A taste of New Orleans keeps up with the times

TROY HULL | THE CHARLOTTE POST

Sharon and Cliff Freshwater are owners of Freshwaters, a New Orleans-style restaurant on North Graham Street.

Cliff and Sharon Freshwater have been in the restaurant business for decades.

Their New Orleans-style restaurant at North Graham Street serves  dishes meant to remind you of the Big Easy.

The restaurateurs began their journey in New Jersey in the 1980s when they opened a joint with no prior experience. They called it the Southern Style Sensation.

“The people that knew us would come into the restaurant when we first started out in 1986-1987 and say ‘why don’t y’all use y’all last name, it is a beautiful last name for a restaurant,’” said Cliff Freshwater, who is originally from Elizabeth City.

“We were at the first restaurant for maybe three years and that second year we [were] there we heard it so many times that we said ‘you know what we gonna do? On our next menu what we did was, we started phasing out Southern Style Sensation. So on the menu we made ‘Southern Style Sensation’ smaller and ‘Freshwater Restaurant’ bigger until it completely faded out.”

In 2013, the couple moved to Charlotte to continue their journey and Freshwaters opened in 2015.

“A lot of our customers would tell us, ‘Y’all need to move to Charlotte,’” Cliff said.

Despite the many challenges of new businesses surrounding them, the Freshwaters have continued their mission to serve good food. Even when the world came to a stop in 2020 amid the Covid-19 pandemic which threatened the stability of local businesses, the Freshwaters kept their doors open.

When you enter the restaurant, there is a southern feel in the air. The restaurant is clean, organized and filled with pictures that tell the Freshwaters’ story throughout their journey in the food business.

Cliff said a way they keep up with the growing competition of new restaurants is by keeping pace, something that has kept their doors open.

“We try to do everything we can to keep our customers coming,” he said.

The restaurant offers a variety of dishes and seafood including crab cakes, salmon and ribs.

At first glance, the most popular dishes are seafood options which are grilled, Cajun, and fried with loads of flavor.

We tried the grilled tilapia with potato salad and mac and cheese. The fish was delicate and filled with flavor. The mac and cheese were cheesy and the potato salad creamy. A kick of the paprika hits at the beginning but you get used to the taste with every bite.

Cliff Freshwater, who does all the cooking in-house, showcased some customer favorites like blackened salmon with cabbage and rice with red beans. He’s a self-taught chef who visited New Orleans in 2005 and took it upon himself to learn about the culture and food to turn it into a thriving business.

Visitors are served a warm single cornbread with butter on the side when they sit down.

“What we originally wanted to do was to eventually take our southern roots, our southern recipes and infuse them with New Orleans,” Freshwater said.

Why New Orleans?

“I like the way they cook,” he said. “I like their seasoning. I like the way they did it. I just became infatuated.”

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