Dining dash: Chef Ashley Christensen cooks up a Raleigh-based eating empire in short order.

• Author: Hughes, Leah
• Position: PROFILE

BY LEAH HUGHES

If you want to eat at Poole's Down-town Diner, be sure to plan ahead. The Raleigh restaurant--which matches the makings of a traditional diner (pressed-tin ceilings, red-and-black decor, macaroni and cheese) with modem embellishments (eclectic music, locally sourced ingredients, $9 blackberry sangria)--serves only dinner and accepts no reservations. Guests begin arriving at 5. Dinner starts at 5:30. If you're not there by 6, expect to wait. On this Friday, a middle-aged man from north Raleigh sits at the bar. He drives south every week for treatments but declines to specify what kind, just treatments. Regardless, he thinks he deserves a nice meal and orders $20 North Carolina flounder and two $8 glasses of white wine. Poole's is part of his Friday routine, but he didn't stumble upon the restaurant. Its location on a one-way street, with tree limbs obscuring its sign, doesn't encourage chance encounters. He came because he saw the chef was nominated for a James Beard Foundation award--the Oscars of food service.

From Emeril Lagasse to Guy Fieri, chefs have become headliners, and North Carolina has its own set of celebrities. Andrea Reusing of Lantern in Chapel Hill won a James Beard in 2011. Vivian Howard of Chef & the Farmer in Kinston has her own PBS program, A Chef's life. Though she doesn't star in her own TV show, Ashley Christensen, the chef/owner of Poole's, has been featured in Bon Appetit and Southern Living, competed on Iron Chef America on The Foot Network and was a James Beard semifinalist in 2013 and 2014. And more than other Tar Heel chefs, she has used her platform to build an empire. AC Restaurants LLC has opened five venues in Raleigh since 2007 and announced plans for three more this year.

Christensen, 37, grew up in Kernersville, an hour and a half west of Raleigh. Her father drove a truck but also was an organic gardener and beekeeper. Her mother was an Air Force brat who had lived in North Dakota, England and Japan. "I think she had an interesting perspective on Southern food." Christensen moved to Raleigh to attend N.C. State University in the mid-1990s. There, she read about cuisine and invited friends over to eat and finance what she learned. After four years of college, focusing on business design and writing, she left without a degree. She then took a job at Humble Pie, the restaurant she credits with sparking the downtown Raleigh dining scene. She moved to Enoteca Vin in Raleigh, where she worked...