Food Baby 15 - January 2013

Introducing the Food Baby 15...

...the exclusive list of 15 top restaurants in Charlotte right now.  In case you wanted to ask the Food Babies for a restaurant recommendation, below are 15 places we might send you!

Note:  the FB15 is intended to cover an array of cuisines in various locations around the city. We also wanted to include several price points with the assumption that you don’t want to drop half your paycheck on each meal. In other words, this is not the same as a "best restaurant" list.  These are restaurants that we dig and would send our friends to.

We will refresh the list every few months to add new picks, as well as to remove restaurants that have slipped.

FB 2012: Charlotte Food Year in Review and 2013 Outlook

image: activerain.com 

The best and worst of 2012, as dictated by the Food Babies.  Plus what to watch for in 2013!

2012 Best New Additions

Restaurants & Bars 

5Church. Has the curse of the 5th & Church retail space been lifted? Approximately 2.2 trillion bars and restaurants have come and gone in this space in the ten years I have been in Charlotte. Hopefully 5Church, with its chic, modern interior and exciting menu will have more staying power.

image: fernflavors.com

Fern: Flavors from the Garden. I think Fern might have opened in late 2011, but because they do mushroom bacon (see Maple-Glazed Pumpkin Filet from the Fall menu) I can overlook the minor technicality. This intimate all-vegetarian spot features a creative menu and earthy-chic décor. I am always smug at my lack of food baby when I leave.

Malabar. Is this the best tapas restaurant I’ve ever been to? No, but the food is solid and it fills a void in the dining scene. While I still miss Coco Osteria, I can now soothe my pain with grilled octopus, manchego and jamon croquetas and other Spanish delicacies.

The Peculiar Rabbit. The jury is still out on this Plaza Midwood gastropub, but I was thrilled to see it finally open. I’ve enjoyed the one dish I tasted (hello pork belly entrée). I truly hope they make it work in this behemoth space…the expansive three stories can feel awkward if there isn’t a crowd there.

Roots Sausage Class

Be honest - how does this make you feel?

DISCLAIMER: If you are yakked out by gratuitous pics of raw meat, and/or are offended by adolescent jokes about “sausage”, you may choose to stop reading now.

However, if you are mildly titillated by handling locally raised cuts….if dry curing gives you weird new emotions….if you agree the scent of a sizzling homemade sausage patty is nothing short of godlike…then this is the post for you. Come in, kindred spirit!



Food Baby Top Picks for Charlotte Restaurant Week

Just when you thought your new year’s resolutions were safe…CRW is back!  The lists have been circulating for a while, and I’ve spent some time perusing the participating CRW restaurants and their menus.  A few of my personal opinions...

1.  Watch out for amateur hour.  In many ways, CRW is like other dreaded “rookie” nights for restaurants – Valentine’s Day, New Year’s Eve, etc.  You know these nights – it’s hard to find parking, tough to get a decent reservation, and there are just too many damn people asking for Kendall Jackson Chardonnay.  Gross and strenuous and I’m already over it.  And you just know your waiter is sizing you up – are you a rookie that will skimp on the tip, or are you a seasoned diner who knows the rules?  Whatever they conclude will on some level impact the quality of service...

2.  Best showing?  I am also skeptical in some cases that you get the best of what a restaurant has to offer.  I can imagine that participating restaurants struggle with the trade-off between the hard to define marketing benefits of RW versus the reality of food costs.  As with anything there will be hits and misses.

Golden Globes Food Babies

Hunger image
courtesy of
thecount.com

What Did the Celebs Nosh on at the 70^th Annual Golden Globes?  After weeks of cleansing, fasting and otherwise blasting their food babies to squeeze into couture gowns for the Globes, we can imagine those celebs were hungry!  A few of the Hollywood starlets in particular (e.g., Anne Hathaway, Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson, Naomi Watts) looked REALLY hungry.

