The chicken is brined, battered and fried, the biscuits are layered with lard, and the sides come family style. That is the food at Haberdish, and the room it is served in was built as a Southern mill town kitchen, in a neighborhood that was one. Southern Living put it on its lists of the South’s best bars and best restaurants in 2018, the first national recognition for the couple who own it.
Haberdish was their third restaurant on the block. It was the one, Jeff Tonidandel has said, where he found his voice.
It started in a recession
Tonidandel and Jamie Brown met at Davidson College in 1996. He was recruited to play tennis, she to play basketball, and they started dating after graduation and took corporate jobs, he with NASCAR and she with Lance, according to Charlotte Magazine. Both hold MBAs, his from Case Western. In 2008 Tonidandel quit, and the couple left the country to backpack. They came home to the financial crisis and, Axios wrote, did what any reasonable person would do: opened a restaurant.
Crepe Cellar Kitchen and Pub opened in April 2009 with eleven tables, in a NoDa space they found because it was the only one a landlord would lease to two people with no experience in the middle of the Great Recession, Queen City Nerve reported. They bought the yogurt shop next door to reach eighteen tables. In August 2010 Growlers Pourhouse opened beside it, a craft beer bar with a serious kitchen; Tonidandel, whose sponsorship work with companies like Coors had given him an interest in beer, became the first certified cicerone in Charlotte.
Haberdish opened two doors down in November 2016 and was, in Axios’s account, an overnight success, with reservations booked and lines from brunch to nightcap. The idea, Tonidandel told QC Exclusive at the time, was to recreate the handmade family meal you would have after church on Sundays. Reigning Doughnuts followed in 2017 next to Growlers. Business was strong enough that Brown left her job and joined full time.
The people behind it
The Tonidandel-Brown Restaurant Group is the couple, their three children and, at last count in 2019, 96 employees. Colleen Hughes, with the group fifteen years, runs the bar programs across the restaurants, and her cocktails have appeared in Garden & Gun and USA Today. Tonidandel builds furniture himself; the tables at Supperland are his.
The couple insist preservation was never part of the mission, Queen City Nerve wrote, and yet every restaurant they have opened is in an old and sometimes historic building. In 2019 they leased a 1952 church at 1212 The Plaza in Plaza Midwood, with a 1936 building behind it, after eyeing the site for three years. Our main thing is preserving something as beautiful as this and giving it a new life, Brown told Charlotte Magazine. Supperland opened in March 2021 after renovations and a pandemic’s worth of anxiety, with a hundred-seat dining room in the former sanctuary, a chef’s counter over an open-fire kitchen in the chancel, and a menu modeled on church potlucks and meat-and-three diners. Axios called it without question the hottest new restaurant of the year.
Ever Andalo, an Italian restaurant, followed on the NoDa block in 2022, built in a four-week dash Axios chronicled. In 2022 the couple bought a second church, a 1915 building, and opened it in May 2025 as Leluia Hall, their first seafood restaurant, with Supperland’s executive chef Chris Rogienski moving over. A PBS series about the couple, Fork & Hammer, premiered in October 2025 at the Carolina Theatre.
The group’s stated second mission runs alongside the food: to build a company that creates job opportunities for its staff, a safe and enjoyable place to work and a way for people to grow. That is the language on Supperland’s own site, and the fifteen-year tenure of its bar director suggests it is not only language. When the couple were profiled in 2019 they had 96 employees across four restaurants; the count has grown with Supperland, Ever Andalo and Leluia Hall.
What you actually order
At Haberdish the fried chicken is the reason to come and the sides are the reason to stay: mac and cheese, the biscuits and a rotating set of Southern vegetables served to share. The cocktails are Hughes’s, and they draw as much attention as the food. Weekend brunch fills the room, and the line moves faster than it looks.
The block is the experience. Crepes at one door, a rare beer and oysters at the next, fried chicken at the third, Italian at the fourth and a doughnut to finish, without moving the car. The neighborhood has been awesome and supportive from the beginning, Tonidandel told Axios in 2016. If your friends are coming to town and you want to show them Charlotte, the editor of Unpretentious Palate told Davidson’s magazine, you take them to Haberdish or Supperland.
Supperland is the special-occasion version, with an open-fire kitchen that uses no gas or electric appliances, thoughtfully sourced proteins, quick-charred vegetables and family-style sides, and a cocktail bar in the 1936 building out back. Leluia Hall, the 1915 church, runs a raw bar of oysters and ceviche built around citrus, which Tonidandel has said the kitchen has a huge knowledge base for. Ever Andalo is the Italian night. None of them is cheap, and Axios noted that Supperland was a step up in price from everything before it; for a couple raising three children on fried chicken and doughnuts, it wrote, it felt like time.
Why it matters
Charlotte demolishes its old buildings faster than almost any city its size, and the restaurants that occupy the ones left are the ones people remember. Tonidandel and Brown built a block of them in NoDa during a recession and then took on two churches, and every one of those rooms would likely be an apartment building without them. They are helping craft Charlotte’s dining identity, the Unpretentious Palate editor said, and it is hard to argue.
Haberdish is a very good fried chicken restaurant. It is also the place where a tennis player with an MBA found his voice, in a building he did not tear down.