by Kristen Wile

Charlotte has seen a surge of national restaurants coming to the city, thanks to a shifting demographic that’s highly appealing to business owners. Many big budget restaurants enter the scene with a shiny opening and flux of influencer coverage to mark their debuts. Ahead of Uchi, welcoming guests in Plaza Midwood, however, chef Shaun King has been slowly integrating himself into Charlotte’s food community. 

Uchi is an upscale Japanese restaurant with locations throughout the United States, and its opening here has much of the culinary community eager for the addition. Uchiba will be a more casual rooftop space, serving cocktails and Izakaya-inspired fare. 

King, who has lived in every major market city in the U.S., came to Charlotte in late November to oversee the restaurants’ development and openings, as of now slated for late March or early April. He says he and his wife had always dreamed of living in the Carolinas; as an outdoorsman as well as a chef, the area held a lot of appeal.

“There was no hesitation for me when it was finally asked, ‘Do you want to go?’” King says. “I was like, ‘absolutely.’”

His first collaboration with a local chef was a dinner with chef Sam Hart of Counter-. The two chefs share several mutual friends in Chicago, and King credits Hart with introducing him to many of the area farms, as well as Freshlist. In particular, King was impressed by the tamari from Rutherfordton, N.C.-based Miso Masters.

King also joined chef Andres Kaifer at wine bar Emmy Lou’s for a pop-up collaboration.

“We wanted to partner with these chefs that we think are pushing the boundaries of the food here in the Charlotte community,” King says. He also plans to team up with the Matthews Community Farmers Market in the coming weeks for a market walk-through and cooking demonstration. 

While Uchi has a core menu, Charlotte will serve its own specials, often inspired by seasonal ingredients. As a California native, King says he was spoiled by an abundance of local produce — something he didn’t fully appreciate until moving to Chicago. He’s anticipating building relationships with local farms to ensure Uchi feels representative of the city. 

“Anyone can just take wild mushrooms from Oregon and black truffles from France and make a menu that doesn’t seem to really represent the town,” King says. “It’s exciting to me just to get out to these farmers’ markets and do a cooking collab or a cooking at a pop-up at a farmer’s market.”

The restaurant’s interior will borrow inspiration from the space’s former life as a textile factory, with high ceilings and exposed beams. Commissioning artwork from local artisans is another way the restaurant group hopes to strengthen ties to the Charlotte community — a community they see as in the early stages of a great transformation.

“I think in the next 10 years it’s gonna be a very, very different town culinarily speaking,” King says.

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