by Kristen Wile

Chefs Jon Olvera, Matt Deering, and Myles Scaglione at Dot Dot Dot. Photo courtesy

Dot Dot Dot is adding depth to its kitchen with two new hires. The Park Road Shopping Center cocktail bar recently brought on chefs Jon Olvera and Myles Scaglione to work with executive chef Matt Deering. Olvera has cooked at several Charlotte powerhouses, including Leah & Louise, Bardo Restaurant, and Peppervine. Scaglione comes most recently from PARA, but also spent a significant amount of time at Heirloom Restaurant. 

The hires come ahead of a new menu launch at Dot Dot Dot — on both the cocktail and culinary sides — and the kickoff of a new style of special dinners built first around food, with cocktails to pair. Owner Stefan Huebner says that he hopes to make Dot Dot Dot as much of a culinary destination as it is a cocktail destination.

“You want to do cool things? At the end of the day, you’ve got to have the right people to do cool stuff,” Huebner says. “On the business side of it, there’s very little growth left on the bar — we’ve kind of hit that top number we’re going to hit sales-wise. But there’s plenty of growth in the kitchen available.”

Adding two chefs with strong resumes to the team will enable Dot Dot Dot to not only have more consistency in staffing, but also give Deering time to hold more culinary-focused special events, with cocktails paired around his food, instead of the usual vice versa. 

Since joining the Dot Dot Dot team about a year ago, Deering has guided the restaurant’s kitchen to serve a menu of dishes that pair well with the spirit-forward drinks the bar is known for. To do so, Deering says he leans on slightly heavier dishes and full flavors, as lighter fare wouldn’t be able to stand up to the beverages. His previous job at Peppervine, where he worked with Bill Greene, familiarized Deering with the Korean flavors you’ll see woven through the Dot Dot Dot menu, as well as a Latin influence. Deering says with the new team in the kitchen, he expects more time for menu development, with more minds conceptualizing the dishes. 

“Each dish will be more focused,” he says. While Olvera and Scaglione will also have input on the menu items, the menu’s overall balance will remain the same. “It’s still going to be global flavors.”

Huebner calls the menu a “chaos menu,” with flavors and inspirations from around the world. With a cocktail menu that spans genres, a hyper-focused food menu wouldn’t make sense, he says.  

“At the end of the day, out of the kitchen, it’s the same as in the bar: It’s about balance, and finding that balance between fat and acid and umami and salt and the flavors of the ingredients that we’re using,” Huebner says. “I feel that’s what we do really well here.”

The new menus will launch at Dot Dot Dot on October 3. With that launch, Huebner hopes to remind people that the high-end cocktail bar isn’t just for drinks before or after dinner elsewhere. Instead, he wants it to become a dinner and drink destination. 

“We’re in a good spot. We have depth. And that depth is comforting,” Huebner says. “That depth builds the confidence for us to do cooler and better shit, too.”

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