Is Charlotte’s Uptown Food Scene on the Verge of a Resurgence?

I got two parking tickets in Uptown last week and I’m not even mad about it. In fact, I’m quite jazzed that something spicy is finally happening in Uptown Charlotte. 

To be clear, the ticket fiasco only happened because actual spicy things brought me to the area in the first place — specifically, the new restaurants. Not the veteran steakhouses that dominated the city center for a while, but the new names, and even the familiar names with fancy facelifts breathing life into the area. 

This is particularly exciting because I grew up rarely going out to eat in Uptown, where I mainly saw business folks clad in gray suits and pastel polos walking with minimal urgency to work. 

On the lucky occasions I made trips into Uptown, it was for the lobster mac and cheese at The Capital Grille and maybe a Hornets (at the time, Bobcats) game. At 16, my curiosity was piqued over the clubby circus that was The Epicentre, but by the time I could legally step foot into its bars, the excitement had died and most of the businesses inside had closed. 

What did consistently bring me to Uptown for years were the musicals hosted by Blumenthal Arts. And despite the vivaciousness inside the theater — the palpable rush of life and music and lots of wine at intermission — I was often startled by the quiet on the streets outside before and after the show. In my teen years, I was a junior usher with Blumenthal, and patrons would ask me where to go to eat after the show. Rooster’s?

These long-ago observations mirror what I have been hearing regularly over the past decade: Uptown is a “ghost-town,” particularly at night. Office building mazes by day and high-end corporate restaurants by night, it was nothing compared to the nightlife of South End or NoDa sort. 

This reality was something I just accepted; the fun, the food, the meet-cutes were just not going to happen in Uptown. But I’m starting to hear a different murmur around town about our town. 

Katy Kindred, co-owner of some of the most recognizable, award-winning restaurants in the Charlotte area — Kindred, Hello Sailor, and milkbread — told me she believes the Uptown area is heading in the right direction. 

Hear more: Nooze Hounds: Kindred Beverage Director Elyse Simchik Serves in a Shortage (2021)

“Right now there are some really good, interesting people that really do want to see the city be a thriving place for local, smaller operators,” she said. “We’re heading in that right direction.”

I count Katy as one of the good, interesting people paving that path. In September, she and partner Joe Kindred opened the doors to daytime cafe milkbread and fine-dining restaurant Albertine on South Tryon Street — creating buzz among fans of their other ventures. 

A Mediterranean fine-dining experience with Southern flair, Katy describes Albertine as “this little glassed-in jewel box … right in what we felt like is the center of the future of downtown as it seems to be growing south.” 

Like the Kindreds, I too think something is stirring, and I’m curious (slightly convinced and certainly bubbling with hope) that we are on the precipice of Uptown 2.0, largely thanks to our shifting food and beverage scene. 

I’m all for it — so much so that I’ll take a parking ticket or two just to suss things out some more. 

A recognizable name arrives in Uptown’s food scene 

My first parking ticket hit the dash while I was busy at Albertine, where four hours flew by in a meze-platter daze. 

Ironically, the Kindreds weren’t even planning on building their newest concept in Uptown. But when the sweeping space was proposed to them, they saw an opportunity to fill a specific niche in the area. 

“We needed to do something on a grander scale,” Katy said. 

Albertine is one big eye-catcher, one big breath of fresh, fanciful air. It’s something different from the Kindreds’ other concepts, and from its neighbors in Uptown. “We wanted to make it less about the restaurant itself, and more of a love note to the city that we’re in,” she added.  

So they named the restaurant after Queen Charlotte’s mother, Albertine, and set out to “re-capture a little bit of the feminine history of the city,” Kindred said. 

To do so, they steered away from big-shoulder, masculine, steak-housey type spots, instead leaning into a “feminine, confident, beautiful, elegant” approach with marble tables, 18-foot backsplashes, towering ceilings, an original menu and a fresh wine list.  

The arrival of the Divine Feminine by way of this restaurant points to the natural evolution of both a neighborhood and its dining scene. You can see this shift even with well-established places making moves to stay relevant, like the sleek new rooftop redesign at Merchant & Trade (where I just so happened to be when I got my second ticket).  

“With any area, there comes a life cycle,” Kindred said. “If Charlotte is genuinely tired of some of the restaurants that are Uptown, then they will naturally run their course and new stuff will come in.” 

Notable Uptown closures in the past few years include BLT Steak at the Ritz Carlton, Dandelion Market and others. 

Even one of the city’s richest historic buildings, the Latta Arcade, built in 1914, became lackluster. While Brevard Court outside remains largely popular, especially during sporting events at Bank of America Stadium and Truist Field, the arcade inside has become largely desolate and underutilized in recent years. 

In that promising space is where Northpond Partners saw a development opportunity, revamping the arcade into The Alley at Latta Arcade. Jeff Merriam of Northpond Partners told me that establishing a new life cycle amidst the stagnancy starts with food and beverage. 

“Getting places where people want to go that aren’t steakhouses,” he suggested, for example. 

The development company kept the building’s historic roots and added several modern, worldly touches (aka food vendors with pre-existing clout in Charlotte: Nani Li’s by The Dumpling Lady, Felix Empanadas, Two Scoops Creamery, Protagonist and Jean’s Cold Drinks are just a few current and upcoming tenants. 

