Like the rest of Asheville’s food community, we are heartbroken at the loss of Brian Canipelli, chef and owner of Cucina 24. From his restaurant’s inception in 2008, Brian has been a model in sourcing from local farms and building strong bonds with farmers. Below are excerpts from an interview ASAP did with Brian and Aaron Grier of Gaining Ground Farm in 2021. Brian is pictured above cooking a dinner at Gaining Ground in 2022.
BRIAN CANIPELLI: I don’t even know how I first met Anne and Aaron [Grier, owners of Gaining Ground Farm]. Maybe it was at a market. It’s been 15 years. Over the years we have honed in on that relationship and a few other farms to provide all the produce for the restaurant. But it’s more than that. We go out and cook farm dinners on the farm. We’ve had events out there. Sometimes it’s just my family and theirs and we’ll make dinner on the farm and drink wine and our kids will hang out together.
AARON GRIER: Our relationship with Brian has been unique from the get go—him and few other restaurants in town that are great and get it. Brian has a real relationship with vegetable growers.
BRIAN: That relationship means a whole bunch. When the pandemic started I had to let everybody go and try to figure out what to do. Aaron and Anne just started bringing vegetables and wouldn’t let me pay. Then when floods happened [in 2021 with Tropical Storm Fred], that was a big blow to [Gaining Ground]. I wanted to try to make some sort of impact. I wanted to let customers know how important they are to my business. We decided that takeout sales would go to those guys [as a fundraiser]. A lot of people from the community showed up and helped.
From time to time Aaron or Anne will bring our order in, and sometimes they’ll have Ziploc bags of tomatoes they’ve cured or hot sauces they made for the house. That happens on the restaurant side, too. If I have a really great olive oil or special bottle of wine, I’ll hand that to them. Some of my cooks have made bread with their flour. Last fall, one of the people who works on the farm brought in the delivery. They were about go into their slow season and we were looking for a cook, so they came over and worked the in kitchen—and still do, one day a week.
AARON: Brian is inspiring because he is so passionate and what he’s cooking and the way he’s presenting it. His buying standards over the years have transformed and changed.
BRIAN: I love their potatoes, all their alliums, the brassicas I look forward to. We do a lot with their peppers. I have an idea of using one of their cows for our source of beef for the length of time it goes through. We could dedicate a pasta course to them. We have their flour that is milled for us, we could use their eggs if they’re available. The sauce would change depending on the cuts of beef as we work our way through the cow. The specific dish would rotate and change, but the spirit would be that it’s all coming from these guys.