The Food Baby bottom line:
· For being one of the top 20 new restaurants in America, Kalu was straight up dead for a Saturday night.
· They were out of EVERYTHING - including the essentials.
· Kalu is a weird place that actually has really good food.
Saturday night was Kiley’s 30th birthday – a celebration worthy of an exceptional dining experience. Her adorable new husband, Andy, planned a night out for her with all her friends, and Kalu was selected as the restaurant of choice. I was excited to finally check this place out – I’d heard a wide variety of colorful feedback, ranging from “best restaurant in Charlotte” to “absolutely blows”. Despite the mixed reviews, I couldn’t help but be intrigued after hearing that Esquire Magazine named Kalu one of America’s Best New Restaurants in 2010.
Kalu is located “off the beaten path” Uptown – so in Charlotte terms, three long blocks from the Epicentre. It’s right behind Time Warner Arena in the Courtside building, and the restaurant itself is gorgeous. Everything about the bold, vibrant Asian décor is visually stunning. However, I was equally stunned to see how freakin empty the restaurant was. It’s a huge place, and I only saw our table of friends, a couple people at the bar, and one other couple seated in the dining room. There was a staircase right next to our table which led to an upstairs semi-private area where a book signing was taking place. This book signing involved a lot of indistinguishable yammering into a microphone, over which we spent the evening yelling.
