Buncombe County chef wins James Beard Award for Southeast best chef

Taylor Montgomery’s James Beard Award win put a Leicester farm, not just an Asheville dining room, at the center of Buncombe County’s food story. Montgomery, co-founder and executive chef of Montgomery Sky Farm, won Best Chef: Southeast on June 15 in Chicago, and it was his first James Beard nomination. The honor gave national recognition to a 50-acre regenerative farm and animal rescue that has built its reputation on ticketed dinners and private dining instead of a traditional nightly restaurant model.

That matters locally because Montgomery Sky Farm is tied directly to the land around it. Its meals rely on seasonal, hyper-local ingredients grown on site or shaped by the surrounding Appalachian food landscape, making the award as much about agriculture and hospitality as it is about cooking technique. For Buncombe County, the win spotlights a business model that pulls together farmland, rescued animals, destination dining and a deeply regional menu in Leicester, just outside Asheville’s city center.

The recognition also adds another marker to Asheville and Buncombe County’s growing food identity. Explore Asheville says the region has now recorded 40 James Beard nominations and four national wins, a figure that reflects how firmly the county has become associated with high-end, locally rooted dining. Montgomery’s documentary, The Soil Remembers, also was nominated for a 2026 James Beard Media Award, widening the attention around the farm’s regenerative mission and its place in the local culinary economy.

For local farms and food producers, that kind of national attention can translate into more demand for ingredients, more interest in farm-to-table experiences and more pressure on reservation books for the county’s destination dining spots. It also reinforces a broader point about Buncombe’s restaurant economy: the region’s reputation now extends beyond Asheville proper, with Leicester and other parts of the county helping define what Western North Carolina food looks like on a national stage.

In a market where independent restaurants and food businesses are still dealing with recovery and higher costs, Montgomery’s win offered a rare bright spot. It showed that a place-based operation built around land, animals and Appalachian ingredients can not only compete at the highest level, but help carry Buncombe County’s culinary brand with it.