great for us.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I before we get into everything that's happened in the last year, I I do want to go back a little bit to your origin story. Uh you guys meet in 2001, I believe, and Corner Kitchen opens in 2004. What what did the food scene in Asheville look like back then? And and also uh what did you initially envision for Corner Kitchen?
SPEAKER_03It was always kind of interesting. There were no chain restaurants in the downtown Asheville area. And right now that there are one or two, but they really there weren't any in the early 2000s. There were about three or four, maybe five, what I call good restaurants. And when I when I say good restaurants, I talk about people who are um really, really trying to put forth uh you know handcrafted, um carefully prepared foods and create an ambiance that is um interesting at the very least, if if not posh, you know. Um and there wasn't a lot of that. I mean, you could go to the Grove Park and have a fancy dinner. Um, there was the marketplace, uh, there was Reza's, uh a few other places around town um that were quote unquote nice restaurants. And when Kevin and I got together, we realized that if we were going to do this, we were going to have to appeal to the greatest demographic slice of the pie that we possibly could. I'm classically trained. If I had my brothers, I would probably open a little 20-seat French restaurant and I'd be back in the kitchen every day cooking what it is we do. And we realized, nope, not gonna do that. You know, we're gonna have a hundred seats, we're gonna have something that's gonna hopefully support both of our families, and we're gonna have something that is handcrafted. And the front of the house, which Kevin gamely took over with no, absolutely no restaurant experience, is gonna be welcoming, accommodating, and friendly um, without fail. And that's sort of that was sort of our our template. And so, you know, we we have quote unquote fancy food, I guess you'd say, but we have food that is carefully prepared. We have food that is sourced as much as we can locally, things like that that were always in the mix. So that that was sort of the scene was growing. I mean, Lori's catering was uh Lori Masterton was one of the pioneers, uh, marketplace was Mark Rose and the Steam. Uh Eric Sheffer had Savoy. There were a lot of uh, you know, a lot of people by a lot, a handful uh of people that were of like mind. And um then, you know, and then Kevin came in and and you know, I should shut up and let Kevin talk because his his take on it is completely different from mine, I think, at least from the onset.
SPEAKER_01Sure. I mean, what Joe and I met, our boys were the same, they're both Matthews, they're the same age, they went to the same school. We all I won't go into the details, but we ended up camping, and Joe cooked for us uh a big a couple cookouts, and uh without using profanity, it was like, holy wow, this is really good food. And and um he's cooking it over a campfire, and it's like something out of a restaurant that better than most restaurants. So my thought was I come from this uh you know corporate background. And for me, I lived in Denver uh for a while with my wife and my son, and we went to chain restaurants. That was our history, and so uh when I met Joe, it was kind of like, well, that's there's nothing wrong with that, but I'd like to do something different. And this building became available. I wanted to focus on um since I didn't know anything about restaurants, other than I figured I'd be terrified, and I was the first few days, that uh Joe, Joe knew all both sides of the house. So I had a customer service background. I was very serious about taking care of uh guests or people that uh dealt with my businesses in the past. I worked in corporate uh IT and in uh hospitals, and so I knew the basics of be nice to people. My dad was enough of a of a charmer that I got a little bit of that, and so I could talk to people. And Joe helped me be at Eddie's and first few days were were tough, but we wanted um we wanted it to be different. The building we're in, we took that and we I think we tried to maybe step as far as we possibly could with the little money we had away from it being this coffee shop that was there, which was great, but not what we wanted to build. So we had white tablecloths. I mean, Jod didn't mention that. I mean, I know he remembers it and I know it's in it, it's in the back of his mind. We had white tablecloths. I mean, nobody does white tablecloths, we don't even do white tablecloths anymore, but it was a thing where it was not a coffee shop. This was a nice restaurant where you could come for dinner and feel welcome. Anybody could feel welcome. And we have a couple, you know, little story of that. This painter came in at the end of service one night, and uh we he had on his splattered paint paint clothes, and dinner was really decidedly uh upscale, a little upscale compared to to our brunches and breakfasts. He came in by himself 15 minutes, maybe 20 minutes before closing, maybe less. And we seated him, of course, because it's what we do. If you come in a minute before we close, we you can come and have the whole experience. We're not gonna rush you out or anything. He sat there for a minute. There was a miscommunication, the server didn't get to him, and he got up to walk out. And I was like, I stopped him and I said, Wait, wait, wait, I got I think I got him on the front porch, or Joe got him on the front porch. And he goes, I can tell you're not interested in taking care of me. And we were like, No, no, no, please come back. We it was just a miscommunication with the server. They didn't know they had your table. We brought him back in and he he had his meal and and we took care of him. And we've always been really uh want to be really thoughtful about that. As Joe said, if somebody needs to use the bathroom, let them use the bathroom. We're not that kind of place. We're never going to tell you can't use the bathroom or you can't come in at a minute until closing, or whatever it might be. You can have water free. I don't know. Some places are funny about rules, and we just didn't have a lot of rules. In fact, our one rule, I think, was we never we don't say no. That was kind of our rule. So we wanted even to take whatever was in Asheville and make it more welcoming and accessible to everybody and fun for people to come and have dinner. And I hope we've done that.
