Kindred Is Back on Davidson's Main Street, and the Kitchen Went Digging Through Its Old Menus
November 5, 2026
November 5, 2026
Before the old bar at Kindred came out, Katy Kindred had the carpenters map the countertop so the new bar would sit on exactly the same footprint. Unpretentious Palate reported that detail in its October 19 preview of the reopening. The new bar has a marble top, a darker base and a brass drink rail. Its outline matches the old one.
The same idea runs through the whole comeback at 131 N. Main St. Kindred reopened for dinner on Tuesday, Oct. 20, after nearly five months closed. The owners used that time to change the parts of the restaurant that serve the staff. The parts that serve the guest stayed as close to familiar as they could manage. Then they rebuilt the menu from the restaurant's own past.
The fire itself was minor. The Charlotte Observer reported in May that it started around 7:30 p.m. in a wastebasket in an upstairs bathroom. Nobody was hurt, and staff grabbed squeegees to dry the space as quickly as they could. The sprinklers did the real damage.
"Being that it was on the third floor ... (the water) just ran through the whole building like a sieve," Katy Kindred told CharlotteFive in its reopening story. "Almost anything that was wood had to be removed."
The water reached the basement, where the kitchen is. Per Unpretentious Palate, no kitchen equipment had to be replaced, though crews relaid the tile in the chef's table area next to the kitchen. That left the owners with a building stripped of much of its wood and a few months to decide how much the restaurant should change.
Their answer was very little, at least where diners can see it. "It basically got just a beautiful facelift," Katy Kindred told CharlotteFive. "It was really important to us that it felt very familiar."
She was even more direct with Unpretentious Palate: "Most of the changes, unless you're a Kindred diehard, probably won't be felt so much by the guests."
Here's what the two reports list as new:
Most of that list is back-of-house work. "A lot of the changes that we made were really more to benefit the staff than anything else," Katy Kindred told Unpretentious Palate. "There's a lot that we've learned in 12 years about how to lay out a bar, how to most efficiently have our service station set up."
Guests will notice one result over time. The extra back-bar storage gives bartenders room for tinctures and other ingredients that had no shelf space before, so the cocktail menu now has room to change. The room itself is meant to feel like the Kindred people remember.
The kitchen took the same approach. During the closure, the team went through every menu Kindred has served since it opened in 2015, Joe Kindred told CharlotteFive. Unpretentious Palate reported that some of the returning dishes come from the restaurant's original opening menu.
These are the dishes Joe Kindred named as coming back:
| Dish | What the chef said about it |
|---|---|
| Milk bread | The signature starter, and the return he's "single-handedly the most fired up about" |
| Crispy oysters | Named among the classics he's glad to see back |
| Pan-fried fish | Cooked until it's "golden, brown delicious" |
| Squid ink conchiglie | "Better than I ever remember. Like super, super good." |
| W8 Ranch wagyu tartare | A surf-and-turf plate with sea urchin mayo, crispy clams and horseradish |
| Shio koji ribeye | A steak that he says eats like dry-aged beef |
| Crudo with gooseberries | His favorite of the originals |
He also said the menu will stay put for a while. "This menu, I think we're going to keep it for a while and just really perfect everything. The cooks and everybody, we've just been through so much. We want to make sure that like everything we do is dialed in," he told CharlotteFive.
For regulars, that means the menu you see in November is likely the one you'll see for a while.
These dishes made Kindred's name in the first place. The CharlotteFive story recounts a Bon Appétit feature, James Beard Award semifinalist nods for Joe Kindred every year from 2016 through 2020, and a spot on The New York Times' 2021 list of the 50 best restaurants in the United States. The milk bread was on the table through all of it.
The reopening landed one day before the 2026 Michelin Guide American South ceremony in Nashville. The Kindreds didn't go. According to CharlotteFive, they stayed in Davidson to serve a dining room booked for 220 people.
"It shows that the town is loyal, which is amazing, and it shows that Charlotte shows up for what we do, and I just think it's such a blessing," Joe Kindred told CharlotteFive.
The results came out on Oct. 21. Unpretentious Palate's roundup reported that every Charlotte-area restaurant on last year's Recommended list kept its status. Kindred was on that list. The guide had already described Kindred as "destination dining" and singled out the freshly baked milk bread, the pasta and the bread pudding. The milk bread and a squid ink pasta are both on the returning menu.
Kindred's sister restaurants show up in the 2026 results too. Hello, Sailor, the Kindreds' lakeside restaurant in Cornelius, also kept its Recommended status. Albertine, their uptown Charlotte restaurant, made the list for the first time. The full 2026 American South guide grew to 265 restaurants, up from 228 last year. Counter- in Charlotte kept the only Michelin star in North Carolina.
Unpretentious Palate reported that much of the staff moved temporarily to the Kindreds' other restaurants, including Deepwell, their new steakhouse in Mooresville. Deepwell opened Sept. 16 at 185 N. Main St. in downtown Mooresville. We covered its Delta-inspired menu in an earlier post.
The team also stayed close to home. During the closure, Kindred staff volunteered in Davidson's community garden and picked up trash around the lake. In May, Joe Kindred thanked neighboring businesses and the Davidson community for their support and promised, "We're going to come back from this … and be better."
Joe Kindred also told CharlotteFive what he missed. "I felt like not having Kindred around as a place that I could pop in and get down in the kitchen and, you know, do my thing definitely felt like part of me was kind of missing," he said.
The Sept. 23 reservation announcement, reprinted by News of Davidson, was specifically about the return of dinner service. Check Kindred's website for current hours and booking before you go.
If you're making a night of it on North Main, Kindred is an easy walk from the rest of downtown. Our walkable day in Davidson post covers the blocks around it, and our earlier piece on the walk from Main Street to Sadler Square explains the town's newer to-go drink rules.
If you own near Kindred's block of North Main and want to know how your home compares today, Foster Rojahn Premier Properties can give you a local read on your Davidson property. Request a Free Home Valuation & Consultation.
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