A cocktail house in the old Jenkins grocery
Housed in a former 1920s grocery, Little Jumbo keeps its tin ceilings and the “Jenkins” still spelled in the entryway tile, a quiet homage to the grocer and to the mountain city's history.
A bar for the neighborhood, first
Little Jumbo opened in 2017 with a simple idea: build the kind of place you'd want on your own corner. Not a scene, not a spectacle: a warmly lit room where the drinks are serious and the welcome isn't. Somewhere you can settle in alone with a book or arrive six‑deep for a celebration and feel equally at home.
We took over a former 1920s grocery in Five Points, on the edge of Montford, and kept the bones: pressed‑tin ceilings overhead, the grocer's name still spelled in the entryway tile. The room reads like a Victorian parlor that's seen a hundred years of conversation, because it has.
What we added was the bar program: a custom database of nearly a thousand recipes, a deep back bar, and a team trained to read the room. The cocktails earn the awards. The service is what brings people back.
The old Jenkins grocery
The storefront went up in the 1920s to designs by Asheville architect T.E. Davis, and for most of the century that followed it kept the neighborhood in groceries: the corner where Five Points and Montford came to trade news as much as goods.
It's a small room by design. Intimate, a little hidden, the kind of space that rewards staying a while.
Who was Little Jumbo?
We borrowed the name from a celebrated nineteenth‑century New York saloon run by Harry Johnson, the “father of professional bartending,” whose 1882 Bartenders' Manual helped write the rules of the craft we still practice today.
It's a small tip of the hat to the people who took cocktails seriously long before we did, and a reminder that we're keeping a very old tradition going in a very specific room.
A thousand recipes
A custom database of signature and classic drinks, a deep back bar, and a menu that turns with the season. Mocktails and low‑proof options get the same care as everything else.
Unpretentious, always
Good, warm, unhurried service is the whole point. Ask for the Manhattan Service for Two and it arrives on a silver platter, cherries and all.
A gathering place
More than drinks: trivia, game nights, literary soirées, the occasional dance party, and free live music twice a week. A neighborhood living room with a great bar.
Open every night, and busy in different ways
We're a cocktail bar seven nights a week. Some of those nights, the room takes on a second life, and over the years that's become part of who we are.
Free live music
Mondays & Tuesdays, our free creative music series gives world‑class players a stage for original, adventurous work, heard live, unfiltered, in the moment of creation.
Trivia & game nights
Big Brains trivia every Sunday with DumbAshe, and game night every Wednesday. Big brains optional; good company required.
Soirées & dance parties
Literary soirées, deejayed dance parties, and the odd one‑off, the kind of evenings that make a neighborhood bar feel like the center of the neighborhood.
The Tropilachia Club
Each winter the whole room transforms into a tiki‑style pop‑up: new cocktails, new flavors, a reason to leave the house in February.
Little Jumbo opens in the old Jenkins grocery, Five Points.
First recognized in Mountain Xpress's Best of WNC, and our free Monday/Tuesday jazz series takes root.
Named one of the South's best cocktail bars by Garden & Gun.
The Tropilachia Club debuts as our winter pop‑up.
Named one of America's Bars of the Year by USA Today.
Part of Slings & Arrows
Little Jumbo is one of a small family of projects from Slings & Arrows Consulting, a full‑service boutique hospitality firm that also gave Asheville its sister bar, Character Study.
Slings & Arrows turns an idea into a fully realized bar or restaurant concept, driven by a desire to build spaces focused on excellent service and quality drinks.
Come see for yourself
Open 4–11pm, seven nights a week. No reservations, just pull up a seat. Free parking at the 5‑Points lot after 4pm.