The day in August 2011 when Jason Sellers opened Plant, he asked his wife if she would come sit at the bar of the restaurant.

“That day was both terrifying and the greatest day of my life,” he says. “I opened Plant because I wanted to make a mark. I’m a chef and I love to cook, but I wanted to create something bigger than me. I was 40 when we opened and felt like it was my first endeavor on a large scale I had seen though. It made me so happy. At the same time, I wondered ‘Is anyone going to come in?’ ”

For thirteen years, through changes in operations but not of mission, diners have been finding their way to Asheville’s first and still only fully vegan, full service chef-driven restaurant.

Count Sellers’ friends and colleagues among those wondering if anyone other than hard-core vegans would be willing to give an entirely plant-based menu a whirl.

“There were a lot of doubters,” he recalls. “More than anything it was ‘People like their cheese and eggs’ and ‘Vegetarian is hard enough; vegan is too radical.’ It made me want to prove we could do it.”Before moving to Asheville in 2005, he worked for the award-winning Candle 79 vegan restaurant on Manhattan’s upper east side, so he knew how that cooking could surprise and delight diners of every persuasion.

He also knew how receptive Asheville was to adventurous vegetarian dining; his first chef job here was at long-tenured – since 1994 — Laughing Seed restaurant. After a couple years, he added kitchen manager to his title and credits his six years there as an invaluable learning experience that showed him what was possible. “Laughing Seed was very good to me and while I was there, I did everything I could get my hands and brain on,” he says. “It gave me the confidence to adapt my ethos and model to what was already in place there, and believe I could do it, with no illusions of how hard it would be.”

As soon as he and opening partners Leslie Armstrong and Alan Berger signed the lease in March 2011 on the small cinder block building that had been home to two consecutive breakfast/coffee/smoothie shops, he gave his two-month notice to Laughing Seed, and began planning the future kitchen right away.

“I drew the kitchen on drafting and graph paper multiple times down to the centimeter. It is so small everything has to have its place. We had to change walls, add electrical and a hood. Most of our budget went to equipment.”

That included the game-changer – a radiant chargrill. “That allowed us to grill food, which was a flavor profile that was missing in a lot of familiar vegetarian food.”

He describes the opening aesthetic of the 47-seat dining room – with the kitchen at the center – as ‘shoestring modernism.’

The opening of Plant in August 2011 – pre-Instagram and influencers — was preceded by a couple of print media stories as well as curiosity from Laughing Seed colleagues and regulars. “There’s kind of a Zen moment when you realize that the limited space also provides safety parameters. We opened with a very small staff, but I got to see it change every day. The more people who came in, the more new faces we saw, the better I felt.”

Though the name of the restaurant certainly announces its intention, Sellers says that in the beginning the partners made the decision not to put ‘vegan’ up front.

“Our approach was culinary, and we saw ourselves firstly as a chef-driven restaurant that happened to be vegan. We didn’t shy away from letting people know we were a vegan restaurant, but we wanted people to think of us as a restaurant first, to know we were a restaurant among peers in a restaurant crazy town.”

Within 18 months, they dropped lunch service, and six months later, eliminated brunch. “We were trying to do too much,” Jason recalls. “We decided to focus on being a dinner restaurant and better executing that in such a small space.”

He tossed the flattop that brunch and lunch required and added more burners; he sold the espresso machine and used the money to get a liquor permit.

In 2018, Sellers bought out his partners, rebranded, repainted the interior to his preferred shades of gray and black, and fully leaned into identifying as Plant Vegan Restaurant, describing its culinary profile as Vegan Fare Without Borders, and a ‘chef-driven vegetable, fruit and active-food restaurant.’

He has sourced from many of the same vendors and farmers since opening. “Anna Littman from Ivy Creek Family Farm came by with a basket of vegetables in year one, and I’ll still take whatever she has. We’re on our second generation of family from R Farm in Weaverville. We use Mountain Foods, and I started working on wine lists with Richard McKinney from Tryon Distributing when I was still at Laughing Seed.”

Sellers says that 13 years of success, national recognition, and local love has given him confidence to be more ambitious. “We’ve been able to pull some things off I never thought would happen, like fresh pasta. It took me eight years to get to ravioli good enough to put on the menu. I secretly want to make Plant an Italian vegan restaurant.”

More on Plant. 

— Kay West

Photos courtesy of Plant:
First photo: Chef Jason Sellers outside Plant
Second photo:  [PLANT] Cheese
Third photo: Ravioli