The ’70s are alive and well at DayTrip.
A five-minute walk away, Edgar Allen Poe-themed bar the Crow & Quill boasts excellent cocktails and the city’s largest whiskey collection. Another block south, DSSOLVR brewery and its adjoining cocktail bar, VOWL, serve an edgy, rock-and-roll vibe along with unique beers, like a Cold Caprese Pizza Italian pilsner. For actual
pizza—of the memorable, artisanal brick-oven variety—it’s worth the quick drive up the hill to visit snazzy rooftop cocktail bar and restaurant Soprana.
NOTABLE AND NEARBY
DayTrip is the passion project of Brandon Davis and Davie Roberts, a married couple who are Asheville bar and restaurant industry veterans. This 1970s-themed bar is one of Asheville’s most celebrated post-Hurricane Helene resilience stories. Though DayTrip originally launched along the banks of the French Broad River in 2024, flooding from Helene brought the bar to a halt. In early 2025, Davis and Roberts intrepidly started from scratch, reviving the concept in a cavernous building just north of downtown that formerly housed the production facility for Moog Music synthesizers. The colorful, kitschy, art-filled space—designed by the couple to look “like your grandma’s basement,” according to Davis—is a celebration of Asheville’s LGBTQ+ community. Roberts’ cocktail menu swerves playfully from selections like the Dumpster Date (a boilermaker comprising PBR and a shot of Malört) to an elegant take on the Pink Squirrel.
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DayTrip’s menu, like its space, offers playful throwbacks like a take on the Pink Squirrel.
• From oil rain lamps to crushed velvet couches, the vintage 1970s-era furnishings and artwork have been painstakingly collected by the owners. Look for a few special items salvaged from the original riverside bar.
• Eighties dance parties, themed drag shows, trivia competitions, horror movie nights—about any activity you can imagine—are on constant rotation in DayTrip’s large event room.
NICE TO KNOW
A five-minute walk away, Edgar Allen Poe-themed bar the Crow & Quill boasts excellent cocktails and the city’s largest whiskey collection. Another block south, DSSOLVR brewery and its adjoining cocktail bar, VOWL, serve an edgy, rock-and-roll vibe along with unique beers, like a Cold Caprese Pizza Italian pilsner. For actual pizza—of the memorable, artisanal brick-oven variety—it’s worth the quick drive up the hill to visit snazzy rooftop cocktail bar and restaurant Soprana.