Come for a meal, leave with a Mustang at this restaurant in a Charlotte car dealership
Blake and Carol Anderson didn’t plan to open a restaurant inside of a Charlotte car dealership.
“We launched our food truck in 2018,” Carol told CharlotteFive. “We weren’t looking to open a restaurant and didn’t have the capital.” When Town and Country Ford approached the couple in late 2022, they couldn’t turn down the opportunity.
The Anderson’s Nor’East Family Treats & Eats food truck had become a staple at Town and Country’s employee appreciation events. After each semi-annual event, employees raved about the burgers, sandwiches and ice cream. When the Pit Stop Cafe moved out of its space at the dealership, it was a no-brainer for Nor’East to move in.
“It was a harebrained idea to start a food truck in the first place,” Blake laughs. “But food has the power to remind you of home and we want to do that — remind folks of coming back home.”
American food with a New England twist
Blake and Carol are both from New Hampshire and lived all across the country before relocating to Charlotte in 2006.
“New England food is hyper-local, and each region has its own thing,” Blake said. “Most of our food tends to be messy. It’s basically American food with a New England twist.”
One look at the restaurant’s menu reveals nods to New England: a signature Vermont maple farm burger, Maine Italian and North Shore roast beef sandwiches, Cape Cod and Northeast pickled beet salads and Boston cream pie. The Vermont maple farm burger includes two beef patties, bacon, a fried egg and sharp cheddar cheese — with a maple syrup and onion aioli — on a locally baked brioche bun.
“A lot of New England food is comfort food like Southern food,” Carol said. The couple prides itself on making many items in-house — including homemade awesome sauce, bourbon glaze, honey mustard, ranch, tartar sauce and secret sauce for the steak sandwich.
Nor’East Family Treats & Eats offers daily specials, including fish and chips every Friday. “Seafood is big in New England,” Blake said. “We don’t do a lot of seafood, but we offer clam chowder, fish chowder and, of course, fish and chips on Friday.”
A place where people feel comfortable
The Andersons don’t sugarcoat what it’s like working inside of a food truck. “It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter — and always fast-paced,” Blake said, praising his staff who work in both the food truck and restaurant.
The restaurant’s ambience is a far-cry from the back of the food truck — by design. “We want this to be a place where people feel comfortable. Where they can rest for a minute with good food,” Carol said.
Regular customer Vicki Gettys feels right at home when she visits Nor’East Family Treats & Eats — six days a week. “They’re very accommodating to diet issues,” Gettys told CharlotteFive. “The burgers and fries can’t be beat, and I love their soups and salads. And the desserts — Oh. My. Gosh!”
“We want our guests to experience beauty through taste,” Blake said. “That’s why we have a pot roast sandwich on special from time to time — one smell sends me straight back to my mom cooking a pot roast on Sunday afternoons.”
Treats and sweets
Nor’East Family Treats & Eats has a vast menu of breakfast and lunch offerings, but really shines when it comes to the treats part of its name.
“Every small town in New England has an ice cream place,” Blake said. “We’ve always got 12 flavors of ice cream to choose from, and our scoops are huge.” The ice cream sundae menu is expansive and each is named after a mountain in Maine, New Hampshire or Vermont.
The Mount Katahdin sundae, for instance, consists of two scoops of Maine moose tracks ice cream and a scoop of cappuccino toffee crunch ice cream atop a bed of M&M’s covered with chocolate sauce, marshmallow sauce, whipped cream and Oreo crumbles.
The restaurant also has a wide selection of pies. Peanut butter pie, Boston cream pie and whoopie pie are among the staples, while specialties like strawberry rhubarb pie are available on a seasonal basis.
Carol’s maiden name is Sweet, and in the 1940s her grandfather owned The Sweet Shop, a small store in Maine that sold candy, ice cream and more. It’s only fitting that she offers customers sweet treats decades later — with a touch of New England hospitality.
Nor’East Family Treats & Eats
Location: Inside Town and Country Ford, 5401 E Independence Blvd, Charlotte, NC 28212
Cuisine: American, New England
Hours: Monday through Friday, 7 a.m.-3 p.m.; Saturday, 8 a.m.-3 p.m.
Instagram: @noreasttreats
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