Chef Blake Hartwick not only creates imaginative dishes but uses his resources to get the freshest food available for his contemporary American cuisine. Fish are flown in overnight from Hawaii, the Gulf of Mexico and South Carolina’s coast. All seafood is served less than 24 hours after being caught. |
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By Tom Crosby
(March 2008) Inside a former church in the up-and-coming Charlotte area known as South End, is Bonterra Dining and Wine Room. The building itself was erected in 1915, and the site itself was home to an African Methodist Episcopal church from 1895 to the 1960s. With such an interesting history, AAA rated Four Diamond Bonterra delivers a heavenly experience.
From vegetables picked at a community farm in Waxhaw, NC, to chocolates made especially for the restaurant by Barking Dog Chocolatiers in Charlotte, the individual touch makes each diner feel special.
Valets give a warm greeting before offering complimentary valet parking. Most guests enter up the steps to the side door of the church, covered with a black awning, but two other entrances are available. Guests can enter from the opposite side through a patio dining area or through the front door - the typical double door church entrance surrounded with stained glass.
The more popular awning covered entrance finds an open kitchen on the left and with a slight right turn, the wine bar, fronting the expansive dining area. The wine bar is the first stop with 600 wines available - more than 200 by the glass. Named one of the country’s Hot New Wine Bars by Wine Spectator Magazine, the restaurant boasts the most wines available by the glass in the United States.
“We’d like to say the most in the world, but we can’t verify it right now,” said restaurant owner John Duncan. Bonterra is consistently awarded Best Wine List by the Charlotte Observer and Creative Loafing. More than a dozen beers and several champagnes also are available.
 Duncan usually can be found talking with guests at the bar in late afternoon or tasting a wine with a visiting seller. He recently sold his most expensive wine, a 1979 Opus One, for $1,500.
Above the bar is a commanding painting titled “Lot and His Daughters” completed by Johann Carl Loth in 1692. This 6-foot-by-8-foot piece and nearly a dozen other smaller pieces along the walls are on loan from the McColl Fine Art Museum.
Hugh McColl, the former CEO and Chairman of Bank of America, thought of the partnership after dining at Bonterra one evening.
According to Duncan, McColl stopped at the bar to say goodbye after finishing his evening meal. He reportedly looked up at the space above the bar and said, “I have the perfect piece to go up there.”
The space was previously filled with clocks displaying the time zones of all the major wine regions of the world. Lot and His Daughters, which sells for $150,000, has become an excellent conversation piece, and the bartenders love to provide verbal details on the work, along with a laminated description.
 Another conversation starter is the building itself. After purchasing the building in 1997, Duncan and his father began a $1 million renovation. The two cleaned and polished every brick of the exterior. Inside they added the kitchen and made a few changes to the dining area as well, including extending the former church balcony, called the choir loft, now a choice eating spot.
The main dining area seats about 100, and the choir loft seats up to 50. One side of the balconied area was the original choir room enclosed with windows that close for privacy.
Also unique to the second floor is the rounded area that reaches over the main floor. The rounded banister was the communion railing originally in front of the altar. Pews and other church artifacts were destroyed in a warehouse fire.
More privacy is available down below. The wine cellar, called the cave, seats 10 amid bottles of wine at a cool 64 degrees, a Scotch pine ceiling and soft lighting. Guests can call ahead to reserve the room for a special dining experience. No room fee is charged.
The outside patio dining area seats about 20 amid hostas, hibiscus and other flowers.
The Food
Chef Blake Hartwick not only creates imaginative dishes but uses his resources to get the freshest food available for his contemporary American cuisine. Fish are flown in overnight from Hawaii, the Gulf of Mexico and South Carolina’s coast. All seafood is served less than 24 hours after being caught.
Relaxing with a wine at the bar before a meal, guests can snack on foods that complement wines. Choices include Sonoma goat cheese and smoked salmon, slices of prosciutto, and a bowl of niçoise and picholine olives.
 And for those who simply can’t decide which wine to enjoy, both red and white “flights” are available. Each flight includes four 2-ounce pours of wines, following a theme. A white flight might include four types of Sauvignon Blanc or four types of Rieslings.
At the dining table, white linen is accented simply with a glass vase holding two roses. Service is so attentive that when a couple realized they came with just credit cards, the waiter offered to lend them a few dollars to tip the valet.
The menu offers eight choices of starters, from Tuna Poki, jumbo scallops to Peeky-Toe Crab Cake with sweet and sour slaw. Chef Hartwick also offers a soup of the day - typically a chilled soup for the summer and a warmer one during colder days.
The four salad choices are also excellent.
Hartwick has helped develop a partnership with New Town Farms in Waxhaw, an organic farm that supplies the restaurant’s tomatoes and some greens. As a result, the tomato salad includes slices of yellow, green, red and purple tomatoes, each with their own flavor that blends with the shaved gouda and arugula pesto.
The Magnolia salad comes with baby greens and toasted almonds in a balsamic vinaigrette, with warm goat cheese on the side. Shitake Mushrooms are blended into the Chilled Soba Noodle and Cucumber Salad, and the Azalea Salad includes sliced apples, bacon and bleu cheese.
Bread is made fresh each day and served with herbed butter.
All entrees are cooked over a wood-burning stove packed with hickory. Menu items range from the Cedar Plank Wild Salmon (cooked on a cedar plank) for $23 to a filet mignon and half fried lobster tail for $52. Other exquisite choices are wood grilled lamb, roasted duck (succulent and moist) and caramelized jumbo scallops.
Dessert, if you have room for it, offers seven delicious choices. The Chocolate Soufflé is $9, and all the others are $7. Sweet Port wines also are available to accompany a sampler dish of salty bleu cheese, berries, nuts drizzled in honey and chocolates from Barking Dog Chocolatiers.
Barking Dog designs and handcrafts candies, petits fours and cookies exclusively for Bonterra. All profits from the sale of boxes and gifts go to SupportWorks, a Charlotte-based nonprofit organization that helps people find and form support groups for numerous issues such as cancer, epilepsy and gambling. The chocolatiers volunteer their time, making sweets good enough to make you drop your fork and sit back against your seat.
Bonterra’s wine bar opens at 4:30 p.m. Monday-Saturday. The dining room opens at 5:30 p.m. The restaurant remains flexible but typically closes at 10 p.m. Monday-Thursday and at 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Reservation may be made by calling 704-333-WINE or visiting www.BonterraDining.com
(Updated March 2008)
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