Restaurants in Charlotte

Now that we've entered the year where two-thousand is pronounced twenty, we've officially reached the future. Stay on the cutting edge of foodnology with today’s deal: for $12 you get $30 worth of tapas, drinks, and more at the tech-savvy restaurant known to its fellow machines as T1 Tapas. This futuristic marriage of technology, humanity, and tasty cuisine is located just a short 17-mile robo-datctyl trip from downtown Charlotte.

Owner Garmon Moore and the team of chefs at Hole in the Wall Crab Shack pile plates high with in-the-shell blue crab legs and crab cakes made with lump meat, brought in from the Carolina coast weekly. House-made lemonade washes down tender helpings of made-to-order fare, including garlic crabs, tilapia sandwiches, and sides of hushpuppies.

Inside the brightly decorated restaurant, chefs re-imagine Mexican plates with California-style touches. Surprising ingredients pepper Baja Soul's entire menu, including tucking caramelized red onions into steak tacos. The fish tacos—a house specialty—reflect the cross-border fusion, especially the Negra Modelo fish, battered in Negra Modelo and topped with refreshing pico de gallo and chipotle crema. Adventurous chefs remix spices and flavors in a sextet of house-made salsas, such as the piña-fire flavor brewed from roasted habañero chilies and sweetened with grilled pineapple.

Behind the full bar stocked with imported and craft beers, mixologists season mojitos with freshly pressed guarapo, or sugar-cane extract, and pour house-made margaritas and shots of premium tequilas. While servers whip up tableside guacamole, diners can play with interactive touchscreen booths that stream music and videos.

Two decades removed from the opening of their first restaurant, the native Thai owners of Thai House continue to season meats, curries, and seafood with tropical Asian spices and embellish their three locations with hand-whittled teakwood silhouettes. Half-roasted duck and grilled shrimp swim in rice and noodles before catching cool, creamy waves of thai iced tea. Curries cascade over mounds of jasmine or brown rice imported from Thailand, and flotillas of Japanese sushi and sashimi cast their anchors alongside the spicy array of Thai fare. Mesmerizing notes of Thai music pervade the dining room, scoring dinner conversations and sword duels between chopsticks.

Large wooden doors—not unlike those used to secure Medieval-era tree houses—grant entry to a multilevel, pagoda-style building designed to resemble a Chinese temple. Within its walls, classic furnishings reflect Chinese traditions, including decor that celebrates the Chinese New Year and elegant curtains that drape among the small, softly lit dining areas. This is Wan Fu Quality Chinese Cuisine, where cooks curate more than 100 dishes—most of which are made in-house from scratch. A mixture of traditional, contemporary, and health-minded creations populate the menu, such as the restaurant's signature pineapple chicken.

Dream Dinners’s registered dietitian and family-physician duo provides cuisine crafters with the ingredients and directions necessary to assemble healthy, palate-pleasing meals during fun on-location sessions.

All chopping, sorting, and recipe-dreaming is done in advance by Dream Dinners’s crew, with family cooks choosing from an ever-rotating menu of gourmet concoctions such as herb-dijon chicken breasts with garlic bread and cheese-lover's manicotti.

After assembling the ingredients at a Dream Dinners location in a music-filled, party-like atmosphere, customers cart their bounty home, armed with easy-to-follow cooking instructions for piecing together the edible jigsaw puzzle without worrying about sharpening knives, cleaning stovetops, or converting grams into degrees Celsius. For those with smaller watches and consequently less time, the Fast Lane menu offers dinners that need only to be cooked or baked.