131 MAIN is a Blakeney dinner option for steaks, seafood and American dishes cooked over a hickory wood fire. The covered porch and fire pit give you another way to enjoy the evening. Dining-room reservations are available through Resy; the bar and patio take guests first come, first served. The restaurant is cashless, so bring a credit or debit card.
300 East has been serving East Boulevard in Dilworth for more than 35 years, in the Street Car Station Shops. The kitchen works seasonally with an emphasis on seafood and local sourcing. It runs weekend brunch from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. There is patio seating, weather permitting, and patio tables cannot be reserved. Guy Fieri filmed it for the Indulgent Dishes episode of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.
Abugida is a family-run Ethiopian room on Central Avenue that describes itself simply as a 'Family owned authentic Ethiopian restaurant'. The food is eaten the traditional way, scooped with injera rather than cutlery, and the kitchen keeps a wide range of vegan, vegetarian and gluten free dishes on the board because Ethiopian fasting cooking is built that way. The cafe also serves a full coffee ceremony, poured at the table with frankincense burning alongside it.
Alexander Michael's has been a Fourth Ward neighborhood tavern since 1983, inside the brick Crowell-Berryhill Store that opened in 1897. The room kept pieces of Charlotte with it: the bar and back bar were made from solid oak doors taken from the old Independence Building, and the beer cooler came from a Charlotte grocery store around 1920. Come for a burger, a beer and a building that survived when much of the neighborhood did not.
BellyUp! Charlotte / Over 50
Good places to eat and drink in Charlotte, minus the nightclubs. When a spot gets loud later or draws a lot of kids, the card tells you.
21 spots
An Italian room in the Strawberry Hill block of Providence Road, run by chef Gabriele Grigolon. His own site traces his cooking back through Milan, Monte Carlo and Paris before Charlotte. It is closed Sunday and Monday and serves lunch as well as dinner the rest of the week.
Birdsong was founded in 2010 by husband and wife Chris and Tara Goulet with their friend Conor Robinson, after they decided Charlotte needed a neighborhood brewery pouring fresh, unfiltered American ale. The taproom sits on North Davidson Street between Optimist Park and NoDa, with a patio running fire tables and outdoor heaters through the cold months.
A Ballantyne Village steakhouse serving USDA Prime beef, seafood and a wine and cocktail list, open daily from 3:30 in the afternoon. Its own site says menu and sourcing decisions are made in the building, and it runs a monthly jazz night.
Live music some nights. Go before the band starts if you want to talk.
Craft Tasting Room & Growler Shop opened in 2014 on South Church Street in South End's Gold District, founded by the husband and wife team Alyson and Dan Davis. It pours local craft beer and draft cocktails next to regional cheeses, charcuterie, pizzas and flatbread sandwiches. It runs outdoor movie nights on Thursdays and hosts private parties.
Customshop sits on Elizabeth Avenue in the Elizabeth neighbourhood and is run by chef-owner Andres Kaifer, who cooks Latin and Italian influences into North Carolina seasonal produce. The menu is printed fresh each day around whatever the farms have sent, alongside a rotating craft cocktail programme and a curated wine list. It made the inaugural MICHELIN Guide American South as a Recommended restaurant in November 2025. It serves dinner Tuesday to Saturday and is closed Sunday and Monday.
Cuzzo's began in 2014 as a Southern food truck run by first cousins Andarrio Johnson and Anglee Brown, who were born and raised in the South Carolina Low Country, and became a west Charlotte restaurant in 2016. This is the second room, on North Tryon Street in University City. The motto on the wall is 'Where Everyone's Family', and the kitchen is known for lobster mac and cheese and shrimp and grits.
A fully vegan kitchen inside Building B37 at the Charlotte Regional Farmers Market on Yorkmont Road, founded in 2015 by someone its own site describes only as a passionate vegan and environmentalist. It runs on a weekly meal plan: orders close Thursday at 2pm and are collected Saturday or Sunday, which is why its posted hours are only Friday through Sunday. CLTure describes the food as vegan comfort cooking, burgers, hot dogs and fried chicken sandwiches, with homemade desserts.
Deli La Cabana is a Salvadoran restaurant across from Garinger High School on Eastway Drive. Elba and Jose Villatoro built the menu around the food of Elba’s home village, Santa Rosa de Lima. The business page highlights pupusas, soups, pastelitos and Salvadoran breakfasts. Its latest visible reopening post is dated November 21, 2025; call before making a special trip.
Growlers pairs a craft beer list with what its own site calls craft Americana food, built around oysters, burgers, sandwiches and wings. The kitchen closes at 11pm but the bar runs to 2am on Friday and Saturday, which makes it one of the few genuinely late rooms on North Davidson. It is run by Jeff Tonidandel, a Certified Cicerone, with Jamie Brown, the same pair behind Haberdish, Ever Andalo and Supperland.
