Asheville Is Having a Biscuit Moment, and These Are the Sandwiches Worth the Drive

By Jon Tharp, Broker  ·  September 11, 2026

There is a line out the door on Depot Street most Saturday mornings, and it is not for a brewery. It is for a biscuit. ButterPunk, a small cafe in the River Arts District, has been drawing crowds since it opened in May 2025 with a laminated biscuit that eats more like a croissant than anything your grandmother pulled from a cast iron pan.

That would be a fun local story on its own. What makes it bigger is that ButterPunk is not alone. Within a few months of each other, Asheville watched a biscuit counter in a downtown food hall outgrow its stall and move into one of the most recognizable restaurant addresses in the city, while the original biscuit heavyweight kept its three Asheville locations packed and picked up more national press. The Citizen-Times called it a biscuit renaissance. Having eaten my way through most of it, I would not argue.

For those of us in Franklin, Sylva, Waynesville, and Brevard, this is good news. Asheville is already where we go for a big breakfast before a day of errands or a drive up the Parkway. Now there is an actual debate to be had over which biscuit is best. Here is how the scene shakes out, and which sandwiches deserve a spot on your list.

The Place That Started It: Biscuit Head

Every food trend in Asheville has an origin point, and for biscuits it is a former gas station on Haywood Road in West Asheville. Jason and Carolyn Roy opened Biscuit Head there in 2013, and it has been busy from the first weekend. A second Asheville location on Biltmore Avenue near Mission Hospital followed in 2014, and there is now a third on Hendersonville Road in South Asheville along with an outpost in Greenville, South Carolina.

The signature is the cathead biscuit. If you did not grow up with the term, it refers to a hand-shaped biscuit roughly the size of a cat's head, scooped rather than rolled and cut, with a craggy top and a soft, tall interior. Biscuit Head's version is big enough that a sandwich built on one is a two-hand, sit-down proposition. Their gravies are the other draw. Depending on the day you can choose from a rotating list that has included traditional sausage, a vegetarian option, and a gluten-free option, and regulars tend to have strong opinions on which one is correct.

The self-serve jam and butter bar is the detail that first-timers remember. Flavored butters, house jams, and hot sauces line a counter, and you can go back as many times as you like. It is the kind of small generosity that turns a breakfast spot into a habit.

The national attention has kept coming. Food & Wine named Biscuit Head one of the top five biscuits in America in 2022, and Garden & Gun gave it a Made in the South award that same year. The Roys also published a cookbook in 2016 that put their Classic Cathead recipe into home kitchens across the country. All that press means the lines, especially at the West Asheville original, are real. Go early on a weekday if you can. If you are coming from Franklin, the Hendersonville Road location is the easiest to reach and usually has the shortest wait.

Flour Grows Up and Moves to Wall Street

The clearest sign of the biscuit boom is what happened with Flour. Brothers Kyle and Carter James and chef Gordon Gibbs opened Flour in May 2024 as a stall inside the S&W Market, the food hall in the old S&W Cafeteria building on Patton Avenue. It was a tight space with a short menu built around one thing done well. The biscuits earned a following fast.

By January of this year the team announced they had outgrown the food hall. The new address turned heads: 40 Wall Street, the storefront that housed Laughing Seed Cafe for decades. If you have spent any time downtown, you know that block. Wall Street is a short, brick-paved stretch just off Battery Park Avenue, and the Laughing Seed space was one of the most familiar dining rooms in the city for a generation of Asheville residents and visitors.

Flour opened there in early March. The statement from the team at the time was simple. With significantly more square footage they could serve more guests and expand the menu. In practice that has meant a shift from a biscuit counter to a full breakfast and brunch operation, with the biscuits still, in their words, the star of the show.

What I like about Flour's move is what it says about the market. A year and a half ago this was a startup in a shared food hall. Now it has a standalone downtown restaurant on a street that carries real foot traffic. That kind of jump does not happen unless people are showing up in numbers, and it does not happen for a fad. Biscuits are not a fad here. They are a category.

ButterPunk and the Laminated Biscuit

Now back to that line on Depot Street. ButterPunk is the project of Beth Kellerhals and Dana Amromin, and the story behind it is a good one. Kellerhals spent years in Los Angeles, where West Coast diners who had never had a proper Southern biscuit started calling her the Queen of Biscuits. Her twist was lamination, the same fold-and-roll technique used for croissants, applied to biscuit dough. The result is a hybrid. It bakes dark golden, shatters a little on the outside, and pulls apart in layers on the inside.