So what did they eat at the Globes this year to keep them from collapsing?  According to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association:

Guests at the 70th Golden Globe Awards will dine on a menu  of Grilled Artichoke on Frisee served with Fennel Tomato Lemon Mousse, Kabocha pumpkin smoked dried tomato tart and pepper honey Goat Cheese as appetizers; a main course of Smoked Flat Iron Steak and Pacific Sea Bass; and Cappucino Mousse Cake for dessert. Beverly Hilton Executive Chef Suki Sugiura and Executive Pastry Chef Thomas Henzi have created this feast, to be enjoyed with a 2004 Grand Vintage Moet et Chandon champagne on tables adorned by red rose arrangements designed by celebrity florist Mark Held.

Harry's Grille and Tavern

The Food Baby bottom line:

• Harry's is exactly what Southwest Charlotte needs
• Nice variety of good solid American dishes, interesting small plates, and a groundbreaking Top Shelf Burger
• Local beers and desserts round out the menu nicely

I love my little neighborhood...but a dining mecca it is not. If you live in the Steele Creek area, you feel my pain. While there are plenty of casual options (think chain restaurants and BBQ), there's nothing great on the higher-end of the dining spectrum...until now. Harry's Grill and Tavern opened in March, and I have to say I was ecstatic to welcome them to the 'hood.

Per the website, Harry's is "reminiscent of one of New York City’s finest gastro-pubs." The menu is mostly classic American, and offers a selection of hot and chilled small plates along with a traditional full menu.

The Capital Grille "Plates" Lunch Menu

The Food Baby Bottom Line:

• The Capital Grill “Plates” lunch menu is fantastic: App, main, and side for $18 – and you’re in and out in 45 minutes.
• Each round has a clear winner, but the runner-ups were also impressive.
• The mini tenderloin sandos haunt my dreams.

Capital Grill gets the Uptown Charlotte lunch crowd. The business-ey types want it quick and delicious, and The Capital Grille “Plates” menus is just that. It changes seasonally, and The Food Babies were graciously invited in to try the newly-updated Winter spread.

Smalls Food & Spirits Opening January 12th in Elizabeth!

I was fortunate to be invited to the friends and family preview night at Smalls Food & Spirits.  Smalls is located at 1609 Elizabeth Ave – right next to the Visualite Theatre.  As a warning, they don’t have significant signage outside, so it was a bit tough to spot.

The interior is modern with pop art, interesting light fixtures and electronic menus behind the bar displaying the specialty cocktail and local craft beer offerings.  The feel is warm and intimate – I counted seating for about 80 people, including the bar area.  

New Year’s Resolutions

The Salt Lick BBQ

Happy New Year!  The Food Baby is back!  And we’ve reassessed our purpose in life and made some New Year’s resolutions.  We want to blog more frequently.  We want our posts to be more concise.  And we want to expand the blog beyond restaurant reviews.  Oh and we want to take better pictures.  There it is. 

So what is the topic du jour? Well, it is a new year, so how about the depressing aftermath of our massive holiday binges?  We aren’t special or unique – just like everyone else in the universe, the Food Babies ate and drank our way through the holidays with reckless abandon.  Simply put – we got fat and we need rehab.  See below for a sample of what I’m talking about…

Kabob Grill

The Food Baby bottom line:

• I’d like to be a “lady who lunches”
• Kabob Grill has delicious and healthy Mediterranean cuisine
• I love pretty much anything involving meat on a stick

After an epic lunch with my husband at Kabob Grill on East Blvd a few weeks ago (there was lamb involved), I smugly bragged to Lauren about my impressive Mediterranean Food Baby.  I think she was pretty J, but also excited to try it for herself.  We promptly made a lunch date for the following week for a decadent Club-Med style lunch experience. 

Trucktoberfest

The Food Baby Bottom Line:

• OMB is a fun place to party and has delicious beer!
• Living Social puts together a super fun and well organized event.
• The food samples, while delicious, were a bit too miniature for me (aka, I'm fat).

