The Market Place Restaurant & Lounge

The Market Place Restaurant & Lounge Restaurant Review:

Quaint and highly walkable Wall Street is lined with restaurants, craft shops and odd art installations. From the street, you can glimpse Market Place’s small kitchen as its skeleton crew pirouettes around each other with military precision. The high-ceilinged dining room is a rare departure from Asheville’s generally efficient (read tight) downtown restaurant spaces. Knowledgeable staffers seem as excited about the place’s sustainable, farm-fresh mission as chef-owner William Dissen. The menu relies on myriad Appalachian-grown ingredients and sustainably produced proteins, and every plate is artfully presented and well executed. Roasted asparagus is paired with pickled rhubarb, farm egg and country ham. Sea scallops come with a boiled peanut and butterbean succotash, all bathed in a carrot ginger nage or broth. Even “mac ’n’ cheese,” accented with Allan Benton’s Tennessee-produced prosciutto, peas and a cheddar mornay, becomes a highlight. Desserts vary by season, but in summer don’t miss anything featuring the local berries. Sample the blackberry crisp with almond crumble, lemon curd and peach ice cream. While the quaffs include a good array of local brews, the global wine list departs inexplicably from Market Place’s farm-to-table criterion and ignores North Carolina’s more than 100 wineries. House-made limoncello makes a fine cap to a meal.