The Draftsman

The Draftsman opened on 21 June 2023 at 68 Patton Avenue in downtown Asheville, the bar and restaurant of The Restoration Hotel, and it is a more relaxed proposition than a hotel bar usually is — there is a bowling alley in it, called Up Your Alley, run first-come-first-served by signing up at the bar rather than booked in advance. The kitchen is straightforward and well priced for downtown: deviled eggs with local farm eggs, pickled mustard seeds and bacon at $8, a short rib and chuck Draftsman Burger at $17, and a jalapeño buttermilk fried chicken sandwich with Alabama white sauce at $16. It serves Thursday and Friday from 5pm and from 11.30am at weekends, running to midnight, and is closed Monday through Wednesday. Reservations run through Resy. The hotel reopened after Helene and posted its recovery notice in early November 2024.

The non-alcoholic drinks are handled differently here from most bars, and the difference is worth understanding before you order. There is no separate zero-proof section: the alcohol-free options sit inside the main cocktail list, each tagged "(N/A)" beside its name. That is arguably the better design — a non-drinker reads the same menu as everyone else, in the same order, rather than turning to a short appendix at the back. The Clear Morning Spritz ($12) is the best of them, built on Ghia, the Californian non-alcoholic amaro, with lemon, grapefruit and soda, so the bitterness is genuine rather than sweetened over. The Apple Cider Fizz ($10) is the simplest, made from apple juice with lime, ginger and soda. A Phony Negroni completes the list at $10. One small caveat: the Phony Negroni is the only drink on the entire menu printed without its ingredients, so ask what is in it if that matters — every other cocktail, alcoholic or not, lists what it contains.