I'm going to visit a dear friend next weekend in Charlotte. She recently moved from Chicago and is not adventurous at all. She's done no exploring of local restaurants. Despite her lack of desire to hunt down places, she will eat most foods.

Can anyone recommend a couple of good places? I'd love to have try some good regional food and have at least one really nice dinner. She lives in Davidson (just north of the city) so we're flexible about travel.

Thanks.

Never been... sorry Een. Good luck. I hope someone can help you out!

quote:

Originally posted by Een:
.....we're flexible about travel. Thanks.

I recommend Paris.

PH

Hey! I know a couple good places there. This could work, PH!

My roommmate (who happens to be from Charlotte) recommends the following:

Mimosa Grill, Blue, and he mentioned something about a place called Sonomas, which is a wine bar, but cannot remember if it is still in business or not.

Good luck.

Thanks!

Jasper's in Davidson is very good. My son is a student at Davidson College and when my wife and I visit we always eat there.

Also, Latorre's on W. 5th (between Tryon and Church) is a latin place that has great food and a very good (and inexpensive) wine list. Lots of Chilean and Argentinian wines.

Longboarder, those both sound very promising, especially Jasper's. I appreciate it.

Longboarder, thanks for the Jasper's recommendation. It was only a five minute walk from my friend's home! We had a great meal there. We shared the crab cakes with mango yogurt sauce and I had she-crab soup with chilled sherry and the pan-fried sea-bass.

We visited Bill's Spoon Barbecue. It's been around since 1963.Bill still cooks the whole pig himself. It's open 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. Monday through Saturday. We walked in and we were the youngest by a couple of decades. I ordered a small plate and had the most divine barbecued pulled pork, slaw and barbecued potatoes. The vinegary sauce was perfect and I used a lot of it. Before our plates came, we were treated to free and very fresh hushpuppies. Mind you, the only time I'd eaten hush puppies in my life was when I was 8 at a Red Lobster in Florida. Those hush puppies came to a bad end as did my sister's new Mickey Mouse ears. Anyway, these were nothing like those and I had to resist their offer of more, more! We ended the lunch by splitting some of Bill's wife's homemade banana pudding. Damn, that was good.

On Sunday I ended my visit with Mert's Uptown , a soulfood restaurant in uptown Charlotte. I had sweet tea, hot cornbread with butter, fried catfish, greens and macaroni and cheese. I couldn't really do the meal justice as we'd eaten about two hours before but I got a good taste. The catfish was nicely breaded, crisp outside but hot and juicy inside. Melissa's fried chicken was simply the best I've ever tasted. Everything was so good I wished that I could have come back the next day for their meatloaf or shrimp and grits with focaccia and some coconut cake.

Food was good. I wish I could have stayed a little longer to sample more.