On Saturday, October 29 the hubby and I decided to start our day of Halloween celebrations off with some food trucks and day drinking at Old Mecklenburg Brewery. We purchased a Living Social Adventure package, which included a beer flight plus two pints, samples from three food trucks, and a variety of fun activities like cornhole, pie eating, etc. The Living Social deal was a $49 dollar ticket for $25...which is an amazing deal - not that our slow asses would know. We missed the deadline for the coupon (guh) but decided to go ahead and buy the tix anyways. I'm a fan of OMB beer, and I always want to check out Charlotte food trucks (because sadly there are so few!).

Kalu

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.

Enso

Sexual Bar

The Food Baby bottom line:

• This place just screams SEXY!
• Seriously perfect sashimi and creative sushi rolls
• Is 30 dollars a lot for lunch?

Brianna and I had a Food Baby Meeting of the Minds at Enso last week. We're thinking about redesigning the site (sweet!) and had a brainstorming sesh. Sushi seemed necessary.

Enso is located at the ground level of the Epicentre, and when we arrived at 11:30 AM the lunch crowd had yet to show up. Enso has the kind of ridiculously sexy interior that I love.

Vivace

• Come for the amazing décor, excellent service and views…
• …stay for the apps and Italian wines/cocktails…
• …but don’t stay for entrees… 

Vivace has been on my list of places to dine for some time now.  I had been for apps and drinks on their gorgeous patio, but never for a full-on dinner situation.  The reason I waited so long to come for dinner is that frahhnkly I’d heard some less than flattering reviews.  The general consensus among my foodie friends is that Vivace is the perfect spot for cocktails and apps, but that the mains are seriously underwhelming.  The online reviews are mixed – Helen Schwab didn’t love the food (see review here), however in response to her write-up some Vivace-loyalists accused her of confusing the place with Olive Garden and were calling for her resignation.  Way harsh guys...  After some first hand investigation, I regret to say that I must side with Helen and with my foodie friends.

Taste of the Nation Recap!

Photo by Tonya Russ Price, POPROCK Photography

The Food Baby would like to give a special thanks to our friends, families and readers that came out on April 13 to support Share our Strength at the Taste of the Nation soiree!  Thanks to the efforts of people like you, over $115,000 was raised to fight childhood hunger!  Most importantly, this money will stay in our community, benefitting Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina and the Community Culinary School of Charlotte.  As an event sponsor, ticket ambassador and auction committee member, The Food Baby sold over 30 event tickets and rounded up over a dozen silent and live auction items, ultimately raising well over $5,000!!  WE ARE CHARITABLY SMUG!

Farm to Fork Restaurant Month

We are pleased to relay some great information on behalf of our new friend Richard Grucia, who we met as Ticket Ambassadors for Taste of the Nation. 

Richard is the founder and organizer of Good Eats and Meets Charlotte, which is a local foodie-focused meetup group which boasts almost 2500 members! Good Eats and Meets Charlotte has created a fantatic concept that we put our full Food Babies behind:

FARM TO FORK RESTAURANT MONTH: MAY 2011

We hear from Richard that 15+ restaurants are already on board! Be sure to visit carolinasfarmtofork.com to sign up for the mailing list - you'll be the first to know all the latest details!

Great work Richard (aka Foodzilla) and all the Good Eats and Meets Charlotte folks who organized this wonderful concept. The Food Babies always be loving some local and sustainable food!! We're waiting for the restaurant list with bated breath.....

-Lauren and Brianna

Rooster's

The source of my olfactory pleasure!
Photo courtesy of tripadvisor.com

The Food Baby bottom line:

• Please bottle and sell the grill aromas as an aphrodisiac.
• Excellent mains, above average desserts...but weak sides.
• “Our medium is medium rare”
• Congrats to Kiley and Andy!!

Last week my fabulous Mom and Dad came into Charlotte to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, and to join us for Taste of the Nation! We had the best week ever, and part of that included checking out Rooster’s Wood Fired Grill in Southpark.