SPEAKER_00And part of that was no no more white tablecloths. When when did that really go away?
SPEAKER_03That's a really interesting question. So the I would follow on something Kevin said, and and that is that there has, in my experience, and at this moment in time, I'm about 47 years into the restaurant business. So I've been around a few, been around the you know, the block a few times. And there was there was always an undercurrent of some sort of adversarial possibility whenever you approached a restaurant, especially where I come from, which is the the northeast. I grew up, you know, 12 miles from Manhattan. And I wanted and the minute Kevin said what his approach to to things was, I was like, oh my gosh, we are going to remove the adversarial relationship. We're going to, you know, we we are not gonna have the the word no did not appear anywhere on our on our menu, you know. And I think that that's an important thing to stress because yes, we were doing handcrafted food, yes, we were trying our darndest to make it great. There there was this sense of acceptance and uh sort of this joyful giving that we decided that we were going to embody from day one. And so we aligned with certain um philanthropic and uh associations like Mana Food Bank, like Elida Home, um, and you know, we were both actually on the board of both of those organizations early in Corner Kitchen's history, and these are the kinds of things that we decided we were going to do because we wanted to make sure one, that we were part of our community, and also that we were giving. Because when you cook for somebody, and I I don't know who does the cooking cooking in your house, John. It's mainly me. There you go. And so when you do that, that is an act of love, my friend. Absolutely positively. And, you know, we just got through with Thanksgiving, and I was at my younger brother's house, and he had these two turkeys, and the the widow ladies from the neighborhood came by because they didn't have any place else to go for Thanksgiving, and there was so much love. And, you know, yeah, it's it's a it's a business. Hey, we we're not apologizing for being a business. We're not apologizing for being in a restaurant, but we're gonna make it as comfortable for you as possible. Now, as far as the white tablecloth thing goes, that was kind of like one of the things that Kevin and I also do is we want to make sure that our sales force and our and our other co-workers are comfortable with what we do. We know it ain't gonna be easy, but what we did is we had the white tablecloths, and on top of each white tablecloth, we spread a sheet of of um of paper. You know, so it was like the white tablecloth, and then it had this nice sheet, fresh sheet of paper, and people would draw on it, and it was really fun and all that kind of stuff. And it became, as we got busier, the the it just became like, oh dear God, can we please stop?
SPEAKER_01We were cutting, we were cutting like a hundred and a hundred sheets of of this paper. Like we had this huge roller. It was this white paper that, you know, kind of thick, and we would roll it off, and we knew it we had it marked, and you would tear it. Somebody would tear it, sometimes it was me, sometimes it was a server, sometimes it was a busser. And we would and it would diagonally make it like a diamond so it overlapped. It it did two things. It gave people, kids, something to draw, and it protected the tablecloth so we didn't have to put a new tablecloth out every time that somebody left. So there were it was really a great idea. And then I think um, yeah, at some point we went, well, this is well, there's all kinds of things that go into these decisions, but it felt uh stiffer, maybe, than we want it to be, I suppose. And it was expensive. And a lot of waste. Yeah, there was a lot of waste to it, a lot of wasted paper. We're we're we're both environmentally conscious, and our staff was very environmentally conscious, and they were they were responsible for us doing recycling before you know a lot of people were doing that, and we do composting and and all those things. But yeah, it just became this thing where it was kind of like, oh, we take this layer of extra stress and maybe some the adversarial piece with the guests where it's like, oh, this is white tablecloth. I can't even come in. People wouldn't come in sometimes because it was white tablecloth. Didn't matter what we how we acted because they never found that out.
