Grey’s Diner: a Michelin recognized chef took over the Mattie’s diner car, and it is one of the year’s best openings

The diner car on The Plaza has a new name, a new chef and, five months in, a place on the short list of the year’s best openings. https://queencitymagazine.com/directory/greys-diner-and-community-kitchen/ opened at 3100 The Plaza on April 27 in the restored 1940s car that Charlotte knew for two decades as Mattie’s Diner. The chef is Sam Diminich, whose other restaurant, /directory-category/restaurants-and-food/, holds a Michelin recommendation. In its August ranking of the city’s 30 best restaurants, Axios Charlotte called Grey’s one of its favorite openings of 2026.

We have not had it in the directory until now. Here is the story of the car, the chef, and what a diner run by a James Beard semifinalist actually serves.

The car

Mattie’s was never just a restaurant. According to Axios, the diner car was built in the 1940s and operated for decades in New Jersey before owner Matt King hauled it south in 2005. It ran 24 hours a day at the Music Factory for about ten years, closed suddenly, sat homeless for a while, and reopened in Plaza Shamrock in 2022. It closed again in summer 2025. King told Axios he chose Diminich’s group because they respected the car’s history and had a plan for the neighborhood.

The car is still the heart of the place. The Charlotte Observer reported that the space now seats more than 100 across the 40 seat diner car, a larger community room and a patio. The booths and the counter are intact. What changed is the kitchen.

The chef

Diminich runs Your Farms Your Table, the farm to table catering and meal group, and opened Restaurant Constance in west Charlotte in 2022, about a mile from where he was once homeless. Axios told that story in detail in 2022: years of addiction, a hospital stay, sobriety beginning in November 2014, and a climb back through kitchens in South Carolina before he got to Charlotte to be near his kids. Constance is named for his daughter. Grey’s is named for his son, Allan Grey.

The idea, as he put it in the February announcement, was that “Diners are one of the last truly inclusive dining spaces.” The pitch is Michelin level hospitality in a room where nobody needs a reservation and the bill does not require a special occasion. Grey’s own site describes it as a place where locally sourced food should be accessible to everyone, and asks people to come as they are.

What “community kitchen” means

The second half of the name is not decoration. FSR Magazine reported at the opening that Your Farms Your Table already runs catering, personal chef services and community meals, and that Grey’s is meant to extend that work into a permanent room. The site lists catering and events alongside the regular menus, and the larger community room next to the diner car is built for exactly that. The stated goal is that locally sourced food should not be a luxury item, and a diner with a $16 chicken sandwich is a more honest test of that idea than a tasting menu.

What is on the menu

Axios’ opening week review gives the shape of it. Diner classics with a fine dining touch, sourced from the same farms that supply Constance:

• Fried chicken sandwich, $16.
• Burger, $18.
• Short rib and eggs bowl, $24.
• A full vegan lineup, including black bean chilaquiles, vegan marshmallow French toast and a plant based Sloppy Joe.
• Layer cakes, pies and milkshakes for dessert.

Coffee comes from Enderly, the west Charlotte roaster, and the bar runs from fresh juices in the morning to cocktails at night, with nonalcoholic options throughout. The Observer notes the menu leans on Diminich family recipes. The Axios reviewer’s verdict on the chicken sandwich, the short rib and eggs and the chocolate milkshake was that all three were as good as anything she had eaten this year.

Hours, and a correction

This is where you need to read carefully, because the early coverage is out of date. When Grey’s opened in April, Axios and the Observer both reported it would be open daily from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. The restaurant’s own site now lists a different schedule, and we go with the business:

• Breakfast and lunch: Monday, Thursday and Friday, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.
• Dinner: Monday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 5 to 9 p.m.; Sunday, 5 to 8 p.m.
• Closed Tuesday and Wednesday.

So it is a five day operation now, not seven, with a break between lunch and dinner. The phone number is 980-277-2375. There is online ordering and a waitlist on the site. Our read: a chef driven diner trimming its hours after a summer of running breakfast through dinner every day is not a warning sign, it is a sign the owners are protecting the kitchen and the staff. Call ahead on a Tuesday all the same.

The neighborhood

Plaza Shamrock is the pocket of east Charlotte between NoDa and Plaza Midwood, ranch houses and a high school, a few blocks off The Plaza. Until this spring its restaurant scene was mostly memory. Now Grey’s sits a short walk from https://queencitymagazine.com/directory/postscript/, the neighborhood restaurant that opened in the old Letty’s on Shamrock space the same month, and the two together have given the area a reason to eat close to home. We have a separate story on PostScript today.

Grey’s Diner and Community Kitchen is now in the Queen City Magazine directory under https://queencitymagazine.com/directory/greys-diner-and-community-kitchen/. If you have been, tell us what you ordered and whether the milkshake lives up to it.

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