It was in 1986 when Sharon and Cliff Freshwater, without any restaurant experience, decided to open a Southern food joint in New Jersey, about 15 miles west of Newark. There were only three seats inside the dim, wood-paneled place, about the size of a shack.

 

They used this first location as a trial run, serving strictly Southern food. Cliff peeped over the shoulders of the chefs he hired, picking up techniques but tossing out countless burnt dishes as he learned to cook. Sharon’s mother shared recipes for okra and tomatoes and potato salad, while Cliff’s family, originally from North Carolina coastal town of Elizabeth City, passed on their preparation of fresh-cut collard greens. Sharon worked at her 9-to-5 job at Johnson & Johnson, then managed the front of the restaurant in the evenings.

 

Three years passed and the Southern Style Sensation didn’t go under. Instead it morphed into Freshwaters. Cliff and Sharon moved their business into a free-standing house-turned-restaurant that became less of a carryout joint and more of a date night destination. “When we left that first location and went to the second location, “I became the man,” Cliff boasts jokingly.

 

From then on, Cliff was the head chef, adding some Cajun flavors to the Southern menu in 2006. He was confident enough in his skills to put his last name on the restaurant and there it stayed, even as they moved the business 600 miles south. After relocating to Charlotte in 2012, Cliff and Sharon opened a new Freshwaters in 2015 as a full-service restaurant in a Fourth Ward strip mall.