Over the weekend I hopped down to Charlotte to see a good friend
perform at the opera and was shocked to see how vibrant the downtown
dining and nightlife scene is. Oddly, there is little else to do such
as shop; other than a couple of museums everything is out of downtown.
Before the opera I ran across the street from the Ritz-Carlton where I
was staying (and forwent their BLT-Bistro Laurent Tourondel) to the
new EPICENTER which is a small complex with movie theater and several
dining spots as well as a CVS and some other stuff. ENSO (meaning
circle in Japanese(at 210 East Trade St) is a huge dining complex, bar
and sushi lounge. It was pretty quiet at 6pm, but I gather it was
jammed later on as the place began to fill around 7pm. Sadly, the
thumping music bombarded the place and kind of shook the place with
the huge bass.
My server Ginny was sweet but just kept going on and on about the
quality of the food, etc. There are two menus (sushi and ala carte)
making decisions harder, so I chose the SEAWEED SALAD with cucumber
and baby greens which was nice and a glass of smooth OZEKI house sake.
I decided on two sushi rolls:
TUNA TATAKI (at $13) was EIGHT pieces (WOW for that price) of barely
seared tuna wrapped around rice, spicy tuna, avocado and cucumber. It
was nice, but not a prize winner.
SPIDER ROLL (again EIGHT HUGE PIECES for $16) was deep fried SOFT
SHELL CRAB (I doubt it was fresh!), lettuce, avocado, cucumber and
masago with a sweet glaze and sesame seeds. The crunch from the
tempura was a treat and Ginny did bring two dips which worked superbly
with each of the dishes rather than soy sauce.
For the crab a thick CHILI Japanese MAYO was rich, but great if used
sparingly. For the tuna a light PONZU-SOY sauce was perfect.
The place has some fun huge chairs, red vinyl chairs, lots of
banquets, a HUGE noisy bar with three large screen TV's sporting
sports and a monstrous blown up photo of a sumo wrestler on the wall.
The decor is nice, but I would dread the noise after 8pm!
As we walked down the street after the opera around 1130pm, I was
shocked to see people spilling out of noisy bars and discos
everywhere. The opera has a post-performance party at a super noisy
place where we lasted all of 5 minutes before heading to ZINK
(www.harpersgroup.com/zink.asp at 201 N Tryon St) where the place was
quite deserted. The bar had several occupied tables, but we were seven
people, so the manager opened up the quite nice main dining room for
us, but did warn there was a limited after hours menu from 11pm-1am.
It was super! I salivated over Housemade BLUE CHEESE Potato Chips and
LOBSTER MAC 'n' CHEESE, but we all ultimately chose the various
burgers which are 1/2 price after 11pm. That means HALF of $10...or
$5.00 for my ZINK BURGER of tasty Angus with melted American cheese,
1000 Island Mayo, crispy tasty MAPLE-PEPPER BACON and some slightly
soggy fries. WHAT A DEAL at $5.00. We down a couple of bottles of
WRITER's BLOCK SYRAH from California and went home VERY HAPPY to be
able to chat and be with friends while enjoying a superb burger!
