Changes are coming to one of Charlotte’s most beloved establishments. The Common Market has hired Geoff Bragg, former head chef at non-profit Community Culinary School, to oversee food operations all of their locations.

Bragg has a background that’s primarily in fine dining, taking a job at the Community Culinary School because he wanted to have a deeper impact on the community. He’s been approached with executive chef jobs before, he says, but didn’t want to give up that sense of community. The Common Market, and the way it gains dedicated regulars from among its neighborhoods, seemed like it could give him that. Bragg was a regular at the Oakhurst location when co-owner Graham Worth approached him about working there.

When he first came on earlier this year, Bragg began improving the recipes Common Market was already serving, such as the chicken and tuna salads, and sales have gone up for both since. Now, the big changes are taking place.

“It’s been a great stepping stone for the Common Market, because we’ve been around for 17 years now and Geoff is bringing some new things to the business that are really injecting some new energy,” Worth says, “Which is great, and which is what you need for a business that’s been around for a long time.”

One of the most exciting changes for food-lovers is the new Night Food menu. The deli will now shut down at 5 p.m., and instead of sandwiches, Common Market will serve a short menu of dishes inspired by a certain area, mostly street food. Each of the three Common Market locations’ chefs will get to create the menu, meaning all three will serve something different, and the menu will last for two weeks. Plaza Midwood has been doing something similar three nights a week for five or six years with Thai food on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights. The South End location kicked off Night Food just over a month ago, and Oakhurst followed a few weeks later.

Currently on the menu at the Oakhurst location, where Bragg is based, is a Vietnamese street food menu. Dishes include rice paper and fried rolls, banh mis, and Vietnamese chicken salad. South End recently served Hawaiian dishes such as a poke bowl and spam stir fry, with a Louisiana night coming up soon. While he approves the menus, the chefs have the freedom to select the regions they want to explore.

“The menus have to be authentic,” he says. “I don’t want crazy, modern fusion. That’s not what we’re about. I just want real simple stuff.”

We popped by to check out the Vietnamese menu, and were impressed. The dishes were true to themselves, and portions were large. We ordered everything at once and had dinner, but could’ve spent the night at a table with friends sampling everything slowly with drinks. The Night Food menu runs until 9 p.m.

Up next is an even bigger change for the market and bottleshop: The deli menu, which currently has 30+ sandwiches, will be trimmed down to about 15.

“All the best restaurants I’ve ever been to have the smaller menus, because you’re able to focus your energies on making fewer things better than trying to make everybody happy,” Bragg says. “I truly believe that.”

The idea is to simplify and expedite the ordering experience. Instead of making the customer make so many decisions up front — for example, most sandwiches don’t come with a particular type of bread or specific condiments — each sandwich will be standardized to be fully dressed. Customers can then make substitutions as needed.

“Geoff’s philosophy, which I never really fully appreciated until we think about this, is that you’re coming in here to order an awesome sandwich,” Worth says. “We should tell you how that is. There shouldn’t be all this optionality. And if you want to change it, that’s great. But 90 percent of the time, if we don’t have a bread on there, people will ask, ‘Well, what would you do?’ And so it makes it way more efficient to say our reuben is on marble rye.”

Minimizing the number of sandwich offerings will also make the kitchen move more smoothly, as it could take employees months to learn to make each kind of sandwich. Several of the deli favorites will be staying, including the spicy turkey, reuben, Billy Club, and Tree Hugger, for example. Bragg says the changes will be rolling out in a month or so, starting at the Monroe Road location. The breakfast menu will also see some tweaking. Keep an eye on the Common Market Instagram and Facebook pages for updates on which menu is currently being served. —Kristen Wile

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