How this Italian restaurant cracked the code in Charlotte’s toughest dining scene
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Angeline’s sustains strong customer flow in Charlotte’s competitive uptown scene.
- Hotel tie-in aids traffic, but food quality and service drive repeat diners.
- Proximity to attractions boosts appeal as a flexible dinner-and-evening hub.
Hosts posted at Angeline’s door greet young couples on dates and families gathering, while staff in black coats stand along the kitchen wall, waiting to serve the hungry guests coming in.
Most have come casually, in jeans or shorts and sneakers, although the crowd isn’t lacking in little black dresses, either.
Amid the moody lighting, Angeline’s gray booths and warm wooden tables fill up as the evening passes. Action in the restaurant’s bar heats up, too.
In an era where many restaurants bring out all the stops to catch your attention, the Italian restaurant tucked inside the Kimpton Tryon Park Hotel isn’t overly showy or avant garde. Yet since 2017, Angeline’s has been a steady presence in the high-stakes realm of uptown dining, where many struggle to draw a consistent crowd.
What’s filling those seats and bringing customers back for repeat visits?
Sure, its connection to the hotel brings in a captive crowd of sorts. But in Charlotte, that’s not enough to keep a food and beverage spot open. (The Punch Room at The Ritz-Carlton didn’t make it. BLT Steak closed there, too, replaced by The Fifth Fork.)
The real draw — in any restaurant, of course — is delicious food made with premium ingredients and attentive service. But it’s especially true at a time when Charlotte diners’ expectations have never been higher.
Angeline’s invited CharlotteFive in for an inside look at the restaurant, complete with a sit-down conversation with Kimpton Tryon Park Hotel executive chef Farid Ahmed. He shared behind-the-scenes details on the developmental culture being created there, along with an advance tasting of Angeline’s new fall menu, still in the works.
Behind the food
Ahmed is settling into a stride in Charlotte, where he landed a few years ago after building his career in the kitchens at Pinehurst Resort and The Sea Pines Resort. The French-born chef brings along a cultural background that shapes his point of view, as well — his mother is French, and his father is Pakistani.
Like so many Charlotte chefs, the real driver behind his food, though, is the bounty of farm fresh ingredients available in the Carolinas. Ahmed describes the menu at Angeline’s as “very identifiable Italian food, and then we try to put a twist on it.”
That rings true, as he works with Angeline’s executive chef Cory Owen — who’s “very playful with food” — to build seasonal menus that draw in crowds.
A busy summer filled with feeding FIFA Club World Cup soccer teams and fans led the team to skip a summer menu this year. But now, they’re full speed ahead, working to craft a made-from-scratch menu of fall flavors that will hit the spot with diners seeking something new.
A culture of learning and growing
Ahmed has found that team stacked with young culinarians, graduates of Johnson & Wales and Central Piedmont Community College, where some of the city’s top chefs got their start.
“They want to pick up. They want to learn everything. So, kind of my first thing was developing the staff,” he said.
Team building not only includes Angeline’s kitchen, but also the staff at Merchant & Trade, the hotel’s rooftop bar serving small bites and entrees to pair with craft cocktails or wine.
They’ll put on competitions — say, to make the best pizza and feature the winner as a special of the month. Kitchen leaders have also held a hog butchering lesson and broken down whole fin fish to enhance the learning process.
“Anything we could think of to teach them, you know, we tried it. We tried to keep it fun,” Ahmed said.
There’s also an atmosphere dedicated to taking in feedback — and learning from it — that goes into everything they do on site.
“We’ll never be perfect, you know. We strive for it, but ... we want to look at their experience, and how do we fix this for them,” he said.
Building a fall menu
Food is sustenance, something we all need. But it’s also grown into an art form. That’s not lost on anyone at Angeline’s, where beautiful plates are composed that pack flavors to match.
While it’s not a hotbed for molecular gastronomy, the chefs at Angeline’s do find moments of whimsy and maintain a sense of intrigue in crafting dishes, with Ahmed and Owen leading the way.
Fall will find the current marinated artichokes dish now fried instead, an eye-catching display atop a bed of lemon aioli. Cubes of pork belly will be paired with pickled apples and perfectly sweet apple butter.
“This fall is very fun for us. It starts all the slow cooking, all the warm spices; different fruits — your apples and all that. Different kind of greens start popping up, all your squashes,” Ahmed said.
Attention to detail in the fall salad — a savory and sweet combination of well-seasoned arugula and green apple slices — foreshadows the care given to the rest of the upcoming menu items. Among them are short rib ravioli bathed in pecorino cream sauce with demiglaze and truffle oil; and a bacon-wrapped pork roulade, paired with sweet potato and Brussels sprout hash and a spiced raisin puree.
Let’s not skip over a mention of pastry chef Curt Williams’ desserts. Ahmed oozes enthusiasm about building up the restaurant’s dessert program, with visually stunningly plates crafted to catch attention. The creations may look sturdy but taste quite light on the palate, not overpowering with sweetness.
“The textures from the top to bottom are just amazing, you know?,” Ahmed says, describing the confections. “And it’s just beautiful.”
Keeping customers in mind
Amid a sea of recent restaurant closures in Charlotte, striking the right balance between putting out food that will attract customers and food that they can afford is always top of mind. That fact isn’t lost at Angeline’s, either.
“We’ve been working here, just making sure the people around — our locals — can still come in and have a good meal and and not feel too much on their wallet,” Ahmed said. “You know, that goes for me, too. When I’m going out to eat, I start thinking about that.”
Aside from market price white fish and Florentine steak, the most expensive item on Angeline’s dinner menu, the double-cut pork chop, comes in a fairly modest $45. (For comparison at other uptown hotel-based restaurants, The Fifth Fork’s priciest dishes — an 8-ounce filet mignon and a 22-ounce ribeye are $65 and $85, respectively. At The Grand Bohemian’s Mico, at least seven dishes are $45 or above.)
Angeline’s also vies for its share of uptown’s lunch traffic, offering pizza, pasta, salads and sandwiches, plus the Angeline’s Trio of a half pesto chicken sandwich, a cup of tomato bisque and local greens with Parmesan vinaigrette for $19.
At the end of the day, the efforts all come together to keep Angeline’s viable as a place to come back to time and again.
“To me, it’s the attention of detail on the food. It’s a really nice spot, too,” Ahmed said.
“You know, we’re so close to Bank of America. We have Merchant & Trade upstairs, of course. So what’s awesome about this building is you could do a pre-cocktail up there, down for dinner, go and explore the city, or go to a game or something. You can really have a lot of fun here.”
Angeline’s
Location: Kimpton Tryon Park Hotel, 303 S Church St, Charlotte, NC 28202
Cuisine: Italian
Instagram: @angelinescharlotte
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