Wall Street lost three restaurant and retail spaces in the first half of 2025. By early August 2026, all three had new tenants. Two of them, Flour Cafe and Slava, keep breakfast-and-lunch schedules. The third, El Tesoro, put a Mexican kitchen in the former Cucina 24 space. The Asheville Downtown Association's August visitor report found that downtown activity "held strong from midday through 8 PM rather than spiking late at night." The new Wall Street does most of its business in the daytime, which is when downtown has the most people.
Three addresses, before and after
| Address | Through spring 2025 | Now | Reopened |
|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Wall St. | Cucina 24 | El Tesoro, Mexican | May 2026 |
| 37 Wall St. | Rite Rite | Slava, Ukrainian café and bakery | Soft open July 18, grand opening Aug. 5, 2026 |
| 40 Wall St. | The Laughing Seed | Flour Cafe, biscuits and coffee | July 31, 2026 |
A fourth change came sooner. Asheville Forager opened at 35 Wall St. on June 10, 2025, so the stretch around 35, 37 and 40 Wall has turned over almost entirely in about fourteen months.
How the street emptied
The vacancies came close together, for different reasons. Cucina 24 never served another meal after its founder and chef, Brian Canipelli, died on Feb. 6, 2025, Mountain Xpress reported. The restaurant's core team of four went on to open Crusco in the River Arts District. Rite Rite closed at 37 Wall in May 2025. The space had been Trade and Lore before that.
The Laughing Seed closed in late May 2025. Joan and Joe Eckert had started it as a vegetarian lunch counter at the downtown YMCA in 1991, and it moved to Wall Street in 1993. In their closing announcement, the Eckerts pointed to "a rough five years since COVID" of costs, staffing and downtown issues. They said they had hoped to come back from Helene "in a positive way" but decided "it's more than we can manage as summer approaches." They also wrote that they hoped another restaurant would "keep the magic alive at 40 Wall St."
These three closures were part of a larger count. In June 2025, Hayden Plemmons, executive director of the Asheville Downtown Association, told Asheville Watchdog that her group had noted about 40 closures downtown since Helene, 15 of them restaurants. She also predicted which spaces would come back first. Retail spaces, she said, were often leased "pretty quickly," but "it takes a long time to lease and turn over a restaurant," because it takes more capital.
Wall Street followed that pattern. Asheville Forager, a retail shop, moved in within weeks of the spring 2025 closures. The restaurant spaces at 24 and 40 Wall each took more than a year.
What actually moved in
40 Wall St.: Flour, from food-hall counter to flagship
Flour opened its new flagship in the former Laughing Seed space on July 31, 2026. Brothers Kyle and Carter James started the concept with chef Gordon Gibbs in May 2024 inside the S&W Market. Kyle James told Mountain Xpress it outgrew that counter and had trouble keeping up with demand. The same partners opened Easy Tiger, a sports bar on South Lexington Avenue, in October 2025.
The biscuit sandwiches and full coffee program made the move. The bigger kitchen adds a breakfast salad, baked eggs shakshuka, classic pancakes and a "Beans and Greens" plate of Rancho Gordo beans, braised kale, avocado, queso fresco, escabeche and cilantro. Local artist Joshua Spiceland created the blue Flour logo on the outside of the building, and an interior wall carries a mural by artist Liz Evey. Flour's website lists hours as Thursday through Monday, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. In August the owners said the shorter week was temporary while the team gets operations running.
A vegetarian restaurant that started as a lunch counter is now a daytime biscuit-and-coffee café in the same room. For anyone keeping track, the Eckerts' hope for 40 Wall came true about fourteen months after they wrote it.
37 Wall St.: Slava, a caterer's first storefront
Svitlana Eadie catered in Asheville for almost a decade before opening Slava, her first brick-and-mortar location, across the street at 37 Wall. The bakery case has braided sweet and savory yeast breads, poppy seed rolls and cheddar green onion biscuits. Breakfast includes crispy potato pancakes with sour cream and dill, plus made-to-order crepes that can be made gluten-free. Lunch covers handmade potato dumplings, fried cabbage or beef yeast buns, and house-made sauerkraut. Kvas and kompot sit next to the coffee drinks.
WNC Times reported in September that the menu also includes borscht, cabbage rolls made from Eadie's grandmother's recipe, and deruny from her great-grandmother's. Slava has a small front patio and plans to add dinner service at some point. Eadie told Mountain Xpress she wants it to feel like "a warm gathering place for Asheville." During the soft opening it ran Wednesday through Sunday, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. We couldn't confirm the current schedule, so check before you go.
24 Wall St.: El Tesoro takes the Cucina 24 room
The Asheville Citizen-Times reported in March 2026 that a Mexican restaurant was coming to the former Cucina 24 space. El Tesoro opened there in May. AVLtoday describes it as "a big, warm Mexican spot," known for large margaritas and fried fish tacos, which few places in Asheville serve. El Tesoro is the one new Wall Street tenant here that isn't a daytime café.
Why the hours line up with the visitor data
The daytime lean of these openings matches the timing of downtown's foot traffic. The Asheville Downtown Association's monthly reports show summer 2026 close to pre-storm levels, with some ups and downs from month to month:
- June 2026: about 1.2 million non-resident visits, up 7% from June 2025 and 1% below June 2023
- July 2026: about 1.2 million, up 2.8% from July 2025 and 0.3% below July 2024
- August 2026: about 1.1 million, down 2.7% from August 2025
For comparison, in June 2025 the ADA counted about 465,000 visitors over a 30-day period, down about 21% from the year before. The method behind that number may not match the 2026 monthly reports, so it's useful as a sign of how low things were then, not as a direct comparison.
The time-of-day detail in the August 2026 report matters most for Wall Street. Saturday was the busiest day, followed by Friday, while weekdays and Sunday were "lower and flat." Activity held from midday through 8 p.m. The report credits steady weekend programming like Shindig on the Green's 60th season at Pack Square Park, AVL Sounds Fest on Aug. 6 to 9, and Downtown After 5 on Aug. 21. It also noted the "extended workforce" was down about 5% year over year. Flour's Thursday-to-Monday, 8-to-2 schedule covers both of those peak days and runs into the midday stretch.
Other recent openings follow a similar pattern. Andaaz, the Indian restaurant whose Biltmore Village location was destroyed by Helene's floodwaters, reopened downtown in mid-July 2026 at 15 Page St., on the ground floor of the Cambria Hotel. Back in 2025, Plemmons said some new downtown tenants were relocations from the River Arts District or Biltmore Village. Andaaz moved into downtown from Biltmore Village. Flour made a shorter move, from its counter in the downtown S&W Market food hall to a storefront of its own.
Getting to Wall Street this fall
One road change affects trips from the northwest side of downtown. Hill Street, which connects to Hillcrest and Montford, closed on Sept. 13, 2026 for I-26 Connector work. NCDOT says the closure will last "through at least the end of 2027." Drivers going to Riverside Drive are being sent to Clingman Avenue or Broadway Street. The full notice is on NCDOT's site.
On foot, a Wall Street morning can start at Flour at 40, cross to Slava at 37, and pass Asheville Forager at 35 on the way to El Tesoro at 24. Flour's posted hours are Thursday through Monday. Confirm Slava's schedule before you go.
If you own near Wall Street and wonder how a fully leased block and steady midday traffic show up in your home's value, Elevate Asheville Realty Group can put together a free home valuation using current downtown numbers. We're also happy to compare notes on the shakshuka at Flour.
