Run the loop enough times and you stop seeing it. Queens Road West blurs into Hopedale, Hopedale into Queens Road, Queens Road into Selwyn Avenue, and the storefronts along the way become scenery: shapes you pass, not places you register. That is what a three-mile loop does to a neighborhood after enough repetitions. It turns landmarks into wallpaper.
Which is why the last year on Selwyn Avenue is worth pausing for. One storefront on that stretch, a space that has cycled through concepts for years without sticking, suddenly has a national dining press paying attention to it in a way that has nothing to do with the running route and everything to do with what changed inside.
A Storefront With a History of Not Working
The address is 2820 Selwyn Avenue, Suite 180, tucked next to The Chop Shop near the newer People's Market. Before it was anything else, it was littleSpoon, a breakfast-and-brunch spot open limited hours through the week. For a stretch, the same suite also housed Comida, a Mexican concept built around heirloom corn masa, sharing the space as a sister restaurant to littleSpoon. Both are now closed. Two concepts, one address, neither one lasted.
That is not a rare story on a busy Charlotte retail corridor. Storefronts turn over. What is rare is what happened next.
What Moved In, and How Fast the Rest of the Country Noticed
Rada opened in that same former littleSpoon suite as a 46-seat Mediterranean-leaning restaurant from executive chef Callan Buckles, who trained at New York rooms including The Four Horsemen and Claud, and owner Eloy Roy. The room is small and deliberately unshowy: dim light, a low hum, martinis that arrive with sidecars.
Here is the part that separates Rada from the two concepts that came before it in the same space. Within its first year, it landed on Michelin's inaugural American South "recommended" list, placed alongside Kindred, Supperland and Customshop, a group of some of the region's most established dining rooms. A New York Times critic covered it too, describing the way its light spills onto the sidewalk as reminiscent of a favorite spot on a West Village corner.
That is an unusually fast validation arc for a 46-seat neighborhood restaurant in a suite with a recent track record of concepts that did not make it a year. Expect to pay around $100 per person before tip, and expect the menu to change almost monthly as Buckles follows what is seasonal rather than sticking to a fixed rotation. The signature cocktail, a San Sebastian martini built on gin, tximista, bay leaf and Basque pepper brine, has become as much a calling card as anything coming out of the kitchen.
None of this means the address itself was ever the problem. Selwyn Avenue has plenty of restaurants that never had trouble finding a following. Reid's Fine Foods has anchored the stretch as a specialty grocer and gourmet counter for years. Mellow Mushroom is a fixture. What changed at 2820 Selwyn was not the block. It was the execution inside one particular door, and it happened quickly enough that Charlotte diners barely had time to adjust before the national press had already caught up.
The Loop Was Never Just About Exercise
None of this registers unless you already know what the Booty Loop is. Charlotte's most recognized running and cycling route runs a three-mile course through Myers Park, beginning on Queens Road West, continuing onto Hopedale Avenue, rejoining Queens Road, and finishing along Selwyn Avenue past Queens University. Locals have run some version of this loop for cross country practice and casual exercise for decades, long before the name stuck.
The loop is also the site of an annual event that has quietly become one of the more significant charity fundraisers tied to a single neighborhood street pattern in Charlotte. Since 2002, the 24 Foundation's "24 Hours of Booty" has closed the loop to car traffic every July, drawing walkers, runners and cyclists who take laps for a full 24 hours starting Friday evening. More than 28,000 participants have raised more than $28 million for cancer patient support since the event began, funding programs at organizations including the Levine Cancer Institute. For one weekend a year, the same three miles that carry solo joggers on ordinary Tuesday mornings become the site of a communal, sanctioned, streets-closed fundraiser with a finish line at Wellesley Road and Queens Road West.
That is the context that makes Rada's arrival worth noting rather than just noticing. A restaurant earning Michelin and Times attention within a year would be a minor story anywhere in Charlotte. On the Booty Loop, a route residents already use as a daily ritual and an annual civic occasion, it means the reward lap now has a stop that outside critics are making a special trip to visit, on a street residents jog past without a second thought.
The Older Fixture a Few Blocks South
The loop's southern edge sits close to Freedom Park, which hosts the other constant on the neighborhood's fall calendar. Festival in the Park returns for its 62nd year from Friday, September 25 through Sunday, September 27, 2026, running 4 to 9 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday, and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free, as it has been since the festival began in 1964. More than 120 artisans display work around the park's lake, with live music on the Freedom Park band shell and food vendors covering the usual festival range.
Where Rada represents something new and fast, arriving and earning national notice inside a single year, Festival in the Park is the opposite kind of fixture: unchanged in structure for six decades, returning to the same lake, the same free admission, the same weekend rhythm every September. Both draw people into the same few square miles this fall. Neither one is a reason to move here. They are both just what the neighborhood already does with its own calendar.
A few things worth knowing if you are planning around either:
- The Booty Loop's most common starting point is the church parking lot at Hopedale Avenue and Queens Road, though weekday access is easiest since weekend mornings fill with church traffic.
- 24 Hours of Booty runs each July, with the loop closed to vehicle traffic for the full 24-hour event.
- Rada's small dining room and its recent national attention make weekend reservations worth booking well ahead.
- Festival in the Park parking fills quickly around Freedom Park itself, and shuttle service has historically run from nearby lots during the event's busiest hours.
What This Says About the Neighborhood, Not Just the Restaurant
The lesson from 2820 Selwyn Avenue is not that the address finally got lucky. It is that Myers Park's daily infrastructure, the loop residents run without thinking, the storefronts they pass on autopilot, can turn into something worth a special trip faster than most people expect, and that shift can happen inside a single suite that spent years cycling through concepts that did not land. Rada's first year proves execution matters more than location within a stretch that already has plenty of proven traffic. Festival in the Park proves the opposite point just as well: some fixtures do not need reinvention at all, only consistency, to stay relevant across six decades.
Both are true on the same three-mile loop, in the same fall season, for the same residents who already call this neighborhood home.
If you are weighing a move within Myers Park or evaluating what a Selwyn Avenue or Queens Road West address is actually worth in today's market, Matthew Alexander brings the same attention to the neighborhood's details that goes into these stories. Schedule a consultation to talk through what a specific block, or a specific storefront's neighbors, actually mean for value.
