A new oldest restaurant
Providence Road Sundries, which opened in 1933 as a drugstore, is Charlotte's oldest, as some older restaurants close
The following article appeared in the April 15, 2024, edition of The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with smart and original local news for Charlotte. We offer free and paid subscription plans. More info here.
With Green’s Lunch gone, Providence Road Sundries takes the title of Charlotte’s oldest restaurant
by Kathleen Purvis
If there’s one thing Charlotte diners are interested in more than new restaurants, it might be old restaurants.
For years, the reliable answer to the question “What’s Charlotte’s oldest restaurant?” was always Green’s Lunch, the classic hot dog place on 4th Street uptown. Opened by the Green family in 1926 and taken over by the Katopodis family in 1975, it was just three years shy of a century when it closed last year.
Since Green’s is no more, the question came up again on a Facebook group last week: What’s the oldest restaurant now?
Before I stepped down as The Charlotte Observer’s food editor in 2019, restaurant nostalgia was one of the things that brought me a reliable stream of emails and calls.
Living in Charlotte since 1985, I’ve had a courtside seat as restaurants have come and gone, some in a few months, some that hung on for a half-century or more. In 2017, before I left The Observer, I tackled the question of Charlotte classics by figuring out which restaurants were the oldest.
It was supposed to be a list of the 10 oldest, but nothing is ever that simple. Because of a tie between Gus’ Sir Beef and Philadelphia Deli (both opened in 1969), it ended up being 11 restaurants.
Sadly, five on that list have closed since 2017: Gus’ Sir Beef, Philadelphia Deli, Mr. K’s, Bill Spoon’s Barbecue and Price’s Chicken Coop. In 2021, my former colleague Melissa Oyler and Philip Freeman updated the list and took it to the 18 oldest.
So, according to my original list and their updated version, the oldest restaurant now is (seems like we need a drum roll or something here) …
Providence Road Sundries, built at 1522 Providence Road in 1933. There is some debate about when it became a restaurant. Originally opened as a drugstore, it did have a snack bar, although I was never able to get an answer on whether it was there at the beginning or was added later.
Providence Road Sundries on Providence Road in Myers Park is now the oldest Charlotte restaurant. (Google Street View)
The next nine:
The Diamond, 1901 Commonwealth Ave., 1945.
Greystone Pub, 3029 South Blvd., 1947.
The Open Kitchen, 1318 W. Morehead St., 1952.
Tatsis Restaurant, 2328 N. Graham St., opened in 1954 as the Hutchison Avenue Grill.
Circle G, 4818 Rozzelles Ferry Road, 1954.
South 21 Drive-In, 3101 E. Independence Blvd. (original, on South Boulevard, opened in 1955; the current location opened in 1959).
Shuffletown Grill, 10220 Rozzelles Ferry Road, 1957.
Bar-B-Q King, 2900 Wilkinson Blvd., 1959.
Does a restaurant’s history count in its age? Very few restaurants get to 50 or 60 years without changes in addresses, names and owners. The original building for The Greystone, for instance, was torn down and replaced years ago, but it has been run by at least three generations of the Kanos and Koutsokalis families since 1947.
On the other hand, the Beef N Bottle, often named as one of the city’s oldest, has really been around only since 1978. The original owner, George Fine, had an earlier restaurant, The House of Steaks, that opened in 1958 and closed in the 1970s to make way for Discovery Place.
The owner might have been the same, but the name changed — and it no longer had dancing girls in cages when it moved to South Boulevard. If it were a baseball stat, it would have an asterisk by its name.
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