Coming up

• Check out magician Bryan Swaringen each Thursday night at Harper's SouthPark; 6518 Fairview Road; 704-366-6688.

• Toscana, along with Opera Carolina and the business Nada's Italy, hosts an evening on its patio with live opera, antipasti and a wine tasting, 5:30-8 p.m. July 30. $20; Specialty Shops at the Park across Morrison Boulevard from SouthPark; 704-367-1808.

• Blue hosts a Stone Brewery beer dinner July 30, with five courses, including beer-battered grouper cheeks with duck fat fries, pork shoulder braised with apricots, and Moroccan-spiced lamb loin. $49; Hearst Tower uptown; 704-927-2583.

• Also July 30 (busy day!), Carrabba's offers mixer events to help raise money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. $15 gets you a sampling of new appetizers and one of three new signature drinks. $1 will also be donated to MDA for each of the three drinks sold through Aug. 6. 1520 South Blvd., 704-377-2458.

Three for $30 (etc.) goes on...

Gallery at the Ballantyne Hotel & Lodge will offer the three-for-$30 deal it had for Charlotte Restaurant Week throughout July. The menu will change weekly. 10000 Ballantyne Commons Parkway; 704-248-4100.

Blue extends the deal through Aug. 1; Hearst Tower uptown (at College and 5th); 704-927-2583.


Providence Cafe continues its three-for-$28 through July. 110 Perrin Place; 704-376-2008.

Another uptown closing

Harper's will close its uptown ToGoGo site at 121 W. Trade St. after Friday. Harper's director of operations, Steve Seitz, said a proposed rent increase "forced us to close that business" but that many of its customer favorites will be incorporated at Harper's Grill, which is at the end of that block (at 129 W. Trade St.). Included among those is the make-your-own salad bar, which Seitz says will be offered at the Grill for lunch. Fried chicken, pulled pork and more will also be sold at the Grill. Takeout salads and sandwiches, and beverages, will be offered "within a short time," Seitz said, and catering and delivery will continue out of the Grill kitchen.

Restaurant numbers

The recent rash of closings – Oceanaire near SouthPark, Sonny’s on Monroe Road, San Remo in the east and Sugar Magnolia in south Charlotte – beg the question: How are the restaurant numbers in Charlotte?

One answer comes from the Mecklenburg County Health Department, which tracks the number of places offering sit-down dining each September, and the change in that number each year. Only twice in the past 20 years has that number been negative – meaning fewer places opened than closed – and that was back in 1991-’92 and ’95-’96. (It’s not exactly precise, since some restaurants continue to be counted although their permits have been suspended for not paying fees, etc.)

More accurate numbers have been available the past two years, showing we had 2,063 places operating in ’08-’09 and 2,120 in ’09-’10 (though that number is obviously a little early). But the change number has varied a good bit, from 149 in ’86-’87 to 70 in 2003-’04. The last five years, from ’05-’06 to ’09-’10 ran 67, 68, 80, 59 and 28.

The county’s Bill Hardister sums up: “Either way you look at it is a snapshot, just with different filters in place. And either way, we have more restaurants now than we did one year ago ... But the number of plans we are receiving for new/remodeled facilities is down and with the lag between plan submission and permitting a facility, any decline we see may be more likely in (fiscal year 2010).”

So, in terms of closings, it still may get worse before it gets better.

Tapas, crabs, wine

• Vintage Wine Cellar has a new menu for July in which more tapas-style places are offered, from muffuletta sliders ($6) to duck confit salad ($7) to braised short rib ($9). 12206 Copper Way near Ballantyne; 704-543-3977.
  

• Two more weeks left in softshell crab season at TOMI (7741 Colony Road); it’ll be served salt-and-pepper style for another week, then with garlic sauce for the last. Each preparation costs $18. And through the rest of July, you can get an appetizer called fish chips: chunks of fish deep-fried, then topped with seafood powder. 704-759-1288.
  

• Sullivan’s Steakhouse (1928 South Blvd.) hosts a Wine Vault dinner July 26, preceded by a five-wine tasting. Among the courses: seared tuna appetizer with Landmark Steel Plow Syrah, and filet mignon with Flora Springs Cabernet. $55; 704-548-9463.

New breakfast-lunch place en route

Coming to the Charlotte area is FirstWatch, a breakfast-lunch-only chain that plans to build three to five locations in the area. Its menu ranges from eggs, pancakes and sandwiches to specialties such as the Chickichanga (whipped eggs, spicy chicken, housemade chorizo sausage, green chiles, cheeses, onion and avocado rolled in a flour tortilla) and Crepeggs (crepes with whipped eggs and fillings). Locations are TBA, say public relations folk, but you can take a look at the concept here.

New restaurant in Plaza-Midwood

Look for Café Central to open quietly sometime at the beginning of next week at 1401 Central Ave., if all goes according to plan. Peter Herrero, whom you may remember from uptown’s Café 521 years ago, is at the helm of this place, which he says will offer “New York bar food… but a little more rounded.”

That means burgers from meat ground in-house, couscous, sandwiches big enough to sustain an extra few slices of bread (on the house, and from Nova, says Herrero), some pastas, salads, gelati and more.

Herrero, whose Café Central in New York City was called “a saloon that’s also a salon” by People magazine in 1984, has done consulting the past 15 years, but steps again into the fray with this venture, in a multi-tenanted building that will also house a theatrical “black box.” Expect nothing over about $17 and most things less, and details such as housemade mozzarella and stocks with no salt; says Herrero, “I don’t have any salt in my diet, so NO ONE will have salt.” James Hobday, formerly of Upstream, is in the kitchen.