Our History
A young Hector Diaz in the Salsa’s kitchen, early days on Patton Avenue.
It all started in 1993
Hector Diaz opened Salsa’s on this corner of Patton Avenue in 1993, bringing the flavors of Latin America and the Caribbean to downtown Asheville for the first time. There was no Latin food scene here yet - Hector built the first one, dish by dish, with recipes passed down and reimagined, fresh local ingredients, and hand-squeezed juices that are still made the same way today. What started as one man’s vision grew into a downtown institution and the oldest Latin-influenced restaurant in Western North Carolina. Over more than three decades, Hector Diaz became a fixture of the Asheville restaurant scene and a mentor to the generation of chefs and restaurateurs who followed him. Salsa’s has been written up by the New York Times, the BBC, and Southern Living, but its real legacy is simpler: it paved the way for every Latin kitchen that came after it in this city, and it’s still slinging the same soul today.
