Greg Collier brings Southern-French cuisine to SouthPark

Restaurateur Greg Collier is no stranger to Southern cuisine. In fact, for the Memphis-born chef — and James Beard Award finalist — his craft has always been informed by his heritage: a Black American born and raised in the South.

“Everything I do, and will ever do, will have a thread of Southern in it,” Collier said. “That’s who I am. That’s where I’m from.”

Collier is best known for his restaurant ventures Uptown Yolk, 3rd and Fernwood, and the acclaimed but temporarily closed Leah and Louise — all run with his wife, Subrina Collier. Now, he’s also taken over as the executive chef at Fine and Fettle, a hotel restaurant in the Canopy by Hilton in SouthPark.

An intimate portrait of a smiling Black couple in a warmly lit lounge. The man, wearing a beanie, leans back with a drink in hand. The woman, with curly hair and glasses, sits beside him. They are on a comfortable couch, with a vintage Tiffany lamp casting a warm glow over the scene. BayHaven Restaurant Group owners Greg and Subrina Collier. Peter Taylor

“We want to make sure that people coming from Chicago and Detroit and Columbia have a phenomenal experience,” Collier said.

Come October, his debut dinner menu will feature dishes with distinctly Southern flavors. Collier also plans to add playful renditions of French classics.

“The first thing we gotta look at is to make sure we’re providing a well-rounded menu that hotel guests can get down with and local folks in the area can get down with,” Collier told CharlotteFive. “Then, as we build the program, it’s going to start leaning French influence.”

While Fine and Fettle won’t be a classic French restaurant, Collier, a formally trained chef who knows his way around the mother sauces, says he’ll pay homage to the style.

“This is not going to be a French restaurant,” Collier said. “It’s going to be a Southern restaurant. When you come in, you’re going to see certain nods, certain touches of a French thought process in the food.”

What to expect

For Collier, heritage means everything; it’s intrinsic to who he is as a chef.

At Leah and Louise, the menu focused on his story. There, Collier explored the African Diaspora, imagining what Southern food would have been like had slavery never existed in America. It was an exploration of Southern cooking without constraints.

“What if slavery never happened and Black folks still came to America? How would we put together dishes? Would it still be super humble, using parts that nobody else wanted? Or would it be more refined?” Collier said.

At Fine and Fettle, Collier still ponders that question, but he’s looking at it through a different lens: Southern influence on French cooking, or vice versa. This time the menu won’t be about his story but rather a creative exercise in Southern cuisine.

“We’re going to do Southern food, but it won’t be necessarily entrenched in me and my story,” Collier said. “It won’t be about me.”

The expansive dining room of a modern, brightly lit restaurant. In the center, a long, tufted banquette in a caramel leather provides seating for multiple tables. The room has high ceilings, a long bar to the left, and a full-view open kitchen along the back wall where chefs are working. The floors are a light wood laid in a herringbone pattern. Fine & Fettle features a modern yet approachable ambience. Courtesy of Fine & Fettle CharlotteFive

One of the standout dishes is a pan-seared duck breast served with braised collard greens and a house-made cornmeal gnocchi. If there’s one thing you should know about Collier, is that he loves to eat and cook duck. Can you blame him?

There’s also a seared scallop plate served with pickled okra, a potlikker (the liquid leftover from cooking collard greens) redux and Hoppin’ John — a classic African-American Southern rice and pea dish traditionally made with pork, but Collier adds smoked turkey meat instead.

It’s his version of surf and turf. It’s also a dish that may be unfamiliar to hotel guests visiting Charlotte from out of town.

“I think Hoppin’ John is a dish that is going to be new to people,” Collier said.

For a side dish, Collier recommends the sweet potato yeast rolll, served with a decadent sweet potato honey butter.

“One of the things that I pride myself on is not throwing things away,” Collier said. “We’re going to use the sweet potato peels after we wash the potatoes and make the sweet potato honey.”

Not just dinner

Aside from dinner, Fine and Fettle is also open for breakfast. Collier has created a diverse menu with vegetarian options like an umami mushroom toast, served with a wild mushroom ragu and topped with a savory coffee (made using Pure Intentions Coffee), togarashi and crunchy collard greens.

“You take portobello mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, shallots, thyme and garlic — again a super traditional French-style ragu — and de-glaze with marsala,” Collier explains. “Add a little heavy cream, add a little vegetable stock, cook it down to where it’s really nice and rich with mushrooms. If you close your eyes, that might have a little more umami than eating a burger.”

Other dishes include an avocado toast (an admittedly inescapable modern breakfast dish), but Collier’s added pickled green onions, pistachios and watermelon radish.

“I’m always thinking about the juxtaposition of things,” Collier said.

A confident Black man with a full beard and a dark bucket hat stands in a field of tall grass and wildflowers. He is wearing a black t-shirt with a “Boyz n the Hood” graphic and a brown apron. He looks directly at the camera with a neutral expression, holding his hands at his waist. The background consists of trees and an overcast sky. Chef Greg Collier’s food will be featured at Sunflowers at Sunset Dinner at Sowing Seeds Russell Farm. Alexander Palumbo

The breakfast menu also offers classic egg white omelets, a grits bowl and a duck-fat poached flank steak and eggs.

With a handful of steakhouses within close proximity to Fine and Fettle, Collier says he isn’t trying to compete with that market. But rather, he’s working to refine a menu that resonates with hotel guests and locals alike.

“We want to exercise proper service and phenomenal cookery,” Collier said. “We want the standards for execution to be so high in the restaurant at every single point, from the coffee to the wine, to the cocktails, to the service, to the cooking. Once we get to that place, we’ll know who our clientele is.”

Fine and Fettle

Location: Canopy by Hilton Charlotte SouthPark, 4905 Barclay Downs Dr, Charlotte, NC 28210

Cuisine: Southern

Instagram: @fineandfettlecharlotte

This story was originally published September 22, 2025 at 5:30 AM.