Downtown Asheville gets a Ukrainian cafe and bakery, Slava

Downtown Asheville gained a new cafe with a clear point of view at 37 Wall St., where Slava Cafe & Bakery opened as a Ukrainian-born owner’s brick-and-mortar step from Svitlana’s Kitchen. The storefront added another independent business to the city’s core, but it also brought a different cultural identity to a restaurant district already crowded with options.

Owned by Svitlana Eadie, Slava centered its menu on traditional and modern Ukrainian food, with borscht, cabbage rolls, plov, deruny, syrnyky, pastries, breads and some gluten-free and vegan options. Planned hours were Wednesday through Sunday, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., a schedule that positioned the cafe as a morning and lunch stop rather than a late-night draw. The concept also included specialty coffee and bakery items, giving downtown a daylong anchor that could help keep foot traffic moving along Wall Street.

The opening mattered beyond the menu. Asheville’s restaurant scene has long been shaped by independent operators, and every new downtown opening has taken on added weight as the city has worked through recovery after Helene. A bakery-cafe can do more than serve food: It can pull people into a block for coffee, breakfast, lunch and a lingering pastry stop, which in turn helps neighboring businesses on a corridor that depends on steady pedestrian traffic.

Slava also carried a strong local and cultural identity. Explore Asheville described the cafe as bringing a homestyle taste of Ukraine, while noting that Asheville’s Ukrainian community was about 1% of Buncombe County’s population. The Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce said Slava was rooted in culture and community, underscoring how the cafe fit into the city’s broader mix of food, heritage and small-business entrepreneurship.

The former Rite Rite location at 37 Wall St. gave the project a new life in a familiar downtown space. Coverage in late 2025 said the cafe was aiming to open about six weeks after Oct. 28, pending inspections, and the move from Svitlana’s Kitchen into a permanent storefront marked a bigger investment in Asheville’s downtown recovery story. For Buncombe County diners, Slava became more than another opening. It became a visible sign that downtown Asheville continued to attract businesses with specific identities, personal histories and a reason for people to come back.