Asheville's Early Girl Eatery sold to couple behind Blackbird Restaurant

ASHEVILLE — John and Julie Stehling named their Early Girl Eatery after a tomato they grew in their garden, a perfect fit for the homespun charm of the restaurant they've run for nearly 17 years.

In that time, they've been a driving force behind the city's Southern food revival, in part responsible for the momentum of Asheville's skyrocketing food scene. But of late, they'll tell you, they've been running on inertia.

"Early Girl needs new life, new energy — from somebody besides us," John Stehling said.

The bright and lively Wall Street restaurant is now the charge of Jesson and Cristina Gil, husband-and-wife restaurateurs from The Woodlands, Texas, who moved to the Asheville area two years ago to take over The Blackbird Restaurant on Biltmore Avenue.

The Gils are well-qualified, the Stehlings say. They'll take care of the staff, they'll carry on the mission of supporting local farmers, a central tenet of the Early Girl far before farm-to-table was trendy.

They certainly have the energy: "I'm super-excited, and I can't tell you how blessed we feel," said Jesson Gil via phone, as he and his wife drove to Raleigh to put the Early Girl's ABC licensing in their names. "I'm intoxicated by it and can't wait to get started."

Over the past 16 years, the Stehling's devotion to local food earned the restaurant numerous accolades, and special praise from "Victuals" author Ronni Lundy.

"John was interested not just in buying from local farmers but in learning from them," Lundy said in a 2016 interview. "He just started this dialogue with people, and it was not just this dialogue with young, cool people like them. He would drive up in the mountains and look for farm stands."

But suggest to Stehling that he started anything beyond a sweet mom-and-pop spot in the mountains, and he visibly squirms in his blue-upholstered booth in King Daddy's, now his only restaurant.

"We didn't intend to do anything," he said. "We wanted to be part of the community, and we admired the agricultural community that was already here in the town — we set out to do something that made us happy, and we just got lucky that it became a niche that Asheville got known for."

Now, the Stehlings simply want to draw their circle tighter. They want to spend more time working in the same restaurant. They want to see more of their two boys, age 11 and 13.

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It's worth noting that the demographics of downtown have changed, with not as much of the small community feel that drew the Stehlings there in the first place. Early Girl still feeds the same city workers, but fewer navigate the lines for a quick lunch break, reserving the restaurant for a special occasion.

"When we started the restaurant, downtown was a lot of other small businesses, local people trying to build a community, very invested in what they were going to leave to their children and grandchildren," John Stehling said.

"Now a lot of the businesses that have opened up are well-funded. People are doing the right thing, but they're not as invested in the community and where it's going to be 100 years from now."

It's harder for smaller businesses to thrive in the downtown Asheville of today, he said.

"It's been harder for us — there's more regulation, more competition, but less of those things that really made us happy as individuals. The restaurant business, it's not an easy business, so if we're not getting the joy out of it that we were getting before, it wasn't quite worth it."

"Downtown's been really good to us, but everything changes, and change is good, but we're old people," his wife added, laughing. "I'm grateful that it will go forward in the way that we no longer have the energy to do, and that all of our same staff will be there who want to be there. That's a good feeling."

Meanwhile, Jesson Gil said his energy only seems to be growing. "I'm only 46 but I feel like I'm 17,"

The restaurateur rose through the ranks at McDonalds, where he worked for 17 years, then became a franchisee with Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers. He sold his two Texas-based restaurants to move to Asheville in 2016 to take over The Blackbird with his wife Cristina.

Asheville's been a refreshing change from the couple's chain-heavy former home, The Woodlands. This is a more independently minded city, with a love for local that bears out on restaurant menus.

"(Early Girl) is an institution, and it has a great reputation for local food," Gil said. "We're already doing that with the Blackbird, following the same thinking, and it felt like a natural fit."

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The couple plan to nurture the Stehlings' relationship with local farmers. If anything, they stand to add more local vendors to the menu, including Black Mountain-based Dynamite Roasting and the Asheville Tea Company.

Gil professed no nervousness about taking over a beloved institution under the scrutiny of the Yelp era.

"This is my fourth restaurant and I have almost 30 years in the business," he said, hastening to add his education never stops. "The longer I'm in the business, the less I feel I know."

But he does know one thing, he said: "Restaurants are all about the people. Treat them well, and everything should be good."

Early Girl Eatery is at 8 Wall St. King Daddy's is at 444 Haywood Road.