SPEAKER_03We used to have um the the waiters wear particular uh you know shirts and uniforms and stuff like that. And what we found is that um, you know, most Americans are not really, they don't care that much. And it's also kind of slightly off-putting, uh especially at Chestnut. We used to have these white shirts, we had white Oxfords at lunch, and we'd stand there with an empty restaurant wondering why people weren't coming in. So we said, okay, let's just wear our let's wear our let's just wear our t-shirts, okay, with our cool slogans on there, and boom, it was like 20% more business, just because people felt comfortable just rolling on in, you know, in their Bermuda shorts with their, you know, ACDC t-shirt on, whatever they were wearing, you know. So it it so there was and we learn as we go, and that's one of the things I think that's important is the fluidity of really listening and being present with what's happening, one in the moment, but also with regard to trends in dining. And uh Americans are, you know, there are times. Sure, I won't I can't wait to go to La Bernadette in New York City because it's a three Michelin stars, and I'll spend, you know, a week's pay on it. I'll do that once in my life. And I'll expect all that stuff. I don't need that at Corner Kitchen or Chestnut. I need, I need to be to feel happy that I'm there.
SPEAKER_01And Joe said something that I think is really important because I think he and I both would say we're, you know, a part of us is a capitalist. We wanted to build something. We wanted to be successful at that. We wanted to be able to pay our bills and possibly put some money away for our retirement. And Joe said, like I had worked with nonprofits and uh, you know, uh was raised, uh, I have to say I was raised poor. I didn't know I was poor. I didn't know that, I didn't feel it, but it, but but we didn't have a lot of money. My family didn't have a lot of money. And Joe said, we will be doing uh working with Mana Food Bank and whomever else we can work with from the second before we even opened the door to the restaurant. And we didn't know if we were going to be able to pay the rent. I mean, in some ways, we felt like we could, but you don't know that. Restaurants go out of business a lot, and um, so from the very beginning, we gave and gave and gave, and some of it was energy at the beginning, energy and food, time and food. And uh it's worked out that we now can sometimes get money and still give time and food, but that is really important, and um being business owners, I think we felt we needed to be socially responsible to the place where we lived, to the people around us, and and and I would say Joe really pushed the issue. It's something I had you know touched as a as a working in my former life, but this is something we just embrace, and it's just part of what we do all the time now. It's like it's like who are we gonna support this year? Not are we gonna support, but who are we gonna support this year? And I love that, and my children have learned it. Uh, I think Joe's kids uh know that as being important, and it's and our staff knows it's important. So that was that was a big deal besides the food.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I I know that six months after you all opened, there was a flood in 2004. Uh, but before we get to this flood, the most recent flood, uh, what are your memories of of that one so early on? And and you know, how did it kind of how did that challenge shape the way that you you approached business moving forward?
SPEAKER_01Well, yeah, Joe, Joe, Joe's taking a breath there. I think for I think some things are so big and so unavoidable that you just kind of walk into that and go, okay, uh, are we gonna let's we're gonna move forward, I guess, and we've moved forward. But you might want to tell them some of the little details about that that flood too, Joe, the canoes.
SPEAKER_03And that was interesting, um, interesting. It was cataclysmic, but it was uh it my memory of it is not being able to sleep the night before, waking up at 4, 4:30 a.m. with the sense of, oh my gosh, something really serious has happened here. And so I got into my my old Volvo and I left. I lived down uh to South Asheville at the time, and I drove down Hendersonville Road to uh the village and pulled into what is now Bank of America, but at that point was Nations Bank or something, I think was the name. And I pulled into the parking lot and I looked down All Souls Crescent, which is the road that kind of circles all of Biltmore Village on either side, and I'm looking kind of north and east down that road, and I can see that the water is already past the intersection of Boston Way and All Souls Crescent, which is the corner the corner kitchen is on, and it was increasing. And I'm looking at this, and suddenly Kevin is standing next to me. And I'm like, Hi, good morning.
SPEAKER_01I lived about um I lived about a quarter of a mile from the corner kitchen in my oldest.
SPEAKER_03He lived like right there, and so he's standing next to me. I'm like, okay, what now? So I got on the phone and I called a friend. Um, and uh they had a canoe, and so I went up to Will Wharton's house and I got his canoe and I came down and Kevin and I got in that canoe and we rode over to our restaurant, tied it up to the top uh railing of the front porch, and went into the building.
