ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — Slava is a new café and bakery in downtown Asheville. The café specializes in Ukrainian food, which has made the spot a growing favorite for patrons looking for a taste of home and newcomers to European cuisine.
Svitlana Eadie is the multi-hyphenate force behind Slava, located at 37 Wall St., Asheville, N.C.
“I guess I’m the owner, I’m the baker, I’m the accountant, I’m the payroll manager…” Eadie laughed. “I wear many hats.”
Eadie opened her café on Aug. 5, 2026, a goal she has been working towards since she was 18 years old.
The Slava owner is originally from “a tiny, tiny village in the middle of nowhere” in the Carpathian Mountains, where she learned to cook from her grandmother and how to bake from her mother, the baker for their entire village. Eadie also attended gastronomy school, where she learned the technical science behind food preparation. When she was 20, she moved to the United States, where she studied accounting, business law and business management, and gained restaurant experience across Asheville.
In 2017, Eadie opened a catering company, where she learned “how to combine the food and the management piece,” and which she has since wrapped into her Slava business.
“That’s one of the pieces here. We supply our baked goods to Plant Bar Café here in downtown and one on Haywood Road, and we do catering and then we have the actual café,” Eadie said. “Hopefully soon we’ll do online ordering, but I want to make sure the kitchen staff is very familiar with the menu and familiar with the dishes. Since we’re only 3 weeks old, I want to make sure that they know what they’re doing and don’t feel overwhelmed.”
According to Eadie, the Slava menu is a collection of dishes that preserve the authentic Ukrainian flavors she grew up with.
“There’s been a really nice response from people to the comfort of the food that we serve. Like, the dumplings. People have a different idea, because they probably have bought them store-bought, and they’re kind of different. The dough is different. The filling is different. They’re like, oh, this is neat. I like the flavors,” Eadie said. “It’s been really neat to see the people who are from Ukraine be like, ‘This tastes like home.’ That’s been kind of rewarding. Honestly, really rewarding, to see people react like, ‘Ah, this is good. This is what my grandma used to make,’ or, ‘I forgot how this tastes, because I haven’t been to Ukraine in a while, and nobody else sells this.'”
In fact, some of the dishes are precisely what Eadie’s grandmother used to make.
“Our recipes, some of them are my grandmother’s recipes, so they’ve been around for a very long time. Like borscht,” Eadie said. “Borscht is one of those recipes that you don’t have to update because it’s just so good. Why use something different when I could just use the same recipe and everybody loves it?”
Slava offers servings of borscht, a traditional Ukrainian beet soup, in beef and vegan varieties. The Slava staple has even become popular with customers who have never had the dish, Eadie said.
“A few, I mean, they’ve been in Asheville for a long time, but I had people who have never tried borscht,” Eadie said. “Their reaction was like, oh, beet actually tastes good? That was my favorite one, because they’re like, ‘These are earthy. They’re not supposed to taste like this.’ But they actually are delicious, when you prepare them a certain way. So, that made me giggle.”
Eadie said that launching the café on Wall Street has been a dream come true. Not only has she finally opened her Ukrainian café, but she has done it in a place that feels like Ukraine itself.
“The spot itself, and the street and the trees, the way they were, everything reminded me so much of this city called Lviv in Ukraine. Just the cobbled street and the way it’s more private, less traffic, it felt kind of like… a little bit more European. Ukrainian,” Eadie said. “I fell in love with the street in this location. It didn’t look anything like this, but I had that idea of what it could look like, and the dream that I’ve had for a very long time, plus this space, kind of fell in together, like a nice little puzzle piece.”
For more information about Slava, including a full menu and store hours, visit www.slavaasheville.com.