Good Hot Fish opens: What to know about Chef Ashleigh Shanti's new restaurant

ASHEVILLE - Wait no longer for hearty catfish and trout bologna sandwiches.

Chef Ashleigh Shanti has officially launched her highly anticipated modern-day fish camp in Asheville inspired by traditional fish camps popularized in the South.

On Jan. 20, Good Hot Fish had its grand opening, and is open with regular business hours, 11:30 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday.

The independently owned restaurant is at 10 Buxton Ave., inside Eulogy, a new music and event venue opened in the fall at Burial Beer Co.’s South Slope taproom.

“Coming up with the concept of Good Hot Fish, it was a time when I was feeling incredibly homesick," Shanti said. "While Appalachian cuisine and culture mean a lot to me and that’s where my maternal family hails from, I, myself, was raised in Bristol, Virginia ― Virginia Beach to be exact ― so I was experiencing this longing for simple, casual, straight-forward Carolina seafood with an approachable price point.”

Shanti has served as the executive chef at Benne on Eagle, competed on Season 19 of Bravo’s reality television series “Top Chef,” and cooked for diners at numerous special events across the U.S. and internationally.

Most recently, the James Beard Award finalist hosted a series of Good Hot Fish pop-ups at Burial Beer’s taproom mere steps from the new permanent location.

Still, Shanti had to shake off the jitters as she prepared to open her brick-and-mortar restaurant.

“To calm my nerves and to keep things at ease I keep telling myself and my sous chef at the soft openings, ‘This is just another pop-up. We’ve done this before,’” Shanti said. “I’m reassuring him, but mostly I’m reassuring myself.”

Shanti said for months she’s spent more time at the restaurant than at home preparing for the opening, so they have acquired a level of comfort with the location and taken time to get familiar with the menu to have a feeling of being settled.

“It feels like a choreographed dance that we’ve done before,” she said.

Inside Good Hot Fish

Good Hot Fish’s intimate dining room offers counter seating with a view of the chefs in the open kitchen.

Shanti and her wife Meaghan Shanti, an artist, designed the restaurant with original artwork, custom signs and objects that fit the Good Hot Fish brand and reflect the chef’s life.

Many of the items that adorn the walls are from Shanti’s years of antiquing. Family heirlooms like old kitchen utensils and an old skateboard Shanti used in college, are sprinkled throughout.

A disco ball-style catfish specially made by Sofiest Designs hangs from the ceiling and the neon exterior sign by Glas.

A hand-painted sign with the couple’s dog, Roux, hangs on display.

“All of it is incredibly special to us and things we think will make people smile," she said. "The feeling inside of the restaurant is homey and evokes that feeling of an old fish camp."

Modern meals rooted in tradition

Good Hot Fish is coined as a modern-day fish camp. It’s inspired by traditional fish camps Shanti grew up going to when she was visiting but the items on her menu are prepared with a contemporary twist.

“The fish camps that I know throughout the South, they have basic menu items and they’re done simply using humble ingredients,” Shanti said. “I feel like they’re elevated by using local seafood and highlighting that and utilizing incredible, simple ingredients. I feel that is something that we do that’s important to us.”

“Our menu is chef-driven,” Shanti said. “We get creative with specials and different fun things that our farmers are growing that we’ll get in occasionally.”

Shanti said the menu appears simple, but the chefs are intentional in selecting and sourcing fresh ingredients from local and regional farms, such as radishes, and mustard and collard greens.

Good Hot Fish’s menu

The Good Hot Fish sandwich is an early frontrunner for bestseller on the menu, which has been a popular pick at past pop-ups, too.

Fried North Carolina catfish is sandwiched between white Wonder bread and served with house buttermilk tartar sauce.

“The underdog of the menu is definitely the trout bologna and cheese,” Shanti said. “I think when word gets out about it, it will become far more popular.”

Steelhead trout is given “the bologna treatment” ― cured, churned, sliced and seared on the flattop with American cheese melted on top. It’s served on a potato roll with mustard and white onion.

“It’s like the bologna and cheese sandwich of my childhood dreams,” Shanti said.

The chef loves the trout bologna sandwich so much she’s paid homage to it on a T-shirt design, available for purchase with other branded merchandise at the restaurant.

Shanti said the dish is a nod to a pickle and preserves platter that was offered on the menu when she worked at Benne on Eagle that included sliced trout belly that was turned into a farce ― a culinary preparation style in which the fish is finely chopped and heavily seasoned and a binding agent is used to make a stuffing.

The Good Hot Fish dish is more “bologna-forward” and casual to fit the Good Hot Fish menu style, she said.

Sea Island red peas are another of Shanti’s favorite foods, an heirloom food from the Sea Islands and part of Gullah cuisine.

“It’s an incredibly special side dish that will always live on the menu,” she said.

The menu features house-made fish sticks, hot crab dip, shrimpburger, seasoned fries, hushpuppies, macaroni and cheese, and more. Beverages include soft drinks, alcoholic and nonalcoholic beer and sparkling water.

Good Hot Fish will soon offer a late-night menu served from a walk-up window geared toward Eulogy concertgoers.

Good Hot Fish

Where: 10 Buxton Ave., Asheville

Hours: 11:30 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday

Info: For more, visit goodhotfish.com and follow on Instagram @goodhotfish and @foodordeath_.

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Tiana Kennell is the food and dining reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA Today Network. Email her at tkennell@citizentimes.com or follow her on Instagram @PrincessOfPage. Please support this type of journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Good Hot Fish opens, Chef Ashleigh Shanti shares menu favorites