Hi, I’m Katie Button.
I’m a cookbook author, mother, and the chef and co-founder of Cúrate Bar de Tapas, an acclaimed Spanish restaurant inspired by the time I spent cooking and learning in Spain.
I grew up in a house where the aromas from the kitchen shaped my entire relationship with food and cooking.
My mother ran a catering business out of our home, so food was never just dinner and I absorbed all of it without quite realizing the importance it would hold in my life.
I went on to study Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University, and then received a Masters Degree in Biomedical Engineering from Ecole Centrale, finally applying and getting accepted into a PhD program in neuroscience. I pursued science because I was good at it. But I wasn't lit up by it the way I was by food, by hospitality, by the feeling of people gathered around a table. So I made a decision that probably looked a little crazy from the outside: I dropped out of my PhD program and walked into a restaurant.
My very first restaurant job happened to be working for José Andrés in Washington, D.C., which is where I met Felix Meana—my future business partner, husband, then ex-husband, the father of my two children, and one of my dearest friends. Felix is from Roses, in Catalonia, and had worked at elBulli, the legendary restaurant that changed the way the world thought about food. Through Felix, I found my way to Spain, and eventually into elBulli's kitchen myself in 2009, cooking alongside Ferran Adrià. It was the kind of experience that rewires you.
Spain did something to me that I still can't fully explain. The food, the culture, the way people move through meals without rushing—it felt like a way of living I wanted to bring home.
In 2011, Felix, my parents Liz and Ted, and I opened Cúrate Bar de Tapas in downtown Asheville, North Carolina, inside a beautiful old bus depot.
The name means "cure yourself" — fitting for a town that's always drawn people looking for something restorative. We wanted to offer our version of that: honest, soulful Spanish food, the kind you'd eat at a long table in Catalonia with people you love. In 2022, the James Beard Foundation honored Cúrate with its Outstanding Hospitality Award, and the restaurant was recognized in the 2025 Michelin Guide. I've been nominated for a James Beard Award five times and in 2015 received the honor of being recognized as Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs, which I still find a little hard to believe.
My first cookbook, Cúrate: Authentic Spanish Food from an American Kitchen, came out in 2016 and is a translation of the recipes from our restaurant to the home kitchen.
My second book, Spanish Accent, publishes in the fall of 2026.
Spanish Accent is a more personal book that lives at the intersection of my two worlds, taking the American comfort food I grew up with and giving it a very Spanish soul.
I also hosted Magnolia Network's From the Source, and was recently one of 16 chefs selected to compete on CBS's America's Culinary Cup. Beyond the restaurant, I'm committed to building a business that actually takes care of its people — Cúrate is a living-wage-certified restaurant group with real benefits, because I believe how we treat the people who feed others matters just as much as the food itself.
My life today is what I like to call “decidedly Spanglish.”
Felix and I have two kids — Gisela and Lalo — who are 50% Spanish and 100% opinionated about dinner. Cooking for them is where my food life feels most grounded. It's not about accolades or technique; it's about threading two cultures together on a Tuesday night, sneaking anchovy paste into things without anyone noticing, and quietly celebrating the day they reached for the olives on their own.