Travel + Leisure spotlighted Ashleigh Shanti’s seafood counter as North Carolina’s standout experience for America’s 250th birthday, recognizing the chef’s deeply personal take on Southern seafood.
North Carolina is known for its beaches, mountains, universities, and NASCAR Hall of Fame. But according to Travel + Leisure’s recently-released 50 Unique Experiences Across the U.S. to Celebrate America’s 250th list, the most distinctive North Carolina experience belongs to a restaurant: Good Hot Fish, the seafood counter from chef Ashleigh Shanti that grew out of a series of pop-ups.
Shanti, a Top Chef alum and cookbook author whose debut, Our South: Black Food Through My Lens, was named one of Food & Wine’s best cookbooks of 2024, opened Good Hot Fish in 2024 after hosting a series of fish camp-themed pop-ups around the country to lay the groundwork for the project.
“I think Ashleigh Shanti is fantastic,” chef Mashama Bailey told F&W in 2021. “I think she’s a hard worker. I think she’s creative. I think she gets it. I think she’s going to be a force. She has a perspective. She’s fabulous.”
At Good Hot Fish, Shanti reimagines “fish fry traditions with dishes like fried catfish sandwiches, trout bologna and cheese, and sweet potato cabbage pancakes,” writes Travel + Leisure contributor Taryn White. The menu, like Shanti’s cookbook, draws on ingredients and technique from the chef’s personal and family geography: Tidewater Virginia, the Appalachian mountains and rivers of Virginia and North Carolina, and the Sea Islands of Georgia and South Carolina…