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With decor changes, 5Church Charlotte recognizes the restaurant game as a multifront battle BY ANDY SMITH
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WHEN 5CHURCH CHARLOTTE reopened in February, the uptown restaurant emerged from the pandemic with a new executive chef, Sherief Shawky, and a few new menu items, including a nowpopular seafood tower. Another big change: a massive interior mural, courtesy of the artists behind the works in all of 5th Street Group’s restaurants. “We felt strongly that if we were to reintroduce ourselves to the marketplace, we had to put our best foot forward,” partner Patrick Whalen tells me in May. “We wanted diners to see something they’ve never seen before, another side of us, which is the same reason chefs may add features to the menu.”
CHARLOTTEMAGAZINE.COM // AUGUST 2021
The mural wraps around an interior wall and highlights several tales from Aesopica, the collection of ancient Greek fables credited to the slave and storyteller. Among 5Church’s illustrated Aesop’s fables are “The Wolf and the Crane” and “The Scorpion and the Frog,” and the artists who worked on it include Charleston’s Honey McCrary and locals Matt Hooker, Matt Moore, Nathaniel Lancaster, Corey McGovern, Brian Michelotti, and Jon Norris. When Whalen was growing up, his father would read Aesop’s fables to him. Today, Whalen says the text still “offers an incredible resource of parables with real-life application,” even if the protagonists are often wild animals that talk. The
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