SPEAKER_01And you know, and it was sort of like um an example of the amount of shock we were in that we walked in. We just walked into a building that still had power on, still had power on, and the the refrigerators, the fans were running in the water of the because it was up to about the what mid-caf Joe or something like that.
SPEAKER_03It was 18 inches up in the building, and so we Kevin like held my legs as I leaned out over the railing on the back door and leaned out, set a hail mary and flipped the mane and turned all the electricity off in the building. And you know, and then we you know, we sort of saw what it was and realized the magnitude of what had happened. And once again, you know, and I don't know what the heck it means, this combination of the personalities that we have. We were just like, okay, this is bad, we're gonna deal with it. We literally canoed around the the uh the neighborhood because it was pretty cool to be able to do that, and went and picked up a buddy, uh Marvin Slossman. He was kind of stuck on his building nearby. Yeah, on the on the last one I haven't seen, yeah. Anyway, and uh and then the cops told us to get the heck out of there, so we did, but we you know, and then the water receded pretty quickly, and we were there and we swept a lot of the stuff out, but it was category three black water, just like the water that was in this one, and we had to remove every single bit of equipment and every single bit of flooring, and we had to start over, and um, you know, I don't think we ever thought that we weren't going to start over. There was never any point at which we weren't going to or where we were going to throw in the towel, it just wasn't in the cards because and I think part of it was survival. I mean, I had come, I would I lived right near Manhattan, I was executive chef at the United Nations, and then one chase plaza in in New York City, and and Kevin and you know, and I came down here to ask for they didn't really have a job for a guy like me. And then Kevin was his your business had been sold, right? And and and so we were kind of stuck with each other with really nothing else happening. And we both could have, you know, gotten jobs as baggers at Ingleseth, I suppose. But you know, so we I had experience in that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I could do that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, he said he was a good bagger, anyway. So, yeah, so so we just you know, and that took us that, you know, we had a landlord at that time. We did not own the building, and the landlord was kind of this um, kind of this old codger who wasn't really interested in our opinion on anything, but we managed to turn it around and get it reopened in three months.
SPEAKER_01Different situation, and and really important, speaking about that flood and this flood a year ago, is we he had flood insurance on the building. We had flood insurance last year on the building, and I and I I'm not a hundred percent sure had you know, had that not been the case in both of those floods, how it would have turned out differently. Because a lot of people don't have flood insurance down in the village, and some of those people does that's part of why some of them haven't come back. Um and so that was helpful. I would say, I would say in both floods, the federal government was helpful to us. But it feels like in this last flood, maybe the um the funds have still been sort of throttled back for something. We just haven't gotten the flood the money in Western North Carolina that has been earmarked for Western North Carolina, but regardless, uh though both those cases, we had we had something that helped rebuild the building so that it wasn't all on our shoulders or the or Bill's shoulders, the gentleman that owned it before. So that's that's a big deal, it is.
SPEAKER_00And you said that one was 18 inches. So for for those who don't know how high up it came in Helene, uh how high up was it? And and then what's that uh I think I I think I read somewhere that it was the next day that you guys got there, so not a canoe trip this time, but what did what did you see that first time when you when you got there after Helene?
SPEAKER_01Oh, to clarify, it was 18 inches in the building. The building is four, three and a half feet off the ground, Joe.
SPEAKER_03The water was around, it was about six to eight feet deep, depending upon where you were in the village. In Helene, the the uh how do you say something of the magnitude, the the magnitude of it was completely different. It was literally up to the second floor. Um, we had to demo the uh the drywall on on the ceilings, um, on the ground floor, all the way up to the landing. Anybody who's been in corner kitchen will know you walk up the stairs and there's a landing, and then there's a restroom off to the right there. That restroom had water in it. So it was all that way. And we actually have signs now that says this on the sidewall that says this high, because that's how high it was. And we felt it was important for people to be able to see that. It was it was absolutely completely different deal.
SPEAKER_01The thing that that still stuns me because people will walk by, and of course, the first thing they say after they you remind them of the flood is that, oh, how high? That's the first question. If you're standing in the street in front of our restaurant, the water was at least, I would say, six feet over my head. If you're standing there, and it probably street? Yeah, no, no, no, no, or eight feet.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it was eight or ten feet above your head at that point.
