White Duck Taco Shop opening on Seventh Avenue

White Duck Taco Shop serves an international menu of fillings for tacos, plus a variety of sides, craft beer, wine and margaritas.

Adding a new food option to the growing Seventh Avenue scene, White Duck Taco Shop will soon he serving a unique menu, pouring craft beer and wine and mixing margaritas.

The small Asheville-based chain operates three locations in its home city, one each in Johnson City and Nashville, Tennessee, and one in Greenville, South Carolina.

Aaron Adams and his wife, Ashley Clifford, who work for White Duck now, will open the newest franchise in the coming months.

“We live in Hendersonville and we got married in Hendersonville,” Adams said. “What a super town. It seems like Seventh Avenue is really taking off. We’re really stoked to be a part of it.”

Although it’s called a taco shop, Adams said diners ought not brand the casual dining spot as a Mexican. The menu varies widely and unlike many chains switches up the choices often.

White Duck’s website lists taco fillings including Banh Mi tofu, black bean, jerk chicken, crispy chicken BLT, spicy Buffalo chicken, Bangkok shrimp, lump crab, Korean beef bulgogi, steak & cheese, fish, duck with mole, mushroom potato with romesco, lamb gyro and Thai peanut chicken. It offers a kid’s menu of chicken quesadillas and cheese quesadillas. Sides include green chile black beans, cut watermelon with mint, house kimchi chilled tomato gazpacho in the summertime and southwest corn chowder in the winter. For dessert there’s Mexican chocolate pot du creme with pistachio nut crunch, coconut macaroon pie with salted caramel.

But White Duck warns the items at any given location could be different.

“Our real world menu changes more often than this website,” it says.

“It’s international,” said Adams, 33. “We do tacos but it’s not a Mexican restaurant. The menu changes seasonally. It’ll be a different experience every time you come here and you’ll get something you can’t get anywhere else.”

Adams said he and his wife have checked out the craft breweries in the Historic Seventh Avenue District and would like to offer some of their beers. So far, he’s been visiting incognito but plans to introduce himself soon. He and Ashley hope to open the White Duck in the first quarter of 2020.