In addition to Mom, Dad, hubby, and me, our wonderful friends Kiley and Andy joined us. Andy lives right around the corner from Rooster’s, and he and Kiley are quite the regulars. Little did we know at dinner that Andy was less than 24 hours away from proposing to Kiley!!! Ever socially gracious, my family and I hurled relationship questions/advice at them the entire night, and Andy deftly fielded them all with a big secret up his sleeve. Congrats to a serious bestie and phenomenal couple!

The Wine Shop at Foxcroft

The Food Baby bottom line:

• Marrownaise.  Enough said. 
• Amazing, wine-friendly food at this South Park gem rivals any fine dining restaurant in town.
• Recipe for a fabulous Saturday:  lunch at The Wine Shop followed by a wine tasting!

At the suggestion of our new homeboys, The Charlotte Burger Bloggers, we recently checked out The Wine Shop at Foxcroft.  After their detailed description of the MARROWNAISE – yes, that is bone marrow mayonnaise – we knew we had to go (click here for their review).  So, I asked Lauren out for a Saturday lunch date in honor of her birthday and we made our dream a reality.

The Wine Shop at Foxcroft is both wine store and wine bar/restaurant.  I was shamefully unaware first that they served food, and second that it was so incredible.  I did know that they carry an impressive selection of artisinal and hard to find/limited release wines at all price points.  My kinda place!  During the day, the space is light and inviting.  There are beautiful natural wood wine racks lining the walls and gorgeous wooden floors.  The bar is off the kitchen and faces the dining area, curving gracefully around to end at the edge of another wine filled room.  I understand that the bar is getting a bit of an upgrade with taps being installed for select craft beers.  They already have an impressive craft bottled selection, and I think the taps will be a great addition.

Taste of the Nation Ticket Giveaway!

Hello dear readers:

As you may recall, The Food Baby ladies have partnered with Share Our Strength's Taste of the Nation event, held NEXT WEDNESDAY on April 13th! We've sold tickets and worked on the auction committee...and have been all around rock stars, if I do say so myself!

We want to share the love with you!

We are doing a ticket giveaway for this fabulous event. Wouldn't you love to come enjoy tasty bites from 30 of Charlotte's most upscale restaurants, unlimited beer/wine/cocktails, live music, and partying it up with TFB ladies?

The giveaway is this: Buy one discounted ticket for 70 dollars (promo code: FOODBABY) and get a second ticket FREE! A night out for two for 70 bones is a pretty sexy deal to me.

The tickets are regularly 85 dollars each, so this will be a savings of 100 BUCKS!

We want to hear from you: In order to enter the giveaway, you can e-mail us at info@thefoodbaby.com with one of the following:

1. A new Food Baby Type to add to our library. Hold nothing back - we love hilarious, inappropriate, and random FB descriptions.

OR

2. A paragraph with your feedback on the site and blog. What do you like? What sucks (be honest)? What do you wish there was more of, and what should we keep coming?

That's it! The giveaway will end Tuesday April 12th at 8:00 PM, and we'll select two winners.

Good luck! We'd love to party our asses off with you on April 13th - for an AMAZING cause!

-Brianna and Lauren

300 East

The Food Baby Bottom Line:

• Cozy, welcoming atmosphere in a prime Dilworth location
• The menu is, indeed, eclectic...but everything is tasty
• White mocha bread pudding makes me eye-roll and grunt simultaneously

Last Wednesday, I was feeling like a pretty lucky girl! Two of my most fabulous friends, Kiley and Zuzana, took me to 300 East for a very low-key birthday celebration. I just turned the big 2-8, and on April Fool’s day no less. Yes, I’m an April Fool’s baby….that explains a lot about me, I believe.

300 East is a Dilworth staple. The restaurant is in a renovated old house on East Boulevard, and the atmosphere is what you may expect from that (in a great way) – cozy, intimate, and has a historic feel. We were seated in one of the very front tables, near windows looking out onto East Boulevard, and anxiously ordered a bottle of Cotes Du Rhone to start with. Take note: Wines are half-price on Wednesdays!