ASHEVILLE
Review: Wildwood Still in Asheville Allows a Veteran Chef to Take Chances
Photos by Eric Barton
61 Biltmore Ave | Website | Instagram
★★★★★
By Eric Barton | March 24, 2025
On paper, Wildwood Still sounds like the kind of place you’d expect to find on the roof of a hotel in downtown Asheville. It’s in the Moxy, a Marriott brand with mood lighting, pink neon, and lobby cocktails that were likely designed with bachelorette photos in mind. So naturally, you'd expect the restaurant up top to play the hits: a Caesar, a ribeye, maybe a poke bowl so nobody gets mad. But then the menu arrives, and suddenly you're clutching it like a plot twist. This place doesn’t pull punches.
But first, before getting into what we ate, I should mention the space, now my favorite Asheville rooftop.
Enter from the elevator, and there’s a handsome bar over to the right that faces a massive gas fireplace with a lounge area. The dining room beyond it has a glass roof and glass accordion floor-to-ceiling windows on both sides, along with more disappearing doors that lead out to the patio, where there’s a 180-degree view of the mountains. It’s stunning, full of sunshine and breezes, and a place I’ll be taking out-of-towners from here on in.
Now, back to the food: Yes, there’s a smash burger—there always is—but it’s the only safety net on a menu that clearly isn’t afraid to trip. Leading the kitchen is Austin Tisdale, an Asheville veteran, here since 1996, with French training, Southern roots, and a CV that includes Bargello, Bouchon, and the Grove Park Inn.
The first dish we order is evidence that he’s not afraid to take chances here. The crunchy kale and Asian pear salad is an absolute punch in the nose, in the best way. It comes swaggering with a fish sauce vinaigrette that doesn't tone itself down for Midwestern palates, tangled with fresh herbs and crisp pear. It’s bold, delicious, and a total surprise at a hotel rooftop restaurant.
Same goes for the lobster dumplings, four fat little dim sum parcels bobbing in a bisque-like sauce so rich and earthy it feels like soup you’d eat in a velvet smoking jacket. It's elegant without being showy, a little funky, and full of depth.
The robata trumpet mushrooms are a sleeper hit—just mushrooms, sure, but grilled hard and glazed with a black tea sauce layered with whiskey barrel-aged shoyu, which adds the sort of smoldering, mysterious umami that makes you sit there blinking between bites. It's meaty and vegetal and nothing like the mushroom skewers you pretend to enjoy at every other izakaya.
Even the cocktails aren’t playing it safe. The old fashioned comes infused with red bean paste—nutty, earthy, and just barely sweet. It’s a risk that pays off, unless you're the sort who wants sugar-rimmed comfort. Dessert, meanwhile, is one of those dishes that makes you pause before digging in: a chocolate Basque cheesecake. On the side is a glossy pool of orange marmalade nestled in Chantilly cream, looking for all the world like a sliced hard-boiled egg.
Wildwood Still could’ve coasted. It didn’t. And if this is where hotel restaurants are headed, I’ll gladly take the elevator.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who spits his time between Asheville and Miami. He’s on a constant hunt for the best pizza, best places to bike, and for his next new favorite destination. Email him here.
