Nicole’s Good Eats & Sweets — which once operated out of a South End ghost kitchen, but shut down a few years ago — is back. This time, you’ll find the restaurant churning out deliveries and takeout orders through a walkup window at the City West Commons shopping center.
Owner Nicole Peterkin, who has been a caterer for 20 years and grew up in New York City, crafts what she calls “urban soul food” out of the West Charlotte space.
“I’m trying to give the younger folks what they want. They don’t always want collard greens and mac and cheese,” she told CharlotteFive.
That’s where dishes like her New York- and Jamaican-inspired Rasta Pasta come in.
“I think mine is extraordinary, not to sound cocky,” Peterkin said with a thick Brooklyn accent. “The Rasta pasta is a really big hit.”
Even though Nicole’s Good Eats & Sweets sits just a few feet from Londa’s To-Go, another new soul food restaurant in the same shopping center, you’ll find a different style of food — and nothing but respect for the competition.
“She has a big following, and I’m brand new, but we both don’t do the same things. She’s more down home country, and while I’m more urban soul food,” said Peterkin, who gets satisfaction from cooking for others.
“If you don’t enjoy it, i don’t feel like I did a good job,” she said. “ It comes from cooking for my family as a kid. Mom would call from work and tell me how to start it. So if my mom and brothers didn’t like it, it would hurt my feelings. I like people to enjoy it.”
Other dishes from Nicole’s Good Eats & Sweets that she puts in the urban soul food category are Spanish Stewed Chicken, Jerk Ribs and Crab and Shrimp-Stuffed Baked Potatoes. But you’ll also find fried chicken, collard greens and candied yams, along with her version of her grandmother’s potato salad — which we’re going to get in to for a moment.
The online menu goes so far as to note: “This is no ordinary potato salad, everyone will ask, who made the potato salad?” So who could help but ask what’s so special about it.
“I think what really brings it out and makes it difference is that I don’t use a lot of relish, but I add carrots and celery seed. It’s something you never had before and didn’t know you’d like,” Peterkin revealed.
You’ll also note that sweets are embedded into the restaurant’s personality: Nicole’s Good Eats & Sweets offers a lineup of desserts such as banana pudding, red velvet cake, chocolate cheesecake and peach cobbler cheesecake — plus custom cakes.
“I like for them to mainly tell me their theme and color, and let me make the cake. I’m not really one to try to copy someone else’s design. I’ve been baking since I was 9 with my Holly Hobbie oven,” she said.
The restaurant has been closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays, but it’s working on expanding with hours daily. In just a few weekends, it will remain open until midnight on Fridays and Saturdays, with hopes of stretching those hours out to 2 a.m. by summer.
“I would love for people to try my food — and the ones who have come have been happy,” Peterkin said. “My main objective is to make people happy. I was raised to show love to everyone.”
Nicole’s Good Eats & Sweets Urban Soul Food
Location: 1540 West Blvd., Ste 100, Charlotte, NC 28208
Cuisine: Soul food, dessert
Facebook: @Nicolesgoodeats
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