SPEAKER_01So you're you're eight feet or ten feet underwater if you can put yourself on the morning of that flood, and the water that water spread for probably half a mile side to side and then north to south, I don't know, a mile, two miles, three miles of that, a moving lake that's eight to ten feet over your head. It's it's almost unimaginable. It's just if you walk down there now, the buildings are standing and people are walking around and going in for dinner and driving their cars through there, and you there were things in that water you didn't want to touch or be near that could hurt you. And um, yeah, it was just it's pretty much something I could never have imagined happening in in Western North Carolina.
SPEAKER_00What would you all say was the the the hardest part of this rebuild?
SPEAKER_03Being from the New York Metro area, the illusion of movement is really important to me. So as long as I'm moving, I feel kind of you know, sort of comforted by circumstance, right? Um, so we kept moving. There wasn't a moment where we didn't. The hardest thing for me was when we got there several days in, and we decided that we were going to start to scrape away at everything and uncover uh the floors and uncover the surrounding the building, you know, the the the the land, uh sidewalks, the landscaping, etc., patio, uh the walk-in coolers, all of that. When I got there and the reality of of that level, I mean we're talking six inches of of like what I would describe almost as like pluff mud. If you've ever been down in you know the uh the the marshes in South Carolina, you know what pluff mud is. It was absolutely liquid and heavy as all get out. The walk-ins in the back, which is where they are now, in exactly the same place, were literally lifted up and they were not put on their sides, they were not put on their tops, they were put on the corner. So they they were completely inaccessible except from a huge steam shovel, which took us three weeks to get there. So you can imagine what that was like. So that that that initial like feeling in the pit of my stomach, like, oh my, this is this is going to be a big job. That was that that was real for me at that point.
SPEAKER_01I you know, it's funny, it is it is the same, the same time, the same part of the process is what was the hardest. Because you know, once you get that sort of cleared out of the way and they've come and mitigated the building and gotten everything sprayed, and uh the mold is gone and the mildew's gone, and everything's ready. From that point on, it was every day was there was movement, there was work, there was painting, there was you know, bringing things in. It took forever, it felt like um, and it was, you know, it was expensive and you know, all of those things. But that first day pulling up, we brought some neighbors from our neighborhood here, and they said, we want to come work, we want to work until we can't lift our arms anymore because we know what you guys are going through. And you get there, and like Joe said, the mud. We have pictures of our my neighbor Ray shoveling mud, and the every shovel full was probably 30 or 40 pounds. It was just this really, really nasty, heavy stuff. And walking inside the building, you would see a you would see a beer can that a beer bottle that had floated, full beer bottle had floated and sat on top of uh something near the door up at the ceiling. And people would walk in and say, Did you guys put that up there? And we said, No, it's Helene put that up there. It's just you know, all these weird little little looks. Um, and uh it it was that feeling of this is 04 again, but this is so much worse. And every piece of equipment we have in the restaurant is on the first floor. I mean, in the sense of everything that's expensive and heavy and carries the load of of cooking those meals and washing the dish. It's all on the first floor, it was all completely underwater. Um, the bar was completely underwater. Uh uh, we you know, it was it was just the magnitude was and then they would bring it out and dump it. It sat on the corner there in this huge pile of of uh wood and metal and insulation and chairs and and you know, this whole beautifully little, you know, the corner kitchen is sort of like this little compact jewel inside because it's a it's a little house. It was never meant to be a restaurant, and it's this little house with little fireplace and both floors, and everything that we had meticulously set up and painted and you know, all these things, gone. It's just it's just gone. And um at first it it is just it can feel overwhelming and you're tired, you know, the end of the day, first day you're tired, and you know you have hundreds of days ahead of you to fix this.
SPEAKER_00So standing there that first time you see it, there's there's no thought of like, well, we're gonna give up. It's we have to keep going. Like, what what motivates you all if you go back to to those moments and think about it? Like, what motivated you to keep Corner Kitchen alive and to rebuild?