Amromin is a classically trained pastry chef who worked in Asheville kitchens before partnering with Kellerhals. The two ran ButterPunk as a pop-up first, then set out to open a permanent shop at 372 Depot Street in the River Arts District. The plan was to open in late 2024. Then Tropical Storm Helene put the River Arts District underwater.

The flooding pushed the opening back about five months. ButterPunk finally opened its doors on May 10, 2025, and the response, in Amromin's words, was overwhelming in the best way. The crowd that first week spilled out onto the sidewalk. More than a year later it still does on weekends.

The menu is short and focused. The O.G. Breakfast Sammie pairs a souffle-style egg with cheddar and a signature mayo on the laminated biscuit, and it is the order for a first visit. The BBLT adds candied bacon, bibb lettuce, and tomato jam. There is a mushroom gravy biscuit that you can build out with sausage or a fried egg. On the sweet side, look for the double-chip cookie, a chocolate chip cookie crusted in potato chips, along with scones and cakes. Coffee runs from standard drip to a Hong Kong milk tea and a miso caramel latte. Hours are 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., Thursday through Monday, and there is a commuter special on Monday, Thursday, and Friday mornings that pairs the O.G. sandwich with drip coffee for eleven dollars.

Why Biscuits, and Why Now

So why biscuits specifically, and why Asheville specifically? Part of the answer is that the biscuit is one of the few Southern staples that rewards both tradition and invention. Biscuit Head honors the cathead form and then piles it high with things nobody in 1950 would have recognized. ButterPunk borrows French pastry technique and puts it in service of a breakfast sandwich. Flour sits between them. All three are recognizably biscuits, and all three are doing something different.

The other part of the answer is Asheville's dining culture, which has been punching above its weight for two decades. The city has produced James Beard nominees and winners, a nationally known brewery scene, and a steady stream of chefs who came for the mountains and stayed for the community. Biscuits are the accessible end of that culture. You do not need a reservation or a dinner budget. You need twelve dollars and a little patience in line.

There is also a post-Helene story here. The storm in September 2024 hit the River Arts District and Biltmore Village hard, and food businesses were among the most visible casualties. ButterPunk's delayed opening was a small piece of that. Its packed opening week was a small piece of the recovery. When people talk about Asheville coming back, they usually mean the galleries and breweries along the river. A biscuit shop on Depot Street belongs on that list too.

The Rest of the Field

The three headliners get the press, but Asheville's biscuit bench is deeper than that. Early Girl Eatery on Wall Street, a few doors from Flour's new home, has been serving Southern breakfast with local ingredients since the early 2000s, and reviewers consistently single out the biscuits and sausage. Sunny Point Cafe in West Asheville is another long-running favorite with a line of its own on weekends, and its biscuits hold up a hearty breakfast plate.

Tupelo Honey started in downtown Asheville before growing into a regional chain, and its biscuits with blueberry jam and whipped butter are still the thing that arrives at the table before you order. It is a different experience from the biscuit-focused shops, more full-service brunch than counter cafe, but the biscuit itself is a legitimate contender.

Then there is Rocky's Hot Chicken Shack, which nobody thinks of as a biscuit place until they try one. Longtime Asheville food writer Stu Helm has said Rocky's has some of the best biscuits in the city, and he orders one with nearly every visit. Soft, buttery, and an ideal counterweight to hot chicken, they are the sleeper pick on this list. Rocky's has locations in Asheville and Arden, so it is an easy stop coming up from Hendersonville or Brevard.

For readers closer to home, none of this means you have to drive to Buncombe County for a good biscuit. Franklin, Sylva, and Waynesville all have breakfast spots that would hold their own. But if you want to see what happens when a whole city decides to take one humble food seriously, Asheville is where that is happening right now.

How to Plan a Biscuit Day Trip

If you are coming from Macon or Jackson County, the drive to Asheville runs about an hour and fifteen minutes up U.S. 23/74 and Interstate 40. That puts you in West Asheville by 8:30 if you leave Franklin around 7, which is exactly when you want to arrive at Biscuit Head on Haywood Road before the line builds.

A reasonable plan is to pick two stops, not three. Biscuits are filling, and a cathead sandwich followed by a laminated breakfast sammie is a lot of butter before noon. Start at Biscuit Head in West Asheville or Flour downtown, then walk it off. Downtown has the Grove Arcade, the shops along Lexington Avenue, and the Wall Street block itself. West Asheville has the Haywood Road corridor with its record shops and coffee.

Save ButterPunk for a second trip or for a late morning coffee and cookie stop. The River Arts District is an easy drive from downtown, and the studios and galleries along Depot Street and Riverside Drive make for a good afternoon. Check hours before you go. ButterPunk is closed Tuesday and Wednesday, and several of the smaller shops run breakfast-and-lunch schedules that end by 2 or 3 in the afternoon.