This makeover didn’t come without sacrifices. As previously reported by Queen City Nerve, longtime Latta Arcade tenants such as Fujiyama and Pie in the Sky Pizza were forced out as their leases expired while Arcade Men’s Room, which occupied a space inside Latta Arcade that was home to a barber shop for more than 100 years, moved outside to a smaller space in Brevard Court earlier this year after not receiving an official offer to renew their lease.

This was all in an effort to create the new (or born-again) Alley at Latta Arcade — a charming, walkable, European-esque hub with chef-driven, locally-run spaces next to Brevard Court. 

And that’s what the people want now; they’re not seeking corporate chains as much as they used to, said John Nisbet with The Dumpling Lady. Consumers want personal stories, walkability, global touches and a local connection. 

“We are the definition of a mom-and-pop, homegrown Charlotte company,” Nisbet said about the business he launched with wife Zhang Qian as a picnic-table pop-up on The Plaza years ago before renting a kitchen trailer then a stall at Optimist Hall. The South End location they opened in 2023 marked the couple’s first storefront.  

These types of placemaker restaurants ultimately make a culinary scene like Charlotte’s more compelling. The Alley is in a way trying to be the microcosm of this type of electric, rich food scene. 

An ideal evening at The Alley, according to Nisbet, could look like this: a guest spends 15 bucks on a scratch-made dinner at The Dumpling Lady, then goes across the hall for ice cream from Two Scoops. “It keeps the kids happy, keeps you happy and then maybe you want a cocktail at Jean’s,” he said, referencing Larry Suggs’ cocktail spot.

Charlotte seems to be finding a rhythm with these food hall type spaces. For one, Camp North End has built an identity from local, smaller tenants while Optimist Hall has been an objective success. 

At this rate, Uptown is no exception, with both The Alley and Monarch Market, which opened in fall 2023 and caters to the post-work crowd with terrace bars, diverse food vendors, music and bingo events, but in a clean-cut, less stuffy manner. 

Uptown hits its transition phase

In theory, all of this is great progress. But in practice, Nisbet understands that The Alley — and new spaces akin to The Alley — are still very much in the transition phase. The restaurant can sometimes be dead on weekends despite consistently busy weekday lunches. 

“We’re part of a push to get people open on the weekends and at night,” he said. “You have to have the surrounding infrastructure as well … You have to build it right, and we’re sort of in that zone of building it out right now.” 

To create momentum, investment from landlords is required, as is commitment from other tenants to stay open later. 

Simple investments like accessible bathrooms and increased seating options would be a practical addition from an infrastructure perspective. Even safety measures from the city to address concern over “sketchy” affairs, Nisbet said, would be helpful. 

As for driving more evening traffic, strategic tenants like the upcoming cocktail joint Jean’s Cold Drinks and the long-awaited, late-night spot Maneki may boost foot traffic. 

An interesting thing to note about Uptown’s recent resurgence is that it’s not really trying to be South End or any other “destination” neighborhood. It stands in its metropolitan identity, catering to the conveniences of 9-to-5ers, convention attendees and other hotel guests, theatre patrons and sports fans. 

“It’s really more about keeping people in [Uptown] than drawing people from the South End,” Merriam said. “It might not be local Charlotteans that are congregating in Uptown on Friday and Saturday nights.”

The tired ghost-town narrative spewing from the everyday Charlottean represents what Merriam called a “disconnect between local Charlotte persons and what’s actually happening in Uptown.” 

It may be too soon to call Uptown a bustling destination every night, but a Friday and Saturday in Brevard Court — specifically on a game day or concert night — is shoulder-to-shoulder packed. 

This reality keeps restaurant folks like Nesbit “definitely optimistic.” And that optimism may have more influence than we realize. 

As Katy Kindred put it, “Cynicism is what would hold the city back more than anything else … There’s no magic sauce in New York or Chicago, it’s just people doing cool stuff. You just have to have the right breeding ground to make that happen.” 

The need for risk-takers to step up

An effective breeding ground for a thriving, food-centric city requires at least two very obvious ingredients: collaboration and risk-taking. 

Kindred thinks it takes “creative risk-takers” to rewrite the narrative and build a fruitful breeding ground for restaurants in Uptown. A thriving area usually starts with artists, then restaurants, but realistically requires landlords to collaborate in good faith with small, local business owners, she explained.  

If they want new, fresh ideas, these business owners will have to make spaces more “economically viable for a smaller, local business,” which will, in the long run, help Charlotte’s food scene and overall culture to thrive and grow, Kindred said. 

One approach to maintaining the momentum of the Uptown culinary scene in Uptown, beyond just hoping that the landlords with money and power don’t make the “cynical, short-sided choice,” is to foster the type of restaurateurs and chefs that want to stay here, Kindred explained. 

This can be done through mentorship and hands-on learning opportunities at both independent operators and restaurant groups. 

“We gotta keep people here. We gotta keep the talent here to have the courage and infrastructure to open a small business,” Kindred said.  

Restaurants like these are deeply valuable for a city’s identity. They are not just “conduits for community” across the table, but creative forces pushing the boundaries of a city. One clever, risk-taking restaurant “can literally bootstrap the whole identity of the city,” Kindred said. 

It has the potential to make a city a visitor’s destination, but importantly, a fixture that locals are proud of. 

Between all of Charlotte’s varied and sometimes floundering identities, Kindred insisted, a compelling restaurant scene is the “connective tissue that can keep the community together.”