SPEAKER_03I think that the thing that motivated us most was our responsibility to our families and to our employees. Um the first thing we did was we our um our HR director reached out to every single employee and made sure, and I'm feeling a little emotional right now, made sure that they were okay. You know, they they didn't, they they were still alive, and everybody made it. And um, and then we had responsibility, you know, and um, you know, there wasn't any, there wasn't any literally. I mean, I don't know if Kevin, in your private moments, if you had the uh doubt, I was irritated, I was annoyed, I was furious. I felt uh that I had been dealt some really serious injustice, and what did I do to deserve this kind of thing? And then I put in perspective because you look at Craigtown, and 11 people lost their lives. Where I live, I live, I can look down from my house and see the Swannanoa River. Thankfully, I'm 150 feet up. I think six or seven people lost their lives between my neighborhood and Tunnel Road, you know. So the perspective was easy to find because of the fact that we were all okay. We had a responsibility. And then once we decided we were gonna, when and it didn't even, once we got rolling, and you know, our con our contractor, Trey Greer of Elm Construction, is an irrepressibly uh energetic fellow. He helped us a lot. He's like, okay, we're gonna do this thing. And literally, he had his guys down there demoing three days in. You know, so we sort of got we got pulled along by that a little bit too. So I I give Trey some credit for that too.
SPEAKER_01I think I agree with Joe. You know, we we own the building. So um, if we if I suppose if we hadn't owned the building, it it might have been easier to say, well, we'll just move the restaurant somewhere else, some other building. But but it's our building, a lot of uh blood and sweat and tears, literally, all those things have gone into that building. Uh, my children came there after school when they were in elementary school and would go upstairs and wait in the office till I got off work and that sort of thing. And so it meant it means a lot to us. But we did have uh these people showed up the first day we were there. Strangers showed up and worked uh most of the day shoveling mud and carrying things out. These are people we didn't know and have never seen since. They just showed up and wanted to help and then left. And um it was, I think it was the community, you know, people were missing their favorite local businesses, and Asheville's very much a support local business kind of place. And um, I think we felt just like right, once we started moving, it was kind of like well, we're just gonna do this. It every dollar we thought we would spend turned into at least two dollars we thought that we ended up spending. And that part is hard, but again, we're still here. We still compare bills, we still and most of our staff came back, and that was you know, it's just uh such a such a great thing to see those folks uh back in last this all last August.
SPEAKER_00And I I think I saw that you all had had uh you all had had a GoFundMe during everything, and you would you would you were able to get use some of your corner kitchen staff at Chestnut as well until Corner Kitchen reopened, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, the GoFundMe, I'd forgotten about that. So that was a great thing. We were able to just say, here's some money. And of course, Kevin and and my wife Vanessa uh are much better at many.
SPEAKER_01And that went to the staff. That was not a staff for the restaurant or us, it was for the staff. Um, because it was a tough time for everybody.
SPEAKER_03And then the pivot, the big pivot was we started we used to only have brunch on the weekends at Chestnut, and we realized very quickly, once we were able to get water and electricity to that downtown location on Biltmore Avenue, um, like, okay, we're doing brunch seven days a week. And we were able to take managers and waiters and uh gosh, sous chefs and chefs to guisine. They they took hourly positions at Chestnut, and everybody just kind of threw in. That was really fun. It was sort of like this brand new thing that we were doing, and that was that was a high point. Um, and to see when we and you know, on social media, we announced, hey, this is what we're doing, and boy, did people respond to that. They were just like, oh heck yeah. And they came and you know, had brunch with us and got to see Hannah, and they got to see, you know, Akari, and they got to see all those folks. Matthew. Yeah, yeah, and Matt Matthew Spotella, who's such a wonderful man, and you know, all these folks. So that was really fun. And that was, you know, and that was one of the things, you know, we uh I don't want to go back all the way to COVID, but just one little thing about that is that in COVID, you had to pivot. If you didn't pivot, you were lost. And the same thing happened here, but it was very local, it wasn't a worldwide cataclysm. But we did have to pivot. And and thankfully, we were we were able to, you know.
SPEAKER_01And and it and here's here are the things that I I think of that happened. The the Biltmore estate came and told the the businesses of the village, if you have people that need jobs, we will and we have jobs, and we have a job for them, we'll hire them. And with the understanding that if they want to come back to you when you open, we will be prepared for that. And and that's what we want to do. We had our some of our service staff were able to find jobs with other restaurants, and they told those restaurants when the corner kitchen gets ready to open, I will give you my two weeks' notice, and then I'm gonna go back there. And people hired them on, and then those people came back. Uh Rose is one example that I know of, but there were others. And so the whole community was sort of like, okay, that's okay. I I would, you know, I hate to lose you, but I will I'll you know, they had 10 months of these employees, and then they came back to us, most of them. And so that part of the community piece, which is like a little subtle thing that people were like, of course, sure you we that that's great. We expect you to do that. Um, was not something that's a national thing that's been around since we started a restaurant. The independent restaurants are not, we're not adversarial, we're we're a community of independent restaurants that all feel, I think we all feel like the more great restaurants we have in the city, the better for everybody, better for all of us. And and I think that's turned out to be true.
