We paid $80 to dine with sporks and strangers.
- To be exact, we paid $80 for what was promised to us as an “unforgettable 5-course dinner inside an active Mecklenburg County detention center,” with meals inspired by commissary items and jail inmates as our fellow guests.
Why it matters: It’s an incredibly rare opportunity to eat inside a jail among “residents,” which is how the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s office refers to inmates. Sheriff Garry McFadden says he likes to push the limit and agreed to collaborate on this controversial event, held July 24.
- “This dinner is not about glorifying jail or turning incarceration into entertainment,” organizer Evan Diamond wrote online, responding to a barrage of criticism. “It’s about connection, creativity, community, and hope.”
Zoom out: Diamond’s group Charlotte Foodies hosts some of the most immersive and unconventional pop-up dinners you can come by in the city. They’ve thrown a Beetlejuice-themed party outside a funeral home and curated a menu inspired by Hidden Valley Ranch.
- Diamond says his goal is for people to come as strangers and leave as friends.
- “Usually people are exchanging numbers to go break bread at another time, privately,” Diamond tells me. “I always get a little teary-eyed when I see people connecting like that.”
- But this event was much different, as the strangers were the people waiting inside Uptown’s detention center for their day in court.
Flashback: Roughly two months before the event, Diamond and Chef Erick Crawford met with the residents to plan the menu together. All the residents involved had volunteered to take part and were in a reentry program, designed to help them transition back into the community by addressing their challenges, from mental health to addiction.
How it worked: Leading up to the night, attendees submitted background checks and picked up blue T-shirts that we all wore to disguise our differences. The small, intimate group passed through security. Staff took phones, keys and anything else we carried. (The sheriff’s office let me bring in my phone for photos and videos.)
- I’m told the ticket cost covers only ingredients and labor, and Diamond often loses money on these dinners.
- We sat at tables of four. My fellow guests were a friendly couple and a reserved man, hunched over in his seat. The couple said they were well. The man said he was blessed.
- Though the online posting mentioned we’d be dining among residents, some attendees were surprised at the end of the night when, after small talk and praise for the food, organizers asked the residents to stand and reveal themselves.
- “There was a moment of quiet surprise,” one attendee wrote on Facebook after, “not because of any judgment, but because for nearly two hours, we’d simply been people sharing a meal.”
My thought bubble: What I can tell you is the resident I dined with was kind, optimistic and, yes, human. What I want to tell you we had a breakthrough conversation. But how do you connect with someone who’s going through something much bigger than you can grasp? Where do you start?
- You can’t talk about your summer travels or complain about the heat. They can’t even go outside.
Zoom out: McFadden is proud of the nationally accredited detention center, which he never refers to as a jail. He took me on a tour after dinner and shared that they have a library, dentist chairs, even a recording studio. He shows me the hospital, where a young woman is curled up asleep. Some residents will receive some of the first-ever medical care while incarcerated here, he shares.
- Still, there’s no place to go outside and feel the sun.
- The average resident is here for less than 21 days. The longest anyone has stayed there in recent memory? 11 years.
The bottom line: Diamond believeshis event achieved its goals: Erasing stigma for attendees and hopefully inspiring residents to never return to the center again upon release.
- As my dinner guest left the table, the couple told him never to come back. He promised he wouldn’t.
Now, let’s take a closer look at the experience and menu.
Meet the chef
Chef Crawford is the owner Marlee Jean’s Raw Bar + Kitchen in Davidson and won an UPPY Award last year from Unpretentious Palate for his food truck Chop Chop Red Pot…