Chef Sam Hart of Counter- at the UPPY Awards, where he was named Most Impactful Industry Member. Photo by Daniel Coston

Chef Sam Hart says that if it weren’t for his girlfriend, Audra, he wouldn’t have TV or internet. “For the first year that I was back here in Charlotte, I did not have a TV. I did not have internet,” he says. “Any spare time was going for the restaurant or reading.” His inspiration for Counter-’s themed 10-course tasting menus doesn’t come from Instagram or celebrity chefs. It comes from eating — then eating more.

Counter- opened in 2020, when many were reluctant to splurge on intimate indoor dining, but the upmarket restaurant thrived thanks to an elaborate concept that made it a rarity here. Every night, staff members know each guest by name. The chef introduces every dish and pairs each course with curated music. This summer, the restaurant will close its spot at The City Kitch and reopen at 2001 W. Morehead St. The same address will be home to Counter-’s sister concept, Biblio, a wine-focused eatery where the kitchen will prepare tapas to complement customers’ bottle choice. “When people walk into the new location,” he says, “it’s really going to be breathtaking.” Not, he’s quick to add, because of “fancy ornate lighting or what have you,” but because of how the functionality will elevate the cuisine. “The focus will always be on the employees and on the food.”

Between the double buildouts and Counter-’s detail-oriented prep and service, Hart’s schedule doesn’t leave much time for TV or idle scrolling anyway.

Here’s what a day in his life looks like.

7:30 a.m. This is “really the only time in the entire day that I can fully go through all my email from the previous day,” Hart says. “I’ll do emails and busywork and pretty much anything that we need to do on our reservation software, because I’m the one in charge of overseeing all the reservations and dietary restrictions.”

8 a.m. Hart shops at international grocer Super G Mart, stocks up on paper goods at CHEF’STORE, a wholesale food-service warehouse, and picks up local fruits, vegetables, and other products from Freshlist and other markets. He arrives at Counter- in Wesley Heights around 10 a.m. For a couple of hours, Hart has the kitchen to himself: “That’s when I’m just cranking out my personal prep menu as hard as I can.”

12 p.m. Staff and cooks begin to arrive. Hart has a small team; his nine employees play multiple roles, and the chefs double as servers. He leads a midday meeting with his sous chef and chef de cuisine to go over how many people are booked for the evening and what dietary restrictions they have. Then the team starts to prep.

2 p.m. “We completely break down the kitchen and clean the kitchen,” Hart says. “And then at 2:30, that’s when we have family meal.” A staple in restaurant kitchens, the family meal provides an opportunity for the team to relax and eat together. It’s also a chance for the cooks, who rotate responsibility for the meal, to showcase their skills and specialties. Yesterday, “our chef de cuisine made us chicken piccata,” he says. “It’s all scratch-made.”

3 p.m. After family meal, Hart says, “we do group projects. That’s when we’re literally all standing around the same table and we’re doing the same prep project together — it’s bonding time as well.” Around this time, Hart leads another quick meeting, where the staff talks about each individual guest. “We only seat, at max, 35 people (per night), so we’ll say, you know, ‘This person has been in 10 times, they have this dietary restriction, they really aren’t a big fan of garlic. This person, they have a food blog and they don’t like loud music, so we’ll put them over closer to the side of the room,” Hart explains. “It’s all about tailoring for each individual person.”

4:30 p.m. Hart does what he calls “tasters”: “That’s when I taste every element of the entire menu, just to make sure it’s seasoned correctly, cooked properly, it looks right, the color is correct.” Right after that, around 4:45, the team prepares for service. “We get the dining room set up,” Hart says, “because we really don’t have servers, the cooks are also in charge of setting up parts of the front of house.”

5:30 p.m. The first service takes about two hours, after which, “we do this crazy thing that we call a flip, where we completely clean up, completely reset the dining room, the kitchen, and everything for our 8:15 service.” That service goes until about 10 p.m. For guests, the two-hour experience is an invitation into what Hart considers his art. He curates a sensory cornucopia that draws on wide-ranging influences, from musician Kanye West and painter Georgia O’Keeffe to pop artist Roy Lichtenstein and poet Billy Collins. “I think it’s important,” he says, “to allow everything to potentially be an inspiration.”

10 p.m. This time, the staff does a deeper clean. Hart conducts one last meeting to review how service went and prepare to do it again the next day. “At around 11 o’clock, I make my final run-throughs to make sure that everything’s clean, everything’s organized, everything’s tidy, everything’s ready to go and looking good, and then I’m usually back home at 11:30,” Hart says. “And then usually at 11:30, I’m going to be over at Idlewild having a cocktail.” Hart says going to the NoDa cocktail bar is the closest he’s felt to being back in Chicago, where he worked at world-renowned restaurant Alinea.

12 a.m. At midnight, Hart checks his email for the first time since waking up. He does a quick check of Counter-’s Instagram and other social media profiles, then turns in around 1 a.m. He enjoys free time on Sundays and Mondays, when Counter- is closed and he and Audra travel and visit new restaurants and old favorites. He doesn’t long for day-to-day lounging. “Even though it might look on paper like a really long day, it’s just so much fun and rewarding the entire time,” he says. “Because at the end of the day, I get to spend however many hours it is just working on my dream.”

More in this series

NoDa Brewing’s Chad Henderson
Bruce Moffett of Moffett Restaurant Group
Alyssa Wilen of Chef Alyssa’s Kitchen
What the Fries’ Jamie Barnes and Greg Williams
Kindred’s Katy Kindred
Freshlist’s Jesse Leadbetter
300 East’s Ashley Boyd
Aria and Cicchetti’s Pierre Bader