SPEAKER_03One of the things about Asheville, that whole collaborative, not competitive thing, is um it's really, really, you know, three guys got together and said, we're gonna have an Asheville Independent Restaurant Association. And we all thought they were crazy and egotistical and everything like that. And boy, was that a good move because it lets us to pool our resources and it's become a real central part of the community here because people can use resources for everything from you know dental to mental health, you know, and it's uh it's a really great thing. And that that was, yeah, that's a good point, Kevin. That community, uh, the idea of community in Asheville is still there, real strong.
SPEAKER_00Take me back to August when you reopen um, you know, those those first few days of uh bringing friends and family back in and then opening the doors to the general public. What kind of emotions are are going through you guys?
SPEAKER_03For me, when you know we did the uh the soft opening, and of course, um, well, not of course, but usually when people do soft openings, it's a comp. In other words, you you have a bunch of people come, you know, it's no charge, they tip heavily, everybody's happy, they get to try the food, maybe it doesn't go so good, but it works out, blah, blah, blah. And so we were gonna do that. We're gonna have a soft opening like normal. And one of our managers said, Do not do a soft opening where you pay for everybody's meal, they do not want you to do that. And I'm like, What? I was like, no, and so I sort of canvassed, you know, some of my associates throughout the friends were telling us that. We're like, hell no, we want to pay right, we want to pay. So that was cool. So we had, you know, we opened up the reservations and we had you know a full house pretty much, you know, throughout brunch and into dinner, and about noontime at brunch, I had to get out of there. I didn't want to cry in front of everybody, you know. I'm I'm such a guy, right? And I just I and I live with it. Came home, kind of reset, went back for dinner service. But I I just it was overwhelming. I mean, because the people were so happy. And the restaurant, the, the, the, the floor plan and some of the some of the design points inside the restaurant on the ground floor in particular, were changed. We saw it as an opportunity to kind of rectify some of the uh, shall we say, architectural anomalies that we inherited. And so we we did that. And that that too was a was a subject of some debate, actually, but mostly an outpouring of, oh my gosh, this is just so beautiful. And it's a prettier restaurant than it was at this point. But it was for me, it was, you know, I got a little the clemped, as they say, you know.
SPEAKER_01There were um uh Joe and I had sort of stepped back from the daily, we don't work a shift, like we're not on the schedule like we used to be. And we come in and at odd times when we're helping with something or coming in for a meeting, or we and and we still talk to a lot of our guests, but it was as if we went from uh the skeleton of a building, sort of the first floor was just beams and trusses and whatever, to this really beautiful, um, like a Wes Anderson building. Everything's in perfect place and you know, nothing's been touched. And then the food came in and had to be packed away. And then the staff came in and started rolling, you know, getting silverware ready and glassware and liquor and and and all those things that you do and washing dishes, and then they started cooking food like the day two days before, day before. And and the first time you uh one of the smells in that restaurant that is so great is our bacon. The bacon is, I mean, bacon's delicious, and I don't even eat much meat anymore. But when I smelled that and you could smell it a little bit outside the building on the sidewalk, you're just like, oh, they're cooking food in there. That was truly like I I that's when I had to kind of turn around and walk down the sidewalk because it was it was this idea that now food is being cooked in that building again. And then when the people started coming in, there were people that had been coming to see us for 21 years that were some of our first guests, and they came in. And I don't remember, other than say at my wedding, I don't remember ever being hugged so many times that day. I mean, if they saw you, Vanessa and I, uh Joe's wife, our COO, sat down and tried to eat lunch at like two in the afternoon at the bar. And I I think I think lunch got cold because every time somebody came in the door, we'd stand up and go hug them and they would bring flowers, and they were just being um it was it was like it was a community release of something is back to normal in this particular part of town. That was really uh heartening to see that because people looked at it like, well, we're glad you're back, but we're glad for us that you're back, that that there's this this building is operating again. That means the next building might be operating soon, and then the next one, and the next one. And and I think for people in a community like Asheville, it's important that you know there are things they can go to that make them feel better on the weekend. They can go to get their coffee or they can go get their donuts or what have you. And you know, I would like more of that back down there, so that would really be the next step.
