Scene’s Lunsford: Asheville’s Table restaurant to add second-floor bar

Mackensy Lunsford of the Asheville Scene reports on Table’s expansion:

Table is literally lifting up its cocktail scene. After nearly eight years of business, the James Beard Award-nominated Jacob Sessoms and wife Alicia, owners of the 48 College St. restaurant, are expanding to add a second-floor cocktail bar.

If you’ve walked by the modern-American restaurant recently, you may have noticed that the front door has been removed, shifting the restaurant’s once-slightly-off kilter entrance to the center of its College Street facade. Now, guests who enter the restaurant will be faced with a flight of stairs leading to a second-floor bar. The new venue will have a speakeasy feel and room for approximately 45 seats in its nearly 1400 square feet of space.

Half of the seating will be devoted to a lounge-style area, furnished with low, handcrafted tea tables. Additional seating faces windows overlooking College Street. The rest of the seats will be clustered in the bar area, where tender Jesse Ratliff will showcase his craft. Ratliff, the type of bartender who keeps a multitude of house-made bitters and potions on hand, has a number of barrel-aged cocktails marinating in anticipation of the big reveal of his new stage (some time this fall).

Expect Ratliff to dig deep in his mixology toolbox. Sessoms even suggested that liquid nitrogen will be involved. “I don’t think anyone’s doing that in town, are they?” Sessoms asked.