MidWeek Eats: The Great Lake Norman Onion Ring Hunt
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Literally, Thousands of readers joined the conversation, defended their favorites, and told us about restaurants we needed to discover.
Clearly, Lake Norman enjoys a good food hunt.
So this week, MidWeek Eats is turning its attention to another familiar food that rarely receives the attention it deserves:
The onion ring.
Some people want them thick-cut and generously battered. Others prefer them thin, lightly coated, and fried until extra crispy.
But everyone agrees on one thing:
A great onion ring should arrive hot and golden, with a satisfying crunch—and the onion should remain inside the coating when you take that first bite.
We’re beginning this week’s hunt with two Lake Norman-area restaurants that have given us good reasons to start looking.
These are not finalists, rankings, or declared winners.
They’re simply where the hunt begins.
At Crafty Burg’r, the burgers may receive top billing—but the onion rings have developed fans of their own.
Crafty Burg’r says its onion rings are made fresh every morning, immediately separating them from the frozen rings served at many casual restaurants.
Some foods simply belong together.
Burgers and onion rings are one of those combinations.
Customer comments describe Crafty’s rings as crispy and fresh. One recent food reviewer described them as very thick, giving them scores of 7 out of 10 and 7.5 out of 10.
Those may not be perfect scores—but they’re certainly good enough to earn Crafty Burg’r a place at the beginning of our hunt.
Expect a casual neighborhood restaurant centered around handcrafted burgers, chicken sandwiches, cold drinks, and familiar comfort food.
These aren’t delicate little onion strings.
Crafty’s version leans toward the thick side, making the rings a substantial companion to a burger—or something worth ordering separately.
Crafty doesn’t limit its onion rings to the side of the plate.
Crispy onion rings also appear on the restaurant’s Boom Boom Chick’n, along with bacon and its signature Boom Boom Sauce.
But this week, we’re interested in the rings themselves.
Are they thick enough? Crispy enough? And can they stand on their own without the burger?
Crafty Burg’r has two Cornelius locations where readers can begin their own investigation.
Crafty Burg’r — Kenton Place
17015 Kenton Drive
Cornelius, NC 28031
704-997-5388
Crafty Burg’r — Antiquity
21726 Catawba Avenue, Suite B
Cornelius, NC 28031
704-897-7320
If Crafty Burg’r gives us the thick, fresh-made contender, Sports Page Food & Spirits takes the beer-battered approach.
Sports Page is the kind of relaxed neighborhood gathering place where wings, burgers, sandwiches, cold drinks, and televised sports all share the spotlight.
But its onion rings may be worth watching, too.
We found customer comments specifically praising the onion rings for being fresh and beer-batter dipped—not frozen and breaded.
Another customer described the rings as crispy and very good, while Restaurantji includes the Beer-Battered Onion Rings among its listed customer favorites.
That is enough positive evidence to make Sports Page our second starting point.
Expect a casual sports-bar atmosphere with plenty of familiar choices.
The beer-battered onion rings can be ordered as a side or sampled as part of the Sports Page Sampler with wings, mozzarella triangles, and spinach-and-artichoke dip or spicy beef queso.
But an onion ring shouldn’t need an entire appetizer platter to prove itself.
We want to know whether these rings are worth ordering all by themselves.
Beer batter can produce a lighter, crispier coating than traditional breading—when it’s done correctly.
That makes Sports Page an interesting contrast to the thicker rings at Crafty Burg’r.
Which approach is better?
That depends on what you believe an onion ring should be.
Sports Page Food & Spirits
7490 Waterside Crossing Boulevard
Denver, NC 28037
704-827-6283
Visit Sports Page Food & Spirits
Crafty Burg’r and Sports Page are only the beginning.
They are not our declared winners or the only restaurants serving onion rings worth trying. They are simply the first two stops in this week’s hunt.
Somewhere around Lake Norman, there may be a locally owned restaurant, neighborhood grill, drive-in, tavern, or little hole-in-the-wall serving onion rings that deserve to be discovered.
We’re looking for the place somebody has to tell you about.
What makes a great onion ring?
A golden, crispy coating.
An onion that’s tender—not stringy.
Enough seasoning to taste.
Very little grease.
And a ring that doesn’t fall apart after one bite.
If you know where those rings are hiding, tell us in the comments.
Give us the name of the restaurant, the town, and what makes its onion rings special.
We’ll follow the leads.
And if the LKNConnect community helps us find the real thing, there’s only one headline we can possibly use:
Until then, the hunt continues.
Lake Norman is home to people who came here from just about everywhere.
And sometimes, no matter how long you’ve lived here, you still crave that one food that tastes like home.
Maybe it’s a sandwich from Philadelphia. A pizza from New York. A Southern dish your grandmother made. A hometown specialty. Or something you remember eating as a child that you simply haven’t found around Lake Norman.
Tell us what you’re missing. We’ll go looking.
Tell us the food and where you remember it from.
Your nostalgic craving just might become the next MidWeek Eats Lake Norman Food Hunt.
MidWeek Eats is an LKNConnect editorial series exploring the foods, flavors, and local restaurants that make dining around Lake Norman worth discovering.