Parking downtown is easiest in the city garages on Rankin Avenue or Biltmore Avenue. In the River Arts District, most shops have small lots or street parking, though weekends fill up. On Haywood Road, expect to park on a side street.

What the Biscuit Boom Says About the Mountains

Step back from the sandwiches for a minute and the picture is about more than breakfast. Three biscuit-focused businesses have opened, expanded, or relocated in Asheville within roughly two years, one of them in the middle of a natural disaster recovery. That takes owners willing to bet on this region and customers willing to show up for them.

That pattern shows up across Western North Carolina. Sylva's Main Street has more new storefronts than it did five years ago. Waynesville's dining scene keeps adding to Frog Level. Franklin has watched new businesses fill spaces downtown that sat quiet through the last decade. The biscuit shops in Asheville are the most visible version of a broader story, which is that people want to be here, and they are building things when they arrive.

For anyone considering the mountains, that matters more than any single restaurant. A region where a food hall stall can become a Wall Street storefront in eighteen months is a region with momentum. It is also a region where a small business can survive a flood, open five months late, and still have a line out the door.

So go eat a biscuit. Try the cathead at Biscuit Head, the O.G. at ButterPunk, and whatever Flour is doing with the extra square footage on Wall Street. Argue about which one is best over a second cup of coffee. And if the drive home has you wondering what it would be like to make these mountains permanent instead of a day trip, that is a conversation I am always glad to have.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

Where are the best biscuits in Asheville NC?

The three names that come up most often are Biscuit Head, Flour, and ButterPunk. Biscuit Head has locations on Haywood Road in West Asheville, on Biltmore Avenue near Mission Hospital, and on Hendersonville Road in South Asheville, and it is known for oversized cathead biscuits, several house gravies, and a self-serve jam bar. Flour is a biscuit-focused breakfast and brunch cafe that moved to 40 Wall Street downtown in March 2026. ButterPunk at 372 Depot Street in the River Arts District makes a laminated, croissant-style biscuit. Early Girl Eatery, Sunny Point Cafe, and Rocky's Hot Chicken Shack also have loyal followings for their biscuits.

What is a cathead biscuit?

A cathead biscuit is a large, hand-shaped Southern biscuit, traditionally said to be about the size of a cat's head. Rather than being rolled and cut, the dough is scooped or patted by hand, which gives it a craggy top and a soft, pillowy interior. Biscuit Head in Asheville built its entire menu around this style when Jason and Carolyn Roy opened on Haywood Road in 2013, and their Classic Cathead Biscuit is the base for their sandwiches and gravy plates. Food & Wine named Biscuit Head one of the top five biscuits in America in 2022, and Garden & Gun gave it a Made in the South award the same year.

What is ButterPunk in Asheville?

ButterPunk is a biscuit and coffee cafe at 372 Depot Street in Asheville's River Arts District, owned by Beth Kellerhals and Dana Amromin. Kellerhals developed a laminated biscuit that sits somewhere between a croissant and a traditional Southern biscuit, baked dark golden for a crisp outside and layered inside. The shop opened May 10, 2025, roughly five months later than planned because of flooding from Tropical Storm Helene. The menu includes the O.G. Breakfast Sammie with souffle egg and cheddar, a BBLT with candied bacon and tomato jam, mushroom gravy biscuits, cakes, cookies, and coffee drinks. Hours are 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., Thursday through Monday.

Where did Flour cafe in Asheville move to?

Flour moved from its original stall inside the S&W Market food hall at 56 Patton Avenue to a standalone storefront at 40 Wall Street, the longtime home of Laughing Seed Cafe. The new location opened in early March 2026. Flour was launched in May 2024 by brothers Kyle and Carter James along with chef Gordon Gibbs, and it built a following on biscuits during its first year and a half in the food hall. The larger space allowed the team to expand from a biscuit counter to a full breakfast and brunch menu while keeping biscuits as the centerpiece. Wall Street is a short, walkable block in the middle of downtown Asheville.

What county is Asheville NC in?

Asheville is the county seat of Buncombe County, North Carolina. It sits at the confluence of the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers, about an hour and fifteen minutes east of Franklin along U.S. 23/74 and U.S. 441, and roughly two hours west of Charlotte on Interstate 40. Buncombe is the largest county in Western North Carolina by population and serves as the region's hub for dining, healthcare, and the airport. For readers in Macon, Jackson, and Haywood counties, Asheville is the usual destination for a day trip built around a big breakfast, a walk downtown, and a stop in the River Arts District.