300 East has been serving East Boulevard in Dilworth for more than 35 years, in the Street Car Station Shops. The kitchen works seasonally with an emphasis on seafood and local sourcing. It runs weekend brunch from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. There is patio seating, weather permitting, and patio tables cannot be reserved. Guy Fieri filmed it for the Indulgent Dishes episode of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.
Alexander Michael's has been a Fourth Ward neighborhood tavern since 1983, inside the brick Crowell-Berryhill Store that opened in 1897. The room kept pieces of Charlotte with it: the bar and back bar were made from solid oak doors taken from the old Independence Building, and the beer cooler came from a Charlotte grocery store around 1920. Come for a burger, a beer and a building that survived when much of the neighborhood did not.
Birdsong was founded in 2010 by husband and wife Chris and Tara Goulet with their friend Conor Robinson, after they decided Charlotte needed a neighborhood brewery pouring fresh, unfiltered American ale. The taproom sits on North Davidson Street between Optimist Park and NoDa, with a patio running fire tables and outdoor heaters through the cold months.
The room that started the company. It opened in 2004 as a small wine shop in the Foxcroft East Shopping Center, next door to Barrington's, and grew into a full restaurant and wine bar in 2006. Over thirty wines are poured by the glass and hundreds of bottles sit on the retail shelves. The patio is heated through the cold months.
19 spots
300 East has been serving East Boulevard in Dilworth for more than 35 years, in the Street Car Station Shops. The kitchen works seasonally with an emphasis on seafood and local sourcing. It runs weekend brunch from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. There is patio seating, weather permitting, and patio tables cannot be reserved. Guy Fieri filmed it for the Indulgent Dishes episode of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.
Alexander Michael's has been a Fourth Ward neighborhood tavern since 1983, inside the brick Crowell-Berryhill Store that opened in 1897. The room kept pieces of Charlotte with it: the bar and back bar were made from solid oak doors taken from the old Independence Building, and the beer cooler came from a Charlotte grocery store around 1920. Come for a burger, a beer and a building that survived when much of the neighborhood did not.
Birdsong was founded in 2010 by husband and wife Chris and Tara Goulet with their friend Conor Robinson, after they decided Charlotte needed a neighborhood brewery pouring fresh, unfiltered American ale. The taproom sits on North Davidson Street between Optimist Park and NoDa, with a patio running fire tables and outdoor heaters through the cold months.
The room that started the company. It opened in 2004 as a small wine shop in the Foxcroft East Shopping Center, next door to Barrington's, and grew into a full restaurant and wine bar in 2006. Over thirty wines are poured by the glass and hundreds of bottles sit on the retail shelves. The patio is heated through the cold months.
Intermezzo has been on East Tenth Street in Elizabeth since 2007. It is a European-style cafe that makes pizza with handmade dough and house-made mozzarella and serves traditional Serbian dishes alongside it, from the owners' family recipes. There are specialty cocktails and craft beer on tap.
Local Loaf has been on East 35th Street since 2013, serving gourmet sandwiches, brunch and entrees that its own site describes as chef-inspired takes on classic dishes. Chef Adam Spears runs the kitchen. The signature is hand-breaded chicken with poached eggs and house sauces.
Mimosa Grill opened on South Tryon in Uptown in 1996 and is run by Burke Hospitality Group. The kitchen describes itself as global-influenced American built on local Carolina ingredients, and says it works directly with regional farmers and purveyors on seasonal menus. It closes early on Sundays, at 2 p.m.
A Spanish restaurant on Community House Road that its own site says has been running for more than twenty five years. Paella and tapas are the centre of the menu, alongside a wine list and a weekday happy hour. The site says three families are now building what comes next, and that a SouthPark room is under construction for autumn 2026.
The Neighborhood Theatre was built as the Astor Theatre in 1945, part of the post-war movie theatre boom, and was converted to a live concert venue in 1997. Its own site describes both a small room for emerging artists and a larger main stage for touring acts. It runs a bar, which went cashless on 24 February 2025, and it is the anchor that gives the NoDa arts district its music reputation.
NoDa Brewing has been, in its own words, brewing craft beer for the Carolinas since 2011. It took its name from the NoDa arts district where it started, then moved its brewery and taproom to 150 W 32nd St off North Tryon; the old N Tryon address is still used for shipping. Pizza is served on site.
A neighborhood pub on Selwyn Avenue that has been serving the Myers Park side of Charlotte since 1990. Its own site leads with the outdoor space ... a large patio under a retractable roof, which is the reason most people name the place. The transfusion cocktail is the drink it is known for.
A pub hidden on the back side of the Park Road Shopping Center, open since 1996. Its own directions tell you to park out front and walk down the stairs to find it. It is known for a bacon cheeseburger, a championship veggie chili, twenty ounce pints and a whiskey list, and it serves until 2 in the morning four nights a week.
Snug Harbor is a small pirate-themed room on Gordon Street in Plaza Midwood that has been booking national, regional and local bands since 2007. Doors are at 8pm and the show is at 9pm Monday through Saturday. Karaoke runs to 2am on Thursdays and Sundays, and DJ nights sit alongside the live bookings.
Soul opened in Plaza Midwood in 2009 as one of Charlotte's first small-plate restaurants, in a 68-seat upstairs room with no reservations and a waitlist that regularly ran two hours. Its own origin story says it was the first in the city to make local house deejays an integral part of the dining experience, and the house music has stayed. It lost the Plaza Midwood lease in 2022 and owner, chef and DJ Andy Kastanas spent three years building the replacement, reopening in August 2025 at 4110 Raleigh Street near the Sugar Creek station with roughly triple the seats, a semi-private dining room and a patio. The original interior designer, Scott Weaver, did the new room too.
The Evening Muse has been running on North Davidson Street since 2001 and bills itself as Charlotte's premiere intimate venue for up-and-coming and established musicians, artists, comedians and poets. It is a listening room rather than a bar with a stage, and it runs a Monday open mic. Its calendar carries shows into 2027.
The Olde Mecklenburg Brewery opened in 2009 and calls itself Charlotte's oldest standing independent brewery. It brews German-style beer to the Reinheitsgebot, using only water, malt, hops and yeast. Its LoSo home sits on a one-acre biergarten shaded by mature oak, pecan and hickory trees, which the brewery calls the largest biergarten in the Southeast. A second room opened in Ballantyne.
East Blvd diner and bar, Est. 1954 per its Instagram. Its Iceberg Lounge and Moon Room have TVs, and its Instagram bio calls it the official home of Charlotte's Auburn Club.
The Scorpio is Charlotte's oldest gay club, operating since the 1960s. It spent decades on Freedom Drive before that building closed in 2023, and Queen City Nerve reports it reopened on Fairwood Avenue in 2024.
The Thirsty Beaver is the small brick dive bar on Central Avenue that a 323-unit apartment complex was built around. Brothers Brian and Mark Wilson opened it in 2008 and lease the building from owner George Salem, who turned down two offers from the developer that bought the surrounding land for 8.5 million dollars in 2015. The developer built the apartments in a horseshoe around the bar instead, and the Associated Press called it Charlotte's own version of the house from Up. There is live music on Sundays and a pool table.
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