mother bakery & cafe | south slope

This is such a great place! Cute atmosphere, excellent food, and great service! Great hidden gem in Asheville!!!! Go try it.

Amazing food, incredible space. All the food was exceptional. Shout out to Mo for making us feel at home! Genuinely one of the best bakeries in the city, grab all the bread if you go. Will definitely be making this a regular stop!

Fantastic! Popped in on my lunch break and had the salmon toast- it was as big as my head. Anywhere else you’d pay the same price for half the food and it’d be half as good. The vibes and playlist were immaculate, staff was friendly. Gem of a spot.

I've bought excellent baguettes to go here before, but hadn't sat down to eat until today. OMG! Salmon toast! I'll never have plain ol' lox and bagel again after eating this! Amazing. I'll let you read the menu for details. I'll be back ASAP.

Updated from three star to four star. Hoping not to again encounter the initial problem that led to the 3-stars, which was that they closed early with zero notice. Last time we also had a server who was clearly anxious to leave, probably because they had to close early. This was not the case this time. I had the lamb burger for the second time and it was outstanding! The service was efficient; they are quite busy. One of the servers allowed us to taste a couple of different wines, and there were generous pours. The salad with my lamb burger was extraordinarily beautiful. Original review is below. The food was excellent, in fact, quite extraordinary. I had the lamb burger, which had so much umami! We also had a mushroom bread. So good! My cortado was good. Not the best I’ve ever had, but certainly serviceable! So why on earth is this a three star review? Well, my girlfriend and I were so excited to go, and it was unusual that I had a Sunday afternoon that would accommodate this, but my cohost on the radio show was taking the reins that day. So I had a blissful Sunday afternoon that was free. Her schedule is also somewhat tricky, and we were so excited to be able to go to Mother after so many great things we’ve heard about it. We were supposed to be meeting at 2 PM. When my friend arrived a few minutes before two, they told her that they were closing early due to some sort of event. She wasn’t quite sure what to do, because I was still en route and even though she was texting me I was driving, so she ordered something for us; we’ve known each other for 20 years, so she intuits my taste. She ordered the items mentioned above and also some sort of hazelnut dessert. All great choices! I asked the folks if I could have a coffee, and they said that that would be fine, that they were just shutting down the kitchen. The folks I talked to were actually very pleasant to me. But my friend was really put out. Understandably. And apparently the person that I spoke with was really nice but the person that my friend spoke with was not very pleased that my friend was going to actually order, even though she said they had five minutes to order. I think the server was sort of hoping my friend would go away. Their website wasn’t updated. Which would’ve been easy to do. And, again, the one person who was dealing with my friend (who told her they were closing) was also the person who delivered our food, and I could definitely see she wanted us out of there. Which is such a shame, because the food was so so so good! So we ate to the point where they were cleaning around us, and then we went outside to spend more time together, because we really wanted to spend time together. Recall this was supposed to be our leisurely Sunday together. So we sat outside as they closed up and just Enjoyed the sunshine. This 100% should’ve been a five star review. The food was that good; the outdoor space is charming, and the interior is beautiful and sunny and reminds me of a sweet approachable European café. When I go back, and I will be back, based on that experience, I could certainly update this review on the amount of stars, but for now, it felt really disappointing and rushed and my friend just kept saying that they just weren’t incredibly pleasant to her when they told her she only had five minutes to order. Note: I totally understand if something’s going on and the servers need to leave (that’s why we finished quickly and sit outside while they finished cleaning), that’s not the problem, the problem is that closing early should’ve been posted somewhere on their website. We are locals. For decades. And we both work really hard and invest in the city and it’s difficult for us to always connect, so we could’ve picked any of our other spots, but gosh, we were so excited about this. And we want to support new businesses. I just hate that this experience gave us a bad taste for the restaurant. Or that it caused my friend any stress, because she really does work her butt off and time off is sacred to her.