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| - The name "smalls" refers to the restaurant's interior space, not the size of dreams or expectations you'll find once inside the doors. A local vibe permeates the environment: the chef is a Johnson & Wales graduate and the bar serves NC craft beers. The menu is interesting and accessible, with a few varieties of down home sliders accompanying other worldly options like chicken & waffles and handmade pasta. Once your order gets to the table, watch out; the food is rich, developed, and flavorful. BUT... a month after opening, there are still some service-type kinks that they haven't yet worked out.
Friday night, I called to see if a party of 3 could be seated and was told that they were filling up, but if we got there in the next 10 minutes we should be fine. 7 minutes later, we walked in the door and were told there would be a 15 minute wait. Not that big of a deal, we went to the bar for a drink. The bartender was very nice, but sadly couldn't transfer our drinks to the table once we were ready to be seated, so we had to close out - again, not that big of a deal. Our waitress (unenthusiastically) told us the day's specials and then took our order... which is right about when everything fell apart. They brought only two of our three dishes to the table, of which only one was correct. So they then took the pimento sliders away but not-so-sneakily tried to pawn them off on the table behind us - alas, the pimento sliders were not what they'd ordered either. Apparently, our third order had never gotten put into the system, so they scrambled to make that and finally brought out a plain burger, having prepared it so quickly that they left off all the burger toppings (cheese, bacon, lettuce, and tomato) that were supposed to come with it. So, now we send a second plate back to the kitchen. Ultimately, we finally got the right sliders and burger with all the proper fixins, but it shouldn't have to be that difficult.
However, the food was good enough to assuage those problems (it didn't hurt that they comped us the burger on our final bill too). Assuming they work out the kinks, this place may need to be renamed Bigs, as I can see it being huge in the Charlotte restaurant scene.
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