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Ashley Christensen Of Poole's Downtown Diner Wins James Beard Award

Ashley Christensen

Chef Ashley Christensen won the James Beard Award for Best Chef in the Southeast. The news was announced Monday.

To Christensen, a restaurant is not just a place where you sit down to eat.  It’s an entire concept.  She carefully plots an immersive experience for her diners.

The restaurant space is transformed into a work of art, which gestures back to the architecture and artifacts of historic Raleigh.  Christensen writes menus that allow people to mix and match.  She wants the eating experience to encourages experimentation and social bonding.

When Christensen opened her first restaurant, Poole’s Downtown Diner, she started with an idea: the emotion of a diner.

"I think there's a something--there's a familiarity--to the idea of an American diner," Christensen said in an interview on The State of Things.

"My father was a truck driver when I was a child, and in driving through new cities, that was where he went.  There was an understanding.  He knew he would feel at home there."

From the feeling of a diner, Christensen designed a menu that reflects her own spin on classic American dishes and built a double-horseshoe counter so that customers could mingle and lean in.

Since opening Poole's, Christensen has conceived of even more places to eat and drink in downtown Raleigh.  Beasley’s Chicken and Honey, Fox Liquor Bar, and Chuck’s are all hers.

She is a self-taught cook whose vision of food was enormously influenced by her upbringing in Kernersville, North Carolina.

"I grew up in a house where food was just tremendously important.  Both my parents are fantastic cooks.  I still call them with questions," Christensen said.

Listen to her 2013 conversation with Frank Stasio:

Though the restaurant business is notoriously competitive, Ashley Christensen feels a deep sense of camaraderie with her fellow chefs in the Triangle.

"This business isn't about competing with your neighbor.  It's about embracing your neighbor and complementing your neighbor," Christensen said.

Additional 2014 James Beard honorees:

There were other nominees earlier in the year, who did not become 2014 finalists. They include:

  1. Phoebe Lawless for Outstanding Pastry Chef. She's out of Durham's Scratch Bakery.
  2. Giorgios Bakatsias operates several places in Durham. He was up for Outstanding Restauranteur.
  3. The Fearrington House Inn in Pittsboro was up for Outstanding Restaurant.

Other chefs who were in the running for Best Chef Southeast  include:

  • Matt Kelly, of Vin Rouge and Mateo Tapasin Durham
  • Colin Bedford of The Fearrington House Inn
  • Scott Howell of Nana’s in Durham
  • Scott Crawford, Herons at the Umstead Hotel and Spa in Cary
  • Aaron Vandemark of Panciuto in Hillsborough.

Carol Jackson has been with WUNC since 2006. As Digital News Editor, she writes stories for wunc.org, and helps reporters and hosts make digital versions of their radio stories. She is also responsible for sharing stories on social media. Previously, Carol spent eight years with WUNC's nationally syndicated show The Story with Dick Gordon, serving as Managing Editor and Interim Senior Producer.
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