Sports & Game Day Charlotte

Uptown · american, pub food

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.

Elizabeth · new american, french, italian, seafood

The Fig Tree is a white-tablecloth restaurant inside the restored 1913 Lucas House in Elizabeth. Husband-and-wife owners Greg and Sara Zanitsch have run it here since 2005, with seasonal French and Italian influences, a deep wine list and an elk chop that has stayed on the menu for more than fifteen years. The veranda and residential-size rooms make dinner feel like a special occasion without pretending the building was ever anything but a house.

Grier Heights

Vaulted Oak opened on 9 June 2021 inside a refurbished BB&T bank building on Monroe Road in east Charlotte, which is where the name comes from. Outside there is a large patio, covered seating and lawn chairs around a fire pit, plus cornhole. There is no kitchen; food trucks run Wednesday through Sunday, Sal's pizza is across the street, and people are told they can bring their own food.