Let the season lead
We’d rather serve a perfect spring pea for three weeks than a mediocre tomato all year. If it isn’t at its best, it isn’t on the board.
Our Story
Home/Our Story
Since 2013
A feed store, a hearth, and a handful of farmers
Mara Ellison had been cooking in other people’s kitchens for fifteen years when she and Theo Hartwell found the old feed-and-seed on Haywood Road — dusty, forgotten, with heart-pine floors worth saving. They signed the lease on a handshake in the spring of 2013 and spent that summer pulling up linoleum and building an open kitchen around a hearth of river stone.
The name came easily. Sorrel still grows wild along the French Broad, the way it had for Mara’s grandmother; stone, for the hearth that anchors the room and the ridgelines that ring the valley. We opened that October with nine tables and a menu written on a chalkboard — and we’ve been rewriting it every week since.
Twelve years on, the chalkboard is bigger and the garden out back is thriving, but the idea hasn’t moved an inch: cook what’s good, cook it from scratch, and buy it from people we know.
How We Got Here
A few milestones
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- 2013 — We open on Haywood Road with nine tables and a chalkboard menu.
- 2015 — Thursday–Saturday bistro evenings begin; the hearth finally earns its keep after dark.
- 2017 — We plant the back garden — herbs, greens and the sorrel that gave us our name.
- 2019 — Our baker starts a daily naturally-leavened bread program; nothing is bought in again.
- 2021 — We move to a living-wage, no-tipping service model so prices tell the whole story.
- 2024 — Eleven years in, named a neighborhood favorite by the West Asheville dining guide.
Our Sourcing Promise
Grown close enough to drive to
Farm-to-table gets printed on a lot of menus. For us it just means there’s no distributor truck in the alley. We buy whole animals and full crates, we pay our growers fairly and on time, and we let what they bring decide what we cook.
- Produce, eggs and dairy sourced within seventy-five miles
- Whole-animal butchery — we use every cut across the week
- Menus rewritten with each harvest, never frozen or flown in
- Compost and scraps returned to the farms that feed us
Three Creeks Farm · Fairview
Riverbend Pastures · Madison Co.
Sunnyside Dairy · Hendersonville
Bramblewood Mushrooms · Leicester
Foothills Grain Co. · Marshall
What We Stand For
Three ideas we cook by
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Made from scratch
Bread, butter, pasta, preserves, pastry — made by hand in our kitchen each morning. It’s slower, and it’s the whole point.
A place that’s yours
Fair wages for our team, honest prices for our guests, and a corner table that feels like home by your second visit.
In Their Words
What guests say
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★★★★★
“The Saturday brunch board is the best meal in West Asheville, full stop. You can taste how fresh everything is — and they remember your name by the second visit.”
Rebecca Lindqvist
Weekend Brunch · November 2025
★★★★★
“Came for the Friday bistro night and left planning our anniversary here. The trout and the handmade pasta were stunning, and nothing felt fussy.”
Marcus Bell
Bistro Dinner · September 2025
★★★★★
“They catered our office lunch and it put every sad sandwich tray to shame. Real food, beautifully packed, and they nailed the dietary notes for our whole team.”
Aisha Thornton
Office Catering · August 2025
★★★★★
“Our weekday morning spot for years. Great coffee, a warm room, and a kitchen that clearly cares where the food comes from. Sorrel & Stone is the real thing.”
Daniela Pruitt
Weekday Breakfast · December 2025
Come Say Hello
Pull up a chair by the hearth
We’d love to cook for you. Reserve a bistro table, or just wander in for brunch and a good cup of coffee.