Haberdish
The buttermilk fried chicken at Haberdish is the room's signature and the reason NoDa regulars keep returning. Jeff Tonidandel and Jamie Brown set up shop in the old Highland Park Mill corridor in 2016, and the kitchen has earned a Michelin Recommended nod since. The collards are cited alongside the chicken consistently. This is new-Southern done with discipline in a neighborhood that barely had a dining scene twenty years ago. Price point stays accessible for the quality on the plate.
What to orderButtermilk Fried ChickenShrimp and GritsPork Belly Benedict Restaurant Reservations Call DirectionsFull review & visiting detailsRead the full review & visiting details
NoDa's Mill-Town Southern Kitchen Earns Its Reputation
The signature of this Michelin Recommended NoDa room: Alabama-white-sauce fried chicken that earns the hype surrounding it.
A Southern staple executed with the seriousness the mill-village setting implies, stone-ground grits anchoring the plate.
The Benedict format recast in the new-Southern register Haberdish built its reputation on, pork belly standing in where ham would.
Haberdish sits in NoDa, the old Highland Park Mill village that became one of Charlotte's first arguments for a real dining scene. Jeff Tonidandel and Jamie Brown opened it in 2016, and the Michelin Guide's 2025 Recommended designation confirmed what the neighborhood already knew: the kitchen is doing serious work inside a room that carries its industrial bones without apology.
The buttermilk fried chicken is the throughline. It draws the orders and sets the standard the rest of the menu has to meet. The collards that come alongside it are not an afterthought; they hold their own as a reason to come back. Shrimp and grits runs the new-Southern playbook the way it should be run, grounding a familiar Piedmont combination in careful execution rather than novelty. The Pork Belly Benedict, which reads as brunch-adjacent but crosses occasions comfortably, shows the kitchen has range beyond the fried chicken anchor.
Deviled eggs open a meal here in the way that a well-made starter should: straightforwardly good, no need for explanation. That register carries through the whole operation. Haberdish is moderately priced for what it delivers, which places it in the productive middle of Charlotte's dining economy: not an expense-account room, not a quick counter stop. It works as a date-night destination and as the kind of place a new transplant visits once and then keeps.
Charlotte did not have a dining scene worth mapping in the 1980s. NoDa built one in the LYNX era, a lease at a time, and Haberdish is one of the rooms that made the neighborhood's case most clearly. The city's first Michelin Star went to Counter- in 2025; a Recommended nod in the same guide is a different tier, but it is not a consolation. It is recognition that the work here holds up against a national standard.
© OpenStreetMap
The fried chicken is the order, and the collards are the side worth keeping. The room runs at volume on weekends, so a reservation is the practical move.
