Good Food on Montford — Restaurant in Charlotte

My wife and her friends visited Good Food over the weekend while on a weekend trip to Charlotte. They were told the wait for four of them would be about an hour and a half before they could be seated. It looked busy, so they went with it. They ordered something in the meantime at the bar and waited to be called. The wait started to stretch a little over an hour and half, and others had been seated in the meantime, so they asked the maître d' if they could be finally be seated. It appears if they hadn't asked, it wouldn't have happened. The waiter seemed to question all the ladies orders, as if they didn't quite understand what they were ordering. Finally he had to be told if they didn't like it, they simply wouldn't eat it, (seemingly the obvious rule of thumb with any restaurant) so they could move on. There was some suspicion on the ladies part that they were being treated rudely because of their style of dress, but no one directly addressed this while in the restaurant to avoid ruining anyone's time.

While in the restroom, one of my wife's party heard some other customers question what one of her "kind" thought she was doing in there, then looked back at her as they exited. My wife and her party are all black, and while they did notice other black people in the restaurant, those were mixed parties, and her group didn't happen to be this night. We don't know if the rudeness they received that night was a result of racism, assumption that the weren't well-to-do businesswomen (they all ordered water) or just general snobbishness. Or some kind of combination thereof. But it doesn't matter. You're a restaurant. A business that hopes to create some kind of connection with your patrons and your community. You and your employees should have enough sense to put any personal issues like that on the back burner, and they should certainly have enough common sense as to not talk down to a table full of African-Americans. Your other patrons felt comfortable enough to openly remark on the "kind" of person who dared think they were good enough to sit at a table in the same restaurant and eat with them. Whether you meant to or not, it speaks unfortunate volumes to the kind of environment you've engendered surrounding your establishment.

And what's ironic is they all...

I really like this place!!!Just over a week ago, we three adults arrived at Good Food on Montfort shortly after they opened on a Friday evening. We parked at the curb and were seated immediately. We will not count on the good fortune in the future, but it can happen. I love this place Our light dinner consisted of four different dishes. All were the excellent - amazingly so - but according to my tastes they ranked as follows. Steamed Bun was #1, P.E.I. Mussels was #2, Poached Farm Egg was #3, and Garganelli was #4. great food!!!All four dishes would have been the standout dish in many restaurants. Others in our party may have ranked our choices differently. Service was above reproach - prompt, friendly, helpful, efficient.Good Food was quite good but with so much potential to be better. Starting with the highlights, the korean beef is truly spectacular. The beef is thinly sliced to perfection and placed atop the crispiest of crispy rice with some seriously delicious dressing. The mussels were also quite delicious, large and meaty as they should be. As for the things that were subpar - there was a bit of a dissappointing texture battle. The arugula salad for example had a sprinkling of croutons that were unsatisfactory in crunch, rather soft and somewhat soggy. The pot de creme also had a beautiful cracker decoration which was also dissappointingly soggy and lacking texture. Overall 4/5 with potentiall to be a 5 with a few...

Even though we live just about a mile away, we hadn't yet tried Good Food on Montford until last night. So glad we finally made it there! Great service, really great drinks and food. We had the Turkish Delight (which sounds like it would be sweet but fortunately it wasn't - nicely done), then shared the Smoked Beets (great smokiness; one of the best beet dishes ever had) and Falafel (really tasty - but next time I'll ask for more pickled cukes), the Korean Beef (crispy rice; medium-rare beef) and Larry's Buns (so much going on here - the best I've had pork belly cooked, nice and crispy). Then another order of Larry's Buns - yes, that good. We'll be back. My only criticisms and these are very mild are: (1) the menu doesn't seem to change and it doesn't sound like they have off-menu specials, so, like Kid Cashew, eventually one could tire of returning to the restaurant even if the food, service, setting are all great. (2) The "Chef's Table" seating isn't like that of most restaurants. Yes, you are seated in front of one of the chef stations (4 seats at one leg of an L-shaped bar), but it seemed to be more of a prep area than the main kitchen which is in front of the other leg of the L. So you aren't really watching much of the action. That said, the Good Food employee manning the prep area was a great conversationalist, really nice, good energy, offered sound suggestions...