Venue Review: 15 North Roadside Kitchen

1513 Montford Drive

More info about restaurant

The Roadside Kitchens idea makes sense: Let customers customize the menu in each location.

Here's how the website puts it: "Think back to some of your favorite memories. Chances are you were surrounded by family and friends, telling stories, sharing laughs, and more than likely, having a meal.... At Chef Brett McKee's Roadside Kitchens our chef, staff, and restaurants are here to re-create your favorite memories. As Chef McKee says, 'Tell us your dish, give us your story and we'll make it better than you remember.'"

Doesn't that sound touching?

Here's how it plays out: I remember most of the menu from when 15 North Roadside Kitchen opened last fall; more than two-thirds of the entrees (and all of those recommended by our servers) are the same as in September. You don't easily forget Austrian wiener schnitzel and Yorkshire steak and eggs. McKee says the menu is revised regularly; new next week will be shrimp and grits and red velvet cake. (Also new: executive chef Michael Bowling.)

But the sameness ratio implies local staff and McKee, who oversees this and his Mount Pleasant original, have been mostly left to their own devices.

And most of those aren't working.

Some do. A thick, hammy pork chop with buttery spinach and a Calvados demi-glace was fine, "Brett's Meatballs" sported a good, simple marinara and the cheesecake was OK.

But those were the exceptions in our visits. Most troubled: a roasted chicken so overcooked the wing had virtually no meat left on it; seafood Creole with undercooked rice and tinny crawfish; and wiener schnitzel with no oomph and a hardened, dull fried egg on top, all drizzled with a heavy-handed lemon beurre blanc. (A side of potato salad was by far the best thing on the plate.)

White bean hummus was rubbery and bland. Pimento cheese was fine-textured, with mayo dominating the flavor. The crouton in the onion soup was so tough, even after softening in the soup, it took leverage to cut it. A Caesar arrived overdressed and over-cheesed (unpleasantly hard slivers), with halved red grapes tasting of dressing around the plate rim. The potato gratin accompanying the pork chop was oily and unevenly cooked. Salmon was small and fair.

It's a shame, because servers work hard to be helpful and gracious, and the place is pretty: walls of deep gray/taupe in the dining room, lots of texture in seating and lighting, beautiful black-and-white prints of area sights and food, and candlelit cylinders of swirled glass for accents.

You're greeted and seated quickly, though food tends to be slow to the table.

It's also a shame because McKee, who has cooked at the James Beard House, has been well-reviewed in earlier ventures, most notably Oak Steakhouse in Charleston. He's now out of that in order to pursue the Roadside Kitchens concept, and has been quoted as planning to have them in 20 cities. Two more in Charleston and one in Greenville, S.C. are planned for this year, and Pittsburgh and Brooklyn are being considered.

15 North moved into the spot of a former Charlotte restaurant icon: the Ole Smokehouse, in business for more than half a century. It was hard to imagine, when first announced, that a hallowed, inexpensive institution wasn't being replaced with an upstart of undetermined worth. But the Roadside concept held promise, particularly in its determination to honor culinary memories, with a respected chef at the helm and a commitment to engaging the community.

Now? I'm mourning the Smokehouse's decrepit old Chinese smoker - and the expertise with which it was employed - more than I thought I would.