North Carolina's Best Coffee Shop Is A Trendy Charlotte Gem That Doubles As A Wine Bar

While planning a trip, travelers often spend time searching for the best places in their destination to find a stellar cup of coffee to kickstart their day. When travel takes you to North Carolina, which isn't among the top five coffee destinations in America, or the coffee capital of America, nestled in a West Coast city, you can still find a worthy cup of joe. Within Charlotte, the state's largest city, you'll find a trendy gem known as the state's best coffee shop, and as a bonus, it doubles as a wine bar.

HEX Coffee, Kitchen, and Natural Wines was recently included in Chowhound's ranking of "the hands down best coffee shop in each state." Methodology included industry awards, media attention, and online and social media rankings. The site noted HEX's brewing tactics, sustainable sourcing, and hand-roasting process as reasons for their selection. In addition, HEX has also achieved high marks from its customers online, with 4.3 stars on Yelp and 4.6 stars on Google. 

You'll find HEX in Charlotte's Camp North End district, a renovated industrial area just north of the bustling Uptown neighborhood. The HEX concept is the brainchild of three college friends, founded in 2015 as a pop-up before expanding to its Camp North End location. The trio operates other Charlotte eateries and plotted their menu around the Japanese-Hawaiian heritage of one of their founders. What started as a pop-up now encompasses a 2,700 square foot cafe, including kitchen and wine service, indoor and outdoor seating, and an event space. The expansion, along with an upgrade to an all-day, full-service cafe experience, a design featuring Japanese ambiance, and using ethically sourced beans, makes HEX a trendy Charlotte gem.

HEX's website indicates a constantly changing menu, with highlights including Japanese-style sandwiches, "sandos." The daytime menu, served until 3 p.m., features a HEX special breakfast sandwich made with scrambled eggs, hash browns, and a choice of meat on sourdough. Other sando options include a tamago sando, made with Japanese egg salad on Hawaiian shokupan (the island version of milk bread), and a katsu sando, with fried pork, cabbage, and pickles. The coffee menu offers a rotating selection of filter coffee, along with lattes, espresso, and cold brew made from in-house roasted beans. Or try their specialty, coffee shots, made from a cryo-sealed reserve selection. The "not coffee" menu section offers customers a selection of teas, matcha and chai lattes, and hot chocolate, and a "kid's steamer" of vanilla and cocoa, for coffee drinkers in training.

At 4 p.m., the cafe's evening personality takes over, highlighted by kimchi fried rice, a spicy chicken sando, steamed buns, and a yuzu ginger salad. Pair these with a craft beer offering from Charlotte's own HopFly Brewing, or a glass of natural wine from a variety of countries. Hex's natural wine selections are deliberately chosen from wine crafters who practice wine making in its purest form, without additives or stripping away any flavors. Yelpers highlight HEX's consistently tasty food, knowledgeable and friendly staff, trendy ambiance and vibe, and creative coffee options as reasons to visit, with one visitor calling it "the best vanilla latte I've EVER had." While you're exploring the "Queen City," find your way to Fourth Ward, which is filled with historic homes, parks, and secret gardens, and NoDa, one of the city's best neighborhoods with artsy vibes, both within a few miles from HEX.