There will be a line. The first thing every regular tells a newcomer about Mr. Charles Chicken & Fish is that the original counter on Statesville Avenue holds about five people, and that five people is a crowd.
The second thing is that nobody named Charles owns it. The restaurant belongs to the Rhynes family, and the name belongs to a handshake made twenty years ago.
It started as a convenience store
The building at the corner of Statesville and Atando avenues was a convenience store called the Big Apple before it was a restaurant, selling potato wedges and chicken alongside the usual stock, according to QCity Metro. The Big Apple was one of a string of businesses along the Statesville Avenue, Beatties Ford Road and Oaklawn corridors owned by Willie James Rhynes, a Charlotte native born in First Ward in 1935 who decided young that he wanted to work for himself.
By the 1970s the elder Rhynes owned three restaurants, two nightclubs, two clothing stores, a record store, a laundromat, three grocery stores and two pool halls, according to his 2024 obituary in QCity Metro. The Big Apple was where the family’s food business took root.
Michael Rhynes Sr. opened Mr. Charles Chicken & Fish in that space in 2006, and he has told CharlotteFive how the name came about. His best friend, Corwin Alexander, and Corwin’s father, Charles Alexander, had asked about getting back into restaurants, and the three went in together. The building’s namesake was the elder Alexander. Rhynes describes the decision as quick thinking, and says he felt it would be a great opportunity for him and for Mr. Charles.
Three generations
Willie James Rhynes died in April 2024 at 89, and his obituary credits him as instrumental in growing the restaurant from a convenience store into what it became. His son, Michael Rhynes Sr., runs the business and is active in daily operations, and his grandson, Michael Rhynes Jr., manages it, according to QCity Metro.
Rhynes Sr. describes the original location as a greasy spoon and means it as a compliment. He told CharlotteFive that the staff know customers on a first name basis, and that he has watched children who came in at six or seven grow up and go to college. The restaurant runs karaoke on Friday nights at its dine in locations, which is not a typical thing for a fried chicken counter to do.
The business has grown to several locations, with a dine in restaurant on Cambridge Commons Drive in east Charlotte and a newer site announced for Dalton Avenue near Uptown, and manager Aubrey Alexander, from the family of the namesake, told CharlotteFive a fourth was coming. The Statesville Avenue counter has been temporarily closed at points, and anyone planning a first visit should check which location is open.
What you actually order
The Four Wing Special is the dish that made the restaurant a Charlotte lunch: deep fried wings in the house marinade and breading, with two homemade sides. The chicken dinners come with two or four pieces, white or dark, and two sides. Whiting and flounder are the fish, catfish is the other fish, and the sides are the reason regulars build a plate around them: mac and cheese, greens, yams, coleslaw, potato salad and fried okra.
Axios has ranked the fried chicken here among the best in the city more than once, and one of its writers admitted he received three emails shaming him the first time he left it off a list. The chicken comes out dark amber and hot, and the advice from people who know is to eat it off the hood of the car before it does damage to the interior.
The elder Rhynes’ reach across the corridor was remarkable for its era. His obituary lists the Star Lounge and Mr. Silks among his nightclubs, Soul Bowl I and II and Crazy Baby among his restaurants, and a shopping center on South Tryon Street that housed a second Big Apple and a laundromat. He attended Alexander Street School and Second Ward High School, Charlotte’s first school for Black students, and the businesses he built along Beatties Ford Road, Oaklawn and Statesville Avenue were, for a generation, the commercial spine of Black Charlotte on the west side.
Michael Rhynes Sr. has said the restaurant’s growth followed the family’s habit of building relationships one customer at a time. The dine in Cambridge location came first, then the plans for Dalton Avenue, and the expansion happened in the same years several other Black owned restaurants in the city announced closures. QCity Metro noted the contrast when it reported the Dalton plans in January 2023, a week after a well known chicken and seafood restaurant on Tuckaseegee Road closed.
Why it matters
Charlotte has lost a great many of its oldest Black owned restaurants in the last decade to rent, redevelopment and retirement. Mr. Charles is one of the ones that has grown instead, from a five person counter to a family business across the city, without changing what it sells or who it sells to.
The name on the sign belongs to a friend of the family who trusted them with a building. The business belongs to three generations of people who decided, like Willie James Rhynes in the 1960s, to work for themselves. That is the story, and the chicken is very good.