SPEAKER_00I I definitely been through nothing like what you all have been through in those months, but definitely going back to places like Corner Kitchen. Um, I think I was back there a couple weeks after you guys opened. I was there at Zillicoa the weekend that they reopened. Um, and I tears just go crazy. I I yeah, I I get so emotional, so I can't I can't imagine um what all that was like.
SPEAKER_03It was I just want to say one thing, and that you know, I I sort of came at it from my point of view around how it was for me when we reopened. The fact the feeling of of joy, of abject happiness at us pulling this thing off, of us hanging in there and doing this, was it definitely, you know, we talk about floating your boat, but I mean it literally lifted us up. And that's something that we continue to get in our in our comments, which which I read religiously every day. Um, that people are like, Thank you for the opening, thank you for being, you know, a standard bearing, a standard bearer for the recovery of Western North Carolina. And we we don't really think we are, we just are doing what we need to do to get rolling again. But it sure is nice to have people acknowledge that with joy, with happiness, with hope.
SPEAKER_00Is there anything else that's giving you all uh hope right now in general for all of Western North Carolina? Uh and then also like for Biltmore Village, too.
SPEAKER_03We're getting some support. Um, you know, the uh state government is doing really well in you know funneling funds this way. Uh, we saw some news in the last couple of weeks. Kevin probably remembered the details better than I. Um, you know, the city itself is is really working hard uh with the resources that they have. And you know, it's not a big city, so we don't have a whole lot of resources, but they they're they're really trying very, very hard. And I think the county's done a good job. I mean, you look at the activity in Black Mountain and Swannanoa, um, you know, it's gonna take a while, but I'm telling you right now, Swannanoa is gonna be a very cool place five years from now. And it's one of the things I'm so looking forward to in Western North Carolina, and that gives me tremendous hope. The folks that are, you know, rebuilding that area where the Beacon plant used to be and and and Beacon Village, uh, the renovation of all those little homes in there that were built, you know, about the same time that Biltmore Village was built. Um, that's all happening. And so that gives me a lot of hope.
SPEAKER_01I I I grew, you know, I grew up here. Joe's been here a long, a long time, but but I grew up here. I was born in Asheville in '62. Uh downtown was vital. Um, and then in 75, downtown was hollowed out because a lot of the big big box stores moved to the mall. But I remember riding by the rivers and going on the parkway, and uh there were places that you know, over 60 years, the view you get used to the view, and then now you come around a corner and the view is different. Like a thousand trees down a river uh bank will be gone. And what I've found, and what I'm taking from that, maybe I'm maybe I'm making lemonade, but what I've found is some of that is actually like a fresh, clean start for those places. I hope, I hope most of it is not worse than it was like the banks and of the rivers and things like that. But some of the rivers are wider, deeper. Um, I think for Bilmore Village, that'll be better because it'll be it'll take more rain to do the what I would call the general flooding that we see sometimes. But it also is um on the parkway. There'll be these that you'll drive along, and then there'll be a big hole in the in the tree line where those landslides were, and the trees are just gone. But it's uh the trees will grow back there. And I'm looking at it like that. And he was saying, Well, there used that doesn't look like the same place. I said, it it doesn't because there are you know 10,000 trees gone now, but um, but it is a rebirth of something, the entrance to the Biltmore estate. I've walked around those trees to the entrance to the Biltmore estate my whole life, and they're all gone now. But there are these new beautiful trees, and they're going to grow again. It's that whole thing about planting a tree that you'll never enjoy the shade of. That's that's what's going to happen with some of those trees, and it looks fresh and beautiful and different, and and I I really uh love some of that. And I didn't think I would, I didn't think I would even think about it.
SPEAKER_00That's all for today. Thanks again to Joe Scully and Kevin Westmoreland for joining me. To make your reservation for daily brunch or dinner at Corner Kitchen, visit the Cornerkitchen.com. For dinner, Kevin and Joe recommend the trout, and for brunch, I can personally say that the Benedict Du Jour has always been a hit. And you can make reservations for chestnut at chestnutashville.com, where Joe says the lobster bisque can't be missed. You can find the restaurants on Instagram at Corner Kitchen AVL and Chestnut Asheville. You can also find OnTheBlue Ridge on Instagram at OnTheBlue Ridge and online at on the blueridgepod.com. Our theme music is the song Goa, written by Lindsay Pruitt and performed by the John Stickley Trio. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you next time on the Blue Ridge.