A family still and a daughter's chemistry degree turned into a three-story bar on Coxe Ave.
Debbie Word left a career in landscape architecture in 2016. She taught herself to distill on a family still, her daughter Danielle working the chemistry side. Two years later they opened Antidote beside it, three floors at 151 Coxe Ave in South Slope. The building plays the part all the way down: a switchback staircase, a chandelier off a tin ceiling, dark wood booths under exposed brick. A mosaic in penny tile spells the name and the street number into a sunburst at the door, as if the staircase and the chandelier had left room for doubt. Mountain Xpress filed it, the year it opened, among the city’s new cocktail bars, the décor pitched as Prohibition-era and cigar-bar formal.
An espresso bar and a loose-leaf list from Asheville’s own Dobra Tea share the ground floor with the cocktail list. Upstairs, a working fireplace and string lights face the downtown skyline from the rooftop. Half of it sits open and half under cover, which is the right arrangement for watching the light go and staying out after it does.
Two of the standing drinks lean on a neighbor’s bottle instead of the house’s own: the Fernet Daiquiri built on Eda Rhyne’s Appalachian Fernet, the Pink Panther on its Bittertooth, both distilled within blocks. The Chemist Old Fashioned does the opposite, built entirely on the whiskey that gives the building its name. A porcini-and-whiskey pour once did more. “My obsession with the flavor profile started at Antidote in Asheville, North Carolina,” Punch’s Courtney Iseman wrote, tracing a national hunt for forest-floor cocktails back to a glass she had here.
The costume is a century old. The still behind it is not.
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Part of Asheville's speakeasies rooftop bars
Events
Sunday 25 October · 1
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Live musicKass Blount
Kick off your Sunday afternoon with live music at Antidote Cocktail Lounge. We're welcoming Kass Blount for her set from 4–7 PM. Soak up the sunshine on our patio (weather permitting!), sip on handcrafted cocktails made with Chemist Spirits, and be one of the first to try dishes from our brand-new food menu. No cover. All ages welcome. Just good music, great drinks, and even better company.
No cover
Friday 30 October · 1
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DJDJ Brandon Manitoba
Antidote's Friday night rooftop DJ series: rotating local DJs and craft cocktails, 9-11pm. No cover, no RSVP needed. 21+ only.
No cover21+
Every night Antidote at Chemist Spirits lists, in your calendar.
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