Road Trip: Charlotte Is Growing Up

In a decade, Charlotte, N.C., has matured into a sophisticated city with restaurants to match.

By Lisa Bertagnoli, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 5/1/2006

When Chris Ivens-Brown moved from London to Charlotte, N.C., 10 years ago, the city’s population was just over 400,000. Today, with more than 651,000 residents, it’s one of the fastest-growing cities in the Southeast.

While the city retains small-town delights such as affordable homes and a low crime rate, Charlotte has all the amenities of a major urban center: a new sports arena, an opera company, several fine-arts museums and a performing-arts center. Headquarters to Bank of America and Wachovia Bank, Charlotte is, after New York City, the nation’s largest banking center. In addition, it was recently named the site for NASCAR’s Hall of Fame.

The banks and big-city amenities are attracting an increasingly sophisticated population to Charlotte. And as the population becomes more sophisticated, the restaurants do as well. Ten years ago, residents in the mood to eat out had a choice of national chains or a handful of independents. Charlotte is now an incubator for small specialty chains, a solid market for national chains, and a creative hot spot for multiconcept groups such as Harper’s Restaurants, which operates a dozen restaurants in and around the city.

Ivens-Brown, vice president of culinary development at Compass Group North America, showed me the culinary side of Charlotte. We visited restaurants with check averages ranging from $7 to $70; those located in former flower shops and churches; and restaurants whose owners hail from England, Lebanon, Long Island, N.Y.—and South Carolina.

Location, Location, Location
Ivens-Brown and Ed Jones, the driver who squires us around town, pull up in a black SUV in front of Charlotte’s Westin Hotel on a mild, sunny morning that underscored yet another reason people move to Charlotte: the people-friendly weather. Our first stop: Ratcliffe on the Green, a 65-seat fine-dining restaurant located in a 1920s flower shop. Owner John Duncan specializes in reusing real estate: His fine-dining restaurant Bonterra, which we’ll visit later, is located in an old church, and Max’s, a barbecue shop, makes its home in a former transmission shop.

Downtown is rife with full-service chains including Morton’s, McCormick & Schmick’s, Palomino and The Capital Grille. “For a long time, it was all chains downtown,” remarks Ivens-Brown, noting that The Capital Grille is the city’s highest-grossing restaurant.

From Ratcliffe we move on to Bistro 100 in the Bank of America corporate center. It’s a sister to Levy Restaurants’ Bistro 110 in Chicago and one of downtown Charlotte’s first upscale restaurants. The 200-seat bistro once hosted three or four private parties a week but now only about once a month. A bit of remodeling would help restore the restaurant’s competitive edge, Ivens-Brown says.

While still at the corporate center, we visit Sonoma Modern American Cuisine, whose leadership speaks of Charlotte’s geographically diverse population. Owner Pierre Bader is Lebanese, and Chef Timothy Groody is a native Long Islander.

Sonoma, with 90 seats, sports a sleek, spare look; such an elegant atmosphere is catching on among Charlotte restaurants. Ivens-Brown attributes design’s growing importance to the market’s increasing sophistication. “People look for a New York-y look,” he says.

On the way to our next stop, Ivens-Brown discusses the labor pool, a matter that has, until recently, plagued Charlotte restaurateurs. The situation changed when Johnson & Wales University opened its Charlotte campus in September 2004. Now, the university’s culinary students “are the biggest contributor to the labor pool,” Ivens-Brown says.

We stop quickly at Ri-Ra, one of a seven-unit, Charlotte-based Irish pub concept. Ivens-Brown was glad when it opened because it gave him an alternative to Champps for after-work drinks. “I paid for the patio,” he jokes, referring to his frequent patronage of the place.

We cross the street to Zink American Kitchen, a Harper’s restaurant. The bistro features a menu of small plates, plus seafood, steak and chicken entrees, with a natural and/or organic slant. In a prime spot, across from the Mint Museum of Craft and Design and the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, Zink occupies “the best location in town,” according to Ivens-Brown.

Location is key in Charlotte, perhaps more so than in other cities. “It’s not like New York City, where you can be anywhere,” Ivens-Brown says. Desirable restaurant areas include downtown, Dilworth and Southpark. “Outside of that you run a risk,” he says.

