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A taste for the unusual

2/1/2010

John (J.D.) Duncan, considered to be Charlotte, N.C.’s, pre-eminent culinary innovator, has been no fan of business-as-usual models and cookie-cutter concepts. Recruited to breathe new life into a restaurant space in the historic Atherton Mill shopping center, in Charlotte’s South End, Duncan is an entrepreneur who prefers to let the real estate drive the concept, not vice versa.

And the more unconventional, the better, it seems. In the late 1990’s Duncan bought a century-old brick church in Charlotte and turned it into a critically acclaimed fine-dining establishment called Bonterra Dining & Wine Room, which celebrated its 10th birthday in December.

He toured a shuttered auto-transmission shop and envisioned a pub, with a two-wheel twist: It would be a tasteful biker bar selling some of the best barbecue this side of Texas. The highly popular Mac’s Speed Shop was born.

His retake on a former French bistro site in a strip center: a Spanish tapas house called Las Ramblas, a sister property to Bonterra. It was a good call — Las Ramblas opened to high accolades.

Duncan’s distinctive efforts have garnered him national notoriety, even spurring influential Southern Living magazine to describe his savory, offbeat enterprises as “creative and full of surprises.”

His newest creation, a sports bar called Icehouse, will chill in a portion of the 100,000-square-foot Atherton Mill center that once housed South End Brewery, one of the most popular night spots in town at one time. “I will be there trying to bring back that crowd,” said Duncan, who will no doubt try to make fast friends with the occupants of Atherton Mill’s 850-unit condominium complex.

Duncan is no flash in the pan. Before emerging as one of Charlotte’s top entrepreneurs, he paid his dues in the restaurant industry. A graduate of The Culinary Institute of America, California’s Napa Valley campus, Duncan spent six years working for the Houston’s restaurant group, in Nashville and Atlanta, and 12 years in various roles with Buckhead Life Restaurant Group, Buckhead Diner, The Fish Market, Nava, and Pano’s & Paul’s.

By that time Duncan’s father, convinced of his son’s culinary skills, was willing to back him in a venture in Charleston, S.C. A lender told them that Charleston was a tough market for nonindigenous restaurateurs and that they might struggle there. Charlotte, though, about 200 miles north, was a little more receptive to outsiders, the lender said, and in need of fresh concepts. Shortly after arriving there in the late 1990s, they were checking out old warehouses to find an unconventional site and discovered the ornate Dilworth Methodist Episcopal Church. “We saw it and thought we could adjust the formula to accommodate fine dining there,” Duncan said.

At the time, most fine dining in Charlotte was what Duncan dubbed old school: somber-looking rooms, velvet seats and darkly attired waiters. Duncan’s fine-dining vision was more fun and upbeat — “elegant but casual,” as he describes it. Bonterra would create a buzz by offering an unheard-of 200 wines by the glass, typically sold in wine-tasting “flights” of four vintages, then paired with appropriate “food for wine” appetizers and entrées. An additional 300 wines would be available from Bonterra’s private cellar. The place opened in 1999 to rave reviews.

Duncan did his pre-Bonterra homework on a national scale. He traveled to Dallas, Los Angeles, San Diego and other cities to determine what worked and what did not at the better restaurants. He kept detailed notes on the foods, presentations and layouts he liked. But he found the inspiration for his Bonterra wine-and-dine vision appropriately enough in a Napa Valley grocery store, where he noticed a long row of wine bottles lined up in coolers near the front of the store. He theorized that such grocery-store-type coolers, which operate with circulating air currents, would be the perfect way to market wines for by-the-glass consumption and to control their temperatures. White wine would be kept at 42 degrees and red at 62 degrees, the same temperatures at which some of world’s largest wine-storage units keep their wines.

Wine Spectator magazine crowned Bonterra one of the country’s Hot New Wine Bars soon after it opened, and the restaurant also went on to win the AAA Four Diamond Award, a DiRoNA Award of Excellence, and numerous other distinctions.

“John is as fine an operator as there is in Charlotte,” said Lyle Darnall, managing director of Columbia, S.C.–based Edens & Avant, which in 2006 paid $20 million for the Atherton Mill complex, where Duncan’s Icehouse concept will reside. “And there’s no duplication in his concepts, from both a price-point and build-out standpoint.” The owners believe Duncan’s concept will go a long way to helping raise the profile of Atherton Mill as the epicenter of Charlotte’s South End. The signing has already spurred talks with several other food and fashion candidates, Darnall says. “John really is a perfect fit,” said Reynolds Allen, Edens & Avant’s development manager. “He is very creative and very detailed, and he knows exactly what he wants.”

Duncan is literally thinking “cool” in his design strategy for Icehouse. It will feature a 40-to-60-foot, custom-made, heavily iced trough under a glass case near the entrance, offering 200 different beers. The dining room’s 36-foot-high ceilings will be fitted with overhead fans spanning 24 feet and rotating at about 50 miles per hour; these will serve as both conversation pieces and an environmentally virtuous solution to the cooling challenges typically associated with such spacious structures. The 5,600-square-foot Icehouse will also have an expansive patio area visible from busy South Boulevard.

The redesign and retrofit will cost about $1.2 million, including an unspecified amount of tenant-improvement money from Edens & Avant, which has spent the past three years working on renewal plans for the 100,000-square-foot center. The landlord seeks additional restaurants as well as more national and local retailers. Among the mostly local tenants in the 10-acre cluster of four buildings are Evolution Fitness, Rudino’s Pizza & Grinders and Ferguson Bath & Kitchen.

Icehouse fare will consist of large-portion gourmet versions of sports-bar favorites, including two-handed sandwiches and burgers with unusual cheeses, plus Tex-Mex creations, wings and savory ribs and other barbecue, courtesy of the same expert who helped make Mac’s Speed Shop such a success, Dan Boone.

Boone, also chef at Bonterra’s, is a master barbecue cook and winner of several competitions, so Duncan found himself with what he considered to be the perfect fare when he opened Mac’s. “It’s funny, because my partners originally wanted to put in a kind of rough-and-rowdy biker bar there, like you’d see in Myrtle Beach and Daytona Beach, but I said we can’t just do a redneck biker bar; we’d never make it,” Duncan said. He toned down the rougher elements and created a setting decked in sports memorabilia where nonbikers and families would feel comfortable.

Duncan has since sold his stake in Mac’s, which now has added two additional sites, though he remains a partner in another earlier creation — The Lodge: A Sportsmen’s Grill. The 70-seat, family-friendly sports bar-and-grill offers blue-plate specials with such stick-to-your-ribs items as chicken-fried steak and shepherd’s pie.

Duncan also operates a brisk catering business on the side that peaks during football season. His food is commonly served at corporate parties outside and inside Carolina Panthers home games. Duncan is a die-hard Panthers fan connected with a lot of the team’s executives and players, who have frequented Bonterra over the years.

Even with all this, Duncan is not one to rest on what he has already done. “Charlotte really doesn’t have one of those funky, eclectic little breakfast places with mismatched chairs and plates where people like to gather,” he said, “and I’d like to do one.” And he says he already has a site in the South End in mind.