The website makes this place appear a lot larger than it actually is - at least on the first floor. My friend called and asked if we needed reservations she was told no but when we got there we had about a 10 min wait for a table . I'm learning to just make reservations whenever I go out to any semi popular restaurant in Charlotte even the chain restaurants. We were seated near the bar and brought water and shot glasses ... like seriously I guess the water "glasses" go with the ambiance but they were literally the size of a large shot glass... Since I would have looked like an idiot putting a straw into a shot glass I decided on a glass of white wine... I prefer to drink my nonalcoholic beverages with a straw .. alcohol kills germs right ....
I'm a huge fan of tapas or small plates because I get to sample pretty much everything, I'm not into the whole sharing thing so I ordered 3 small plates for myself. I tried the spinach and goat cheese salad .. wow this was pretty good so simple yet so good. They gave a generous amount of spinach with pine nuts, and a scoop of goat cheese on top. Next I had the grilled lamb lollipops so yummy they were also covered in the same vinaigrette as my salad , and finally the sliders - basically a cheese burger with some fancy bacon . Both the chops and sliders only had two servings so unless it's just two people I would either order two or get something else if you're planning on sharing with a group.
Overall the food was pretty good my friends tried the calamari, and the shrimp and grits ... and whoa who knew that you could fry grits into the shape of little cubes.. They had an interesting taste but a strange presentation at least to me. I'm not a big fan of shrimp and grits but my friend said they were delicious (only two shrimps tho...)
I'm not sure what's upstairs I'm hoping more tables b/c there isn't a lot of room downstairs and it's super dark in there. I like this place and would be interested in coming back from brunch .
Parking - I parked in the deck over on 6th street I think there is another deck down 5th maybe .. but the walk from the 6th street deck (5 bucks) wasn't bad.