More Octopus, Please
Next stop: Harper’s Mimosa Grill, a popular spot that averages 200 to 300 lunch covers a day. The menu offers hearty soups and sandwiches. We’re served an off-the-menu lunch of she-crab soup, beet salad and Carolina grouper with grits.

The food, genetically Southern but hardly dripping with an accent, is also part of Charlotte’s culinary scene. “Chefs aren’t Southern anymore. They’re bringing their own types of cuisine,” says Tom Condron, executive chef at Harper’s. We meet Condron—also an Englishman—at our next stop, Arpa, Harper’s 168-seat tapas bar.

“Eight years ago, you couldn’t put octopus on the menu; today you can’t be without it,” says Condron over a post-lunch snack of cheesecake with a praline nougat, a Catalan chocolate pot de crème, and pound cake with poached pears. Super-exotic ingredients such as blood sausage or squid ink remain a gamble, he adds.

We load into the SUV and head south of downtown to check out more restaurants: Penguin, a linoleum-floored dive known for its late-night bar food; the prototype for Cary, N.C.-based Bear Rock Cafe, a 38-unit, fast-casual bakery cafe; Bonterra, a 160-seat restaurant with 200 wines by the glass; and Price’s Chicken Coop, a circa-1962 Charlotte institution specializing in Southern foods.

Ivens-Brown consults his schedule, well rumpled by this time, and guides us to Zebra. The 84-seat, fine-dining restaurant offers what owner Jim Alexander says is the city’s only grand tasting menu, which costs $70 per person with wine.

Alexander offers anecdotal proof that in Charlotte, as in other cities, restaurant traffic creates restaurant traffic. Ten months ago, The Cheesecake Factory opened in Southpark Mall across the street. “My business went up 10 percent at lunch,” Alexander says.

A Family Affair
On we drive to Ilios Noche, a modern Greek restaurant with a trendy yet comfortable design and visible kitchen. It is located in South Charlotte, an area filled with families relocated from other cities. However, “this isn’t the singles town everyone says it is,” says co-owner Stratos Lambos.

Lambos says his biggest surprise upon opening Ilios Noche two years ago was how well customers took to the menu. “This is a meat-and-potatoes town,” he explains over an array of grilled octopus, eggplant and zucchini chips served with dill-spiked yogurt, and buttery spinach pie.

With that, my tour of Charlotte is over, but Ivens-Browns’ day is not yet finished. We drop him off at Discover Place, the city’s science museum and one of Compass’ accounts, so he can prepare for a cooking demonstration the next morning at a local garden club, whose members won the demo in a charity auction. Ivens-Brown, like other Charlotte chefs, is charitably minded: By his calculations, his donated services raise $80,000 to $100,000 for charities each year.

Before he leaves, Ivens-Brown reflects on his new home city: how easy it is to get organic and exotic ingredients now, when 10 years ago “it was ‘salsify what?’”; how pleased he is that the city is home to so many creative restaurateurs; and how much he’s come to like Charlotte.

“It’s a great place to come home to,” says Ivens-Brown of the city he once described as having tumbleweed-strewn streets. “Now, you couldn’t make me leave.”

Biography

• Full Name: Chris Ivens-Brown
• Born: Leamington Spa, England, Sept. 21, 1971; raised in Upper Brockhampton, Dorset
• Education: Graduated from London’s Academie de Culinaire de France in 1991; additional training with Anton Aden, Albert Roux, Michelle Roux, Michelle Bordon, Peter Cromberg and Richard Shepard
• Current Work: Vice president of culinary development, Compass Group, Charlotte, N.C.; hosts Cooking at Home with Chef Chris, a local cooking show featuring local celebrities and government officials; works on Charlotte Shout, a month-long celebration of the arts and culture held every fall in Charlotte.
• Ladder Climbing: Apprenticed with Roux Restaurant Group and Academie de Culinaire de France, 1985 to 1994; spent 1993-1994 with Albert Roux in Amsterdam at the Grand Restaurant Hotel/Café Roux; executive chef at The Restaurant at Hurlingham Club in London, 1994-1995; moved to Charlotte in 1995 as executive chef manager of Bank of America’s Roux Fine Dining Restaurant, Roux’s first in the United States; named vice president of culinary development of Compass Group in 2002
• Personal: Single with a daughter, Sophie, 10