Mattie's Diner

It’s late. You’ve been partying all night and you are hungry.  What are you to do?  There are few 24 hour options in Charlotte to get breakfast or any type of food besides the Waffle House.  I’m not a fan of the Waffle House even at 2:00 in the morning.  Having lived in larger cities, the 24-hour diner was a must after hanging out all night with friends.  I’m glad these folks from New Jersey thought it was a good idea to drive down the highway and bring Mattie’s Diner with them.  This is a true diner. Loud, obnoxious party goers who are carbo-loading on deep fried onion rings, burgers and milkshakes after a night of drinking and dancing.  Mattie’s is ideally located in the NC Music Factory so it gets a lot of people around 1 or 2 am.   It is long with booth seats that stretch the length of the diner as well as the iconic bar stools that make a diner feel like a diner.  I was lucky enough to find one bar stool for me and I hopped on it ready to order my late night meal. 

I had been working all day and the only thing I wanted was a buttery pancake.  Mattie’s didn’t disappoint, but I will get to that in a minute.  The breakfast menu is not as expansive as you would think for a diner, but it has the basics: eggs, meat, potatoes, coffee, pancakes and French toast.  They put their own little twist on the menu like the Hunka Hunka Burnin Toast which is a tribute to Elvis and his love for peanut butter and bananas.  The rest of the menu has a variety of sandwiches, salads, appetizers like loaded fries (I will try those next time) and wings.  They are known for their burgers and all burgers come in turkey in case you don’t eat beef.  One other good menu offering are the milkshakes.  They have 18 to choose from and with your basics and a few creative options.  I sat right in front of the old school milkshake machine where they were making the Cookies and Cream.  The server dumped it scoops of vanilla ice cream, heavy cream and crushed Oreos.  This milkshake is the real deal and not for the lactose intolerant. 

I knew I wanted a pancake and luckily I could order just one.  Now, for the rest of my meal I had a decision to make.  One thing I love is to go out and order breakfast mainly because everyone cooks it better than me.  When I order, I like to get a little bit of everything.  Luckily for me they have a dish called Pappy’s.  It came with two eggs, your choice of breakfast meat, toast (which I declined) and potatoes.  The food came out within 10 minutes of ordering and the portions were hearty.  This dish hit the spot!  I love potatoes and these were cooked with a little crust on them so it made them kind of crunchy.  They serve sausage patties, which were large and they have a little bit a spice, which is always good. You can get your eggs however you want of course and mine were over easy.   Some people say it is hard to mess up breakfast, but I disagree.  Everyone can not make a great breakfast, but these folks know what they are doing. 

This will definitely be one of my go to spots for late night eats, which by the way they are only open 24hours Thurs-Sun.  The food is cheap, the people are nice and the atmosphere is a throwback to the diners of the 50’s.  It’s worth your time to drive over to the NC Music Factory for some late night grub!