Open late. Go earlier if you want a calmer room.
A small restaurant and wine market on Park Road cooking what it calls contemporary, seasonal Carolina Piedmont food with global influences. It is run by Eric and Cat, who are named on the site. Sunday Supper is a single 5:30 seating and takes reservations only; the wine market is open midday Wednesday through Saturday.
Lang Van has been cooking Vietnamese food on Shamrock Drive in east Charlotte since 1990, and in November 2025 it took the only Bib Gourmand in the city. Dan Nguyen has owned it since 2009, having taken it over from the original owner, and her husband Tuyen Tran does most of the cooking... the Charlotte Observer calls it immigrant-powered . The Bib Gourmand is MICHELIN's value designation, given for good cooking at a moderate price, and the Observer noted diners can eat here for twenty-five dollars or less. Axios Charlotte reported that after the award the line ran out the door and around the building, with regulars turning up carrying balloons and flowers.
Love In Action serves two menus under one roof on Albemarle Road: a Vegan Bistro menu and a separate Southern soul food menu. Choose the Vegan Bistro menu when you want an animal-free meal.
Mama’s Caribbean Grill serves Jamaican and Caribbean dishes in Plaza Midwood. Its menu includes jerk chicken, curry goat, oxtail and brown stew chicken. The yellow sign, bright windows and island-themed dining room give the place a lively feel before the food arrives. Check its public Facebook page for the latest restaurant updates.
An Italian restaurant in the Shoppes at Ardrey Kell in south Ballantyne, run by Eloy Roy. Handmade pasta and classic Italian dishes are the menu, with catering on the side. Its own site says the restaurant was originally founded in Miami before this Charlotte room.
An American restaurant and steakhouse in the Strawberry Hill Shopping Center, founded in 1992. Its own site names the owners only as John and Ron and calls the business locally owned and operated, aiming at good food and drink at a reasonable cost. Steaks, pasta and seafood are the core of the menu.
Rhino Market & Deli has run on West Morehead Street in Wesley Heights since 2014, a corner market with a deli counter attached and separate phone numbers and hours for each half. Its own site calls it 'a family owned and operated business with over 40 menu items including vegetarian and vegan options' and says it was voted Best Market + Deli in Charlotte six years running from 2020 to 2025.
Soul opened in Plaza Midwood in 2009 as one of Charlotte's first small-plate restaurants, in a 68-seat upstairs room with no reservations and a waitlist that regularly ran two hours. Its own origin story says it was the first in the city to make local house deejays an integral part of the dining experience, and the house music has stayed. It lost the Plaza Midwood lease in 2022 and owner, chef and DJ Andy Kastanas spent three years building the replacement, reopening in August 2025 at 4110 Raleigh Street near the Sugar Creek station with roughly triple the seats, a semi-private dining room and a patio. The original interior designer, Scott Weaver, did the new room too.
Go early. It turns into a late-night spot later in the evening.
Soul Miner's Garden is the all-vegan stall in the Keswick building at Camp North End, run by Charlotte native Sasha Quinn, who is both owner and chef. The line it works to is 'Creating delicious food that just so happens to be vegan!' The menu draws on family recipes: loaded nachos built with local ingredients and house-made tortilla chips, hand-cut fries, Southern-style collard greens, a portabella mushroom Reuben and a Shroomin' Philly made with locally sourced oyster mushrooms.
Lewis Donald, formerly of Reid's Fine Foods, and Laura Furman Grice converted an old service station on Belmont Avenue into a smoke shack and opened it in December 2018. The core of the menu is Lexington-style chopped barbecue made with North Carolina pork shoulder, alongside dry-rubbed ribs, smoked chicken, brisket, fried chicken and fried fish. Four sauces are made in house: eastern North Carolina vinegar, Lexington tomato, South Carolina mustard and Alabama white. A 450 square foot smokehouse behind the restaurant holds a smoker with room for 1,000 pounds of meat, burning hickory, pecan and peach woods.
The Hobbyist is a coffee bar by day and a beer, wine and cocktail bar by night on North Davidson Street in NoDa. Owners Bryson and Julie Woodside run hand-crafted coffee and tea beside 14 draft beers, wine by the glass and custom cocktails. The food is North Carolina artisan pastries rather than a kitchen.
Two Scoops was founded in 2016 by three partners its own site names as Marques, who makes the ice cream, Jae, who runs operations, and Rich, the entrepreneur. The shop makes everything in house and keeps more than 100 flavours in rotation through the year, plus ice cream cakes.
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