{"id":12720,"date":"2015-05-17T09:44:26","date_gmt":"2015-05-17T14:44:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brubakers.us\/?p=12720"},"modified":"2015-05-17T09:44:26","modified_gmt":"2015-05-17T14:44:26","slug":"blackfinn-ameripub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/?p=12720","title":{"rendered":"Blackfinn Ameripub"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On one of the nights our group walked to the EpiCentre in downtown Charlotte to find somewhere relatively inexpensive to eat. We were originally going to go to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flemingssteakhouse.com\"  target=\"_blank\">Fleming&#8217;s<\/a> but it had four dollar signs next to its name on the restaurant list. We had to keep it three or under because <em>some people<\/em> ate at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ruthschris.com\"  target=\"_blank\">Ruth&#8217;s Chris Steak House<\/a> and already blew the dinner budget. Yup. That happened the night before I arrived. I totally missed out!<\/p>\n<p>To David&#8217;s credit, he did get one of our vendors to take us out to dinner one night. They must really like David because they took us to a fancy restaurant called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thecapitalgrille.com\"  target=\"_blank\">the Capital Grille<\/a>. The food and service was fantastic. It was a wonderful dinner.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, he tried to find a different vendor to take us out the next evening. No luck. That happens when you&#8217;re just window shopping I guess. Vendors only like to wine and dine you if you&#8217;re actually in the market for their product. Our other existing vendors were busy courting new customers. We were on our own.<\/p>\n<p>We ended up at <a href=\"http:\/\/blackfinnameripub.com\"  target=\"_blank\">Blackfinn<\/a>, a two dollar sign restaurant that&#8217;s conveniently located right as you arrive at the EpiCentre. Several people in our group wanted to check out <a href=\"http:\/\/howlatthemoon.com\"  target=\"_blank\">Howl at the Moon<\/a>, a piano bar in the same area so it was perfect.<\/p>\n<p>Here are some pictures of our food&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/ching\/17129201720\"  title=\"Untitled by Ching Brubaker, on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/c1.staticflickr.com\/9\/8750\/17129201720_419889315d.jpg\" width=\"500\" class=\"pic\" height=\"375\" alt=\"Untitled\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I think these are the crab cakes.<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/ching\/17109345367\"  title=\"Untitled by Ching Brubaker, on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/c1.staticflickr.com\/9\/8819\/17109345367_1f21c148f7.jpg\" width=\"500\" class=\"pic\" height=\"375\" alt=\"Untitled\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Steak!<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/ching\/16694263254\"  title=\"Untitled by Ching Brubaker, on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/c2.staticflickr.com\/8\/7772\/16694263254_09e27d37a8.jpg\" width=\"500\" class=\"pic\" height=\"375\" alt=\"Untitled\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Meatloaf.<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/ching\/17109298917\"  title=\"Untitled by Ching Brubaker, on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/c2.staticflickr.com\/8\/7724\/17109298917_3144155476.jpg\" width=\"500\" class=\"pic\" height=\"375\" alt=\"Untitled\"><\/a><\/p>\n<div style=\"float:left; padding-right:10px; padding-top:5px;\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.urbanspoon.com\/r\/38\/1454976\/restaurant\/Downtown-Uptown\/Blackfinn-Ameripub-Charlotte\" ><img alt=\"Blackfinn Ameripub on Urbanspoon\" src=\"http:\/\/www.urbanspoon.com\/b\/link\/1454976\/biglink.gif\" style=\"border:none;width:200px;height:146px\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>I had the grilled mahi, except I subbed spinach for broccoli because I love spinach.<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t get a picture of the other plates because they were either duplicates or too far for me to reach. To check out the other foods, I guess you&#8217;ll just have to go to the restaurant. You won&#8217;t be disappointed. I promise.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, I really liked Blackfinn. The food was good and the prices were reasonable. <a href=\"http:\/\/blackfinnameripub.com\/charlotte\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2015\/03\/ALL_B_Book-Menu-Food_Web_0215.pdf\"  target=\"_blank\">The menu is extensive<\/a> so there&#8217;s something for everyone. Whether you&#8217;re a steak or seafood person or you just want plain ol&#8217; chicken, you&#8217;ll find something on the menu that appeals to you. It&#8217;s great for large groups with different tastes. No one will end up starving.<\/p>\n<p>They also have a great selection of starters, some of which are quite filling. Blackfinn is a great choice for if you just want to have appetizers and drinks. We got to try the crab cakes and ying-yang shrimp starters. Both were very good.<\/p>\n<p>They have flatbread pizzas; all sorts of salads; pork, chicken, steak, and seafood entr\u00e9es; sandwiches and burgers; pasta and noodle dishes; and they even allow you to order extra sides for sharing. The dessert options looked really good too, but we didn&#8217;t have any. No one was interested after all of the cheesecake and other desserts they were feeding us at the conference. LOL.<\/p>\n<p>After dinner Sunni and I walked back to our respective hotels. I registered late and ended up the <a href=\"http:\/\/brubakers.us\/?p=12703\" >Hilton Charlotte Center City<\/a>, while everyone else in our group got rooms at the Westin. I found out the next day that, since Howl at the Moon wasn&#8217;t open yet, the group ended up at the Tendril after party at <a href=\"http:\/\/thewhiskyriver.com\/charlotte\/\"  target=\"_blank\">Whisky River<\/a>, where they had an open bar all night long. They said it was a great time; even better than the piano bar. <\/p>\n<p>I was bummed about missing out at first but, after finding out that some of them stayed out until 2 AM, I didn&#8217;t feel as bad. I really wanted to be at breakfast early the next day to get a good seat for Shawn Achor&#8217;s keynote so there was no way I could hang. Walking back to the hotel right after dinner was a good call.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On one of the nights our group walked to the EpiCentre in downtown Charlotte to find somewhere relatively inexpensive to eat. We were originally going to go to Fleming&#8217;s but it had four dollar signs next to its name on the restaurant list. We had to keep it three or under because some people ate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,21],"tags":[2448,2449,61],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12720"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12720"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12731,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12720\/revisions\/12731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brubakers.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}