Sovereign Remedies — Restaurant in Asheville

Short summary - WOW!! Sovereign Remedies completely exceeded ALL expectations with both food and service! Great atmosphere that is comfortably quaint and cozy, but don’t let the small size deceive you! – This is a truly unique spot that accommodates a diverse range of experiences from a crafty cocktail at the bar to a dinner capturing a fresh taste of Asheville upstairs to a full-on private party served family meal style in your own room (which was our case). This place beautifully covers all the bases from simply hanging out with friends to a romantic date night to a reception dinner to impress family and out of town guests! All with exceptional service from every staff member from the owner, the servers, and even the cooks in the back that personally answer questions and make sure everything is awesome! And then there’s Lindsay – she is a complete Rockstar and hero who hands down knows how to work magic for any private event there!

Here’s our longer story – We’re from Pennsylvania and had been planning a small destination wedding without ever having visited Asheville before! Ten days before our wedding, the original venue we had booked for our reception had to cancel on us, so we were in a total scramble with a very limited budget and felt like we had exhausted every option. Enter Lindsay at Sovereign Remedies!!... she was a total angel on the phone and helped come up with a creative plan which included some things they had never done before to accommodate our party which just happened to be the perfect size for their North room (24 people).

When we arrived in town and had a chance to finally see Sovereign Remedies and meet the staff in person, we were blown away by how perfect it was for us! Lindsay walked us through all of the details of our event and how they planned to accommodate us – we had a mixed crew to please – one child, one vegan, cocktail drinkers to Miller drinkers to several non-drinkers, and one 6 months pregnant Momma (Me! The bride!). She helped us come up with something for everyone! Then there was the food selection – to be honest we’re not serious craft foodies, so we weren’t sure what half the things were on the menu. Then one of the cooks came out and personally further described each dish in a way that made sense to us and our mouths watered and we wanted it all!

We had our “grand entrance” as Mr. and Mrs. into an intimate dining room with a beautiful atmosphere with our closest friends and loved ones – none of whom had ever been to Asheville before. Lindsay had even personalized the menus at each seat with our names as a new couple! The food was incredible and surprised us all since most of us were trying things for the very first time! Not a single dish disappointed and everything pleased the whole range of diverse palates our guests had. My vegan friend said her meal was easily in the top five she’s ever had in her life!

Lindsay and the other staff were completely on the ball with timing everything from drinks to appetizers to making sure there was enough food on the table for everyone. They went above and beyond for everything! Lindsay even helped my son (who is 6) to feel better with some house made ginger ale when his stomach felt a little sick (so much excitement!) – so that I could focus on just relaxing and being the bride and enjoying the evening with our guests.

Talk about being made to feel extremely special and supported on our wedding day, especially in a total last-minute crunch! Those are the “extra mile” things you can’t specifically ask for in service, but Lindsay and the other staff executed everything perfectly on their own initiative! We (and all of our guests) experienced perfect hospitality in every way and our little destination wedding in Asheville was made truly special and unique. All of our guests want to go back to Asheville again, and Sovereign Remedies was a huge part in providing us all with an experience (and flavor!) that makes us want to come back for...

Sovereign Remedies in Asheville makes probably the best cocktails of any place in NC I have so far visited. It is a small but comfortable place with a level of drink-making sophistication that is not seen all that much outside of major urban areas. I have liked the drinks both times I have been here and I do plan to come again.

However, on my most recent visit (second), I did notice some bothersome aspects, some of which are nitpicks, some more serious. I was disappointed that they used rather low quality liquors for their listed cocktails; e.g. Jack Daniels, Jim Beam, Gordon's Gin. I am not asking for top shelf quality but I would hope that it would be a step above the low rungs of the liquor ladder. I also noticed that the bartender (who, to be fair, seemed to working largely alone on a busy night) was using the same jigger to measure out the components of different drinks, without rinsing in between. So there would be some cross-contamination (minor but there) of drink flavors. Again it was busy and cleaning the jigger between each addition would have been time-consuming; perhaps a separate jigger for each but that would get confusing? A bigger issue for me was when I saw said bartender use a jigger to measure out a quantity of liquor (Cointreau I believe), empty part of it into the drink, and then pour the rest back into the bottle. I hope I saw this wrong, because it seemed like he poured back into the bottle liquor that had been "contaminated" with other liquors from previous pourings from the same jigger. Again busy night and limited staff, but that is a significant blunder.

As for the food: The tater tot "appetizer" and the pork cheek "entree" were both really good; this is not a place for those who want quantity, but for those who want high quality in a small amount. But dessert was another matter. I should have backed away when I saw that this "apple candy cupcake" included "parsnip ice cream" but I hoped it would not be a problem. Boy was I wrong. This is one of those desserts with a strong savory element, an evil trend that I hope will be quashed soon, preferably by allied forces storming some French beaches. There was very little sweetness to the dessert, the cupcake was dry, and I had an aftertaste of celery in my mouth. Not good, not good at all.

I do not want to be too harsh here. Again, my gripes notwithstanding, the cocktails are really good and the food was two out of three for my recent visit. But those cocktails could be truly great with a bit more quality in the ingredients, the bar needs more staff making drinks, and getting too far off the beaten path with dessert concepts is not the best way to go. A few adjustments and this place will be one of the best in Asheville, and...

We came in for our 7pm reservation at 6:57, checked in, and were told that they were going to see if our table was ready. 5 minutes pass, and a line begins to form behind us out the door. After that, a woman came up to us and said “well I have two seats opening up here soon at the window if you’d like those…” I replied that, since we did make a reservation, we would like to sit at an actual table, not a communal bar seat. We finally get seated upstairs and are greeted promptly by our server, who was super cool and welcoming….until he wasn’t. Cocktails come out and we order an app- both are great! Our experience was starting to look up and we were excited. Right around the time we ordered our entrees, both a large bachelor party and large bachelorette party are seated upstairs as well. Our server came over to warn us that “things were going to get a little rowdy, and that we should hurry up.” We hadn’t even gotten our entrees yet. We thought that was a little bit of an odd sentiment, but whatever, we were excited to get our food! Entrees came out, they were marginal at best. The Osso Bucco Croquettes were the better of the two, but the Hoppin John pork belly dish had little to no flavor. After the large parties came in, we were essentially ghosted by our server. We were a little sad because he seemed super cool and personable at first! The final nail in the coffin, which left us absolutely speechless, was our last interaction with him. He came up to our table one last time, and we said we had one request. Before we could even ask, he said “sure but make it snappy”. We were a little taken aback, but went through with our request: we asked him if he could take a photo of us. We thought we’d built a decent enough rapport with him that it wouldn’t be a weird request. When we asked, he looked disgusted that we were wasting his time and replied “absolutely not” and stormed away- over to the bachelorette party which clearly took precedence over our silly little request. After that, we were left with a pretty bad taste in our mouth and just wanted to get the hell out of the restaurant. It was made apparent that our dining experience didn’t matter anymore now that these large parties had come in. We quickly paid the check and left utterly confused and kind of embarrassed that our simple request was put down like that. We will not be returning nor recommending Sovreign Remedies to anyone we know. We’ve lived in Asheville for two years and had not had a bad dining experience during that entire duration-...