Days of Yore

Your average news photographer knows a ton about local restaurants. The last three or four years, the Charlotte restaurant scene has greatly improved. Johnson and Wales moved their Charleston Campus here a few years ago and whip ass restaurants have sprouted all over town. This post is about none of those.

I typically bring my dinner to work. It's cheaper and healthier. Wednesday I didn't bring dinner so I was faced with the tough decision of where I was going to eat. When this happens I take the sat buggy down South Boulevard and see where the good Lord leads me. Sometimes I make a left turn somewhere and end up on Park Road, but Wednesday took me to the Skyland Family Restaurant. I used to go there a lot when I worked overnights for NBC. It's your typical 24 hour diner with an enormous menu that has damn near anything you'd ever want on it. Situated in a tiny shopping center with a pool hall and gay bar it looks like it's been open for fifty years. It smells like a smoking section. The plates look old and the food is slightly above average. I just looked at their website and they've only been open since 1994. Their site is really professional and flashy, too. Weird. A greek man named Jimmy Kakavitsas owns the place. He's a hell of a nice guy that fed 2,500 people at Thanksgiving a few weeks ago. He plans to feed 5,000 next year.

Anyway, I walked in and saw the wall of former professional wrestlers that's always there. It's full of signed glossies from wrestling legends. My favorite one is of Nelson Freakin' Royal. A nice waitress handed me a menu and told me to sit anywhere I'd like. Of course I choose a table by the window where the sat buggy was parked so I could keep an eye on it. After ten minutes I settled on a dinner salad with a side of spaghetti. The salad was the finest iceberg available in December and was soaking three or four pints of italian dressing and the spaghetti needed three or four more ladles of marinara, but I loved every bit of it. I miss old school Charlotte.