I was messing with the gridview example trying figure out what was happening, when I realized the solution is actually very simple. The blocky font does not have lower case characters. If you edit the menuOptions list to use all caps, or if you convert the text in the drawTextInRect function with string.upper(menuOptions[row]), then the text will render properly.
Note, I also changed the selected draw mode to use gfx.kDrawModeInverted instead of gfx.kDrawModeFillWhite since the blocky font uses both black and white to create the outline around the font.
As for the problem with the Asheville font, I think that's actually an issue with the font being too big for the rect you are drawing it in. Try increasing the height parameter in gfx.drawTextInRect.