Park isn’t picking a fight; he’s making a point.

“Fine dining is definitely in the details,” he says with supreme confidence, demonstrating the expensive sturdiness of a silver dinner knife at Morehead City’s Shepard’s Point, one of two Crystal Coast restaurants he owns.

Sitting at the bar before the evening dinner rush and surrounded by warm, red walls, subtle, natural lighting and tiny vases full of fresh-cut flowers, it’s apparent that the little things are big at the cozy fine dining establishment on the corner of 10th and Arendell Streets. But Park, a big-picture kind of guy out of necessity, is far from caught up in the details.

The 46-year-old founding owner of Shepard’s Point and the popular Beaufort Grocery Co. in Beaufort, Park alternates from one foot to the other during conversation as his eyes dart around a filling dining room. He literally can’t stand still, which is why Shepard’s Point even exists.

Calling the two establishments sister restaurants might be a bit misleading; they’re more like mother-daughter restaurants, different by design. Beaufort Grocery, a come-as-you-are kind of place that Park’s wife, Wendy Park, operates along with the company’s catering business, is quaint and hectic. The menu there is more composed, in that everything on the plate relates to the main ingredient. The lunch fare includes sandwiches with whimsical names like “Sonnamabeach” and “Sumpin’s Jumpin’,” and the dinner entrées include dishes like grilled yellowfin tuna and Thai rubbed roast half duckling.

Shepard’s Point, which Charles Park runs full-time, is considerably larger but somehow maintains a more intimate feel. Its menu, which specializes in steak and seafood, includes Filet Mignon, salmon Wellington and veal Marsala, all of which are complemented by a choice of creative sides.

Both restaurants serve Sunday brunch, but even those are different; Beaufort Grocery offers a sit-down version while Shepard’s Point has a high-end buffet.

Park, who opened Beaufort Grocery in 1991, says he was urged to open a second, identical version of the already established restaurant when he founded Shepard’s Point in 2003. But that’s not his style.

“I didn’t feel that this place needed a Beaufort Grocery,” says Park, wearing a loud flowered shirt and speaking, as he always does, with authority. “I wanted it to be something new. In retrospect, I probably would’ve been a little bit more successful if I would’ve made another Beaufort Grocery. But that doesn’t mean I won’t be successful here.

“I just wanted another challenge, I guess.”

New challenges are a theme in Park’s life. A Charlotte native, he wanted to be an architect but didn’t have the grades for it. He enrolled in engineering school at N.C. State after high school, an experiment that ended after a year and a half of chemistry classes that he couldn’t tolerate.

He went back to Charlotte and took some community college courses in hotel and restaurant management and found that it appealed to him. “I wanted to do,” he says. “I wanted to be hands-on.”

Now with a vision, Park enrolled in the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., and worked up and down the East coast after graduation. After three years working in fine dining back in Charlotte, the Parks settled in Beaufort. Charles resurrected the food service operation at an inn on Front Street before he opened Beaufort Grocery Co. in the former Owens Grocery building on Queen Street.

(The original Beaufort Grocery Co. was, in fact, a store on Front Street. The restaurant’s current building had in it a 100-year-old safe from the old store with “Beaufort Grocery Co.” stamped on the side, which led to the restaurant’s name.)

It took years of tweaking the business and hiring the right people to help run it and building a faithful clientele, but Park was finally able to step back from the venture and the long days and nights typically associated with restaurant ownership.

For a year and a half of the early 2000s, he had driven past the current Shepard’s Point location and noticed the “For Sale” sign. Intrigued, Park investigated and eventually purchased the property with the intent of leasing it. When that didn’t work out—and with his daily presence no longer needed at Beaufort Grocery—Park decided to take on that second challenge.

He completely gutted the 50-year-old building, which over the years has housed a gun shop, an air conditioning shop, a bank and––as if by design––an architect’s office. In six months’ time, Park had the place up and running, just in time to work out some kinks before Easter weekend. He originally planned for the restaurant to be a steakhouse in the vein of Ruth’s Chris or Morton’s, but customer feedback helped create the menu’s current diversity.

Today, a former bank vault serves as a unique wine cellar. The bars on the doors make the well-stocked cellar look like an old jail cell in which any oenophile would happily serve a life sentence.

The stylish bar sits beneath opaque windows that temper the late evening sunlight, which shimmers through wine glasses hanging high in a rack above good bottles of Scotch. Customers laugh and glasses clink as Ashley Roberts, the restaurant’s 24-year-old bartender and manager, pours martinis and glasses of red wine.

A zig-zagging, shoulder-level wall divides the bar area from a walkway between the open kitchen in the back and the three dining rooms, which seat a total of about 150—roughly twice the capacity of Beaufort Grocery.

Park, who arrived at the restaurant before noon, supervises the evening’s action like an NFL coach. In his years in the industry no lesson, perhaps, has been as important as learning to delegate. With the staffs at both restaurants fully trained, he says, it’s almost like he’s always in the kitchen in two places at once.

“I do want my customers to know I’m here,” Park says in his husky voice, sitting at the Shepard’s Point bar. “Just like at Beaufort Grocery: I’m there, but my guys are doing it. Come see. I challenge you to see if you can tell a difference if I’m there or not. That’s my goal, just like all famous chefs: Wolfgang Puck, Emeril—those guys have a plethora of restaurants, and they’re not at any one at any one given time.”

Adds Roberts, a four-year veteran of the area’s food service industry, “He tries to play it a little bit cool, be more laid-back. It used to be he was always in the kitchen. Now he’s got people doing that for him.”

Park says he’s far from done with his expansion. As soon as he’s able to step back from Shepard’s Point and turn more of the responsibility over to his staff, he wants to turn his attention to new projects and challenges.

The ideas roll off his tongue: a simple barbecue stand that he’d get off the ground and then visit once a week to eat and “make sure the barbecue’s right”; an Italian place—pizza and pasta; a soul food restaurant (“Wouldn’t that be funny,” Park laughs, “having a soul-food restaurant run by a white guy?”); or a minimal burgers-and-dogs joint, maybe a diner. He’s even envisioned opening a theater or a live music venue—anything to help the burgeoning downtown area.

“I’m way ahead of the curve,” Park says, adding that his next venture is likely two to three years away. “I’m kind of over here hiding in the bushes, getting ready to jump out. If I had a good idea for doing something or if I could acquire another piece of property and jump on it, I would.”

In the meantime, his staff marvels at the two businesses he and Wendy have built. Tracy Kenney, who has worked for the Parks for the past 11 years at Beaufort Grocery in a number of capacities, admires Charles Park’s ability to adapt.

“He is an artist, a true teacher,” says Kenney, serving as a Shepard’s Point waitress with a friendly, perpetual smile on this night. “He really enjoys what he does. He’s very passionate about his food. He’s very passionate about creating new menus.

“He cannot stand being still,” Kenney adds. “When Beaufort Grocery got to the point where he didn’t have to do very much anymore, he had to do something else.”

Park helps the kitchen staff arrange a chocolate dessert, offers his guidance on the presentation of an appetizer and repairs to his small office, where he goes from chef to entrepreneur in the blink of an eye. The chef has benefitted from formal training, the entrepreneur from a mix of education, learning on the job and listening to his customers.

“I’ve grown to know my clientele more,” Park says, reflecting upon the birth of his second restaurant. “They want something not quite so extravagant. A lot of people, also, are sometimes intimidated by the looks of this place. They think they need to be wearing a coat and tie. Our mantra is, Come casual, leave impressed.”

Attire, after all, is merely another detail.