No Knife Chicken & Waffles: what DaBaby’s new North End restaurant costs and what to expect

The most talked about restaurant opening in Charlotte this month is on an industrial stretch of Atando Avenue, and the conversation has been about two things: the lines and the prices. https://queencitymagazine.com/directory/no-knife-chicken-and-waffles/, the first restaurant from Charlotte raised rapper DaBaby, opened at 700 Atando Avenue on Sunday, Sept. 6. WSOC-TV and WBTV both covered the 10 a.m. grand opening, and by the end of the day the restaurant’s menu was being argued over on every social platform in the city.

Here is what No Knife is, what it costs, and what we still do not know.

The person behind it

DaBaby, whose legal name is Jonathan Kirk, grew up in Charlotte and built a national career on hits like “Suge” and “Rockstar.” Over the last couple of years he has picked up a second following for cooking videos he posts under the name “Cookin’ With Kirk,” where he calls himself “No Knife.” QCity Metro reported ahead of the opening that the restaurant turns that food brand into a storefront. WCNC called it his first major business venture in the city.

In the announcement quoted by QCity Metro, DaBaby said the restaurant is “sure to become a staple.” The restaurant’s own site puts it more plainly: fast casual in speed, upscale diner in feel, with booths, counter seats and a kitchen that runs late.

What is on the menu

The waffles are the point. The restaurant’s own site lists ten of them. The Plain Jane is $15. Eight flavored waffles are $25 each: banana pudding, birthday cake, blueberry lemon, cookies and cream, peach cobbler, red velvet, strawberry shortcake and sweet potato. At the top is the Soulfood Cornbread Waffle, $45, which comes with four wings, collard greens, candied yams and mac and cheese. You can add six wings to any other waffle for $10.

Chicken does not come with the waffle by default, which is the part that set off most of the online debate. Queen City News ran a story on the mixed reaction under the headline “$25 for waffles?!” and summed up the two camps: people who think the food is good but overpriced, and fans who say the prices are normal for Atlanta or Miami.

Past the waffles, the menu is a la carte. Six wings are $12. Two pieces of fried whiting are $15. Five mini crab cakes are $15. A nine ounce lobster tail is $40 at market price. Plates run from fried fish and grits at $21 to crab fried rice at $25 and lobster and grits at $32. Egg rolls come in jerk chicken and birria at $20 and a seafood boil version at $30. Sides are $7 across the board: collard greens with smoked turkey, mac and cheese, sweet potato casserole, grits and peach cobbler. There are six house sauces, one per order, including lemon pepper, sweet Thai chili and garlic Parmesan.

Both WSOC and QCity Metro also describe a health and wellness bar inside the restaurant with acai bowls, smoothies, yogurt parfaits, oatmeal bowls and wellness shots. That is an unusual thing to pair with fried chicken, and it is not on the online menu as of this writing, so ask when you visit.

One price we can clear up. Early reports, including Queen City News, listed bottled water at $6. The restaurant’s own menu page currently shows it at $4, with lemonades from $6 to $8. When a news report and a business’s own current page disagree, we go with the business, so $4 it is.

The opening day lines

By every account, opening day was a wait. Power 98, citing the Charlotte Observer, reported that a reporter who arrived at 9:30 a.m. waited three hours to get in, and that hundreds of people showed up. Queen City News described videos of crowds standing for more than three hours. Plenty of them were hoping to see DaBaby himself, and according to Power 98 he did not appear during the first four hours.

WCNC talked to a DJ in line who said the opening showed the rapper had not forgotten where he came from. That is the other half of the story. DaBaby has handed out Thanksgiving meals and Christmas gifts in Charlotte before, and a hometown restaurant lands differently than one more celebrity licensing deal.

Where it is, and when it is open

The address is 700 Atando Avenue, Charlotte, NC 28206. The restaurant’s site describes the spot as the North End, off North Graham Street. QCity Metro puts it less than two miles from both /directory-category/things-to-do/ and NoDa. Queen City News describes the block as mostly industrial, which matches what you will see when you pull up. The phone number is (980) 396-6355.

Hours are the part we are least sure about. WSOC reported on Sept. 7 that regular hours had not been posted. The restaurant’s site now lists Monday through Saturday, noon to 10 p.m., with separate patio hours of 5 p.m. to midnight on weekdays and 8 a.m. to midnight on weekends. The Sunday line on that page reads “12:30am to 10pm,” which looks like a typo. A third party ordering page shows 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Pre-opening coverage in June talked about 7 a.m. to 4 a.m. None of these agree. Call ahead, and we will update this when the posted hours settle.

A second note for anyone searching online: there are two websites using the No Knife name. One is a placeholder that still says “coming soon.” The live one, with the menu and hours, is the site we have used for the details above and the one linked from the directory listing.

Our read

The pricing argument is going to keep going, and it is a fair one. A $25 waffle without chicken is a lot for north Charlotte, whatever the comparison to Miami. But the restaurant drew a line that wrapped the block on opening day, the menu is more ambitious than a celebrity brunch spot needs to be, and it is bringing a full service, late night kitchen to a part of the city that does not have many. Whether people keep coming at these prices once the novelty wears off is the real question, and it is one only the next few months can answer.

No Knife Chicken & Waffles is now in the Queen City Magazine directory under https://queencitymagazine.com/directory/no-knife-chicken-and-waffles/. If you have been, tell us what you ordered and whether you would go back.

Know about a new business opening in Charlotte or the surrounding towns? Send us a tip and we will check it out.