Charlie's Steakhouse - Greenville, SC

Posted By Michael Stern on May 11, 2008 1:12 PM

Greenville has vastly expanded in the last quarter century with business and industry from all over the globe. Even its old downtown around Coffee Street now sports a sushi restaurant and espresso shops for the new cultural sophisticates.

Charlie’s Steakhouse, run by a third generation of the family that opened it in 1921, stays its course. With a carnivorous menu that boasts All beef shipped direct from Waterloo & Des Moines, Iowa; St. Joe & Kansas City, Mo, it remains a low-key, small-city steak house to which patrons come for highballs, salads with ultra-thick blue cheese dressing, half-and-half plates (fried onion rings and potatoes), and cuts of pound-plus steak. You can order a T-bone, filet, or porterhouse for one, but many regulars who come in groups opt for a sirloin cut into portions for two, three, or four people. The arrival of any steak at the table is a glorious event, for it comes on a hot metal plate (resting on a wood pallet), sizzling and sputtering so loud that all conversations stop in wonderment. It is nice meat, dense and juicy, although like so many modern steaks, it lacks the delirious delicious beef taste of a good old prime cut.

Dinner at Charlie’s is about rituals: the apply-your-own dressing service for salad or slaw (the latter just a huge heap of cut cabbage), a bottle of Charlie’s own steak sauce on every table, thick china plates rimmed with a pattern of magnolias, silver presented wrapped in thick linen napkins. We were smitten by the service, too, supplied by a waitress staff of pros who position and re-position the dressings, sour cream bowl, bread plate, and butter-pat dish so the table is always arrayed for maximum convenience. As we photographed an extra large thick sirloin for our “What We Ate” picture album, the waitress suggested that when we get back to Wisconsin, we send her a copy so everyone at Charlie’s could sign it. Earlier in the meal, we had told her we were from Connecticut, but we figure that to a lot of citizens of the Deep South, the difference between Connecticut and Wisconsin is a non-issue.

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Posted By Nancy Floyd on May 11, 2008 1:20 PM

We continue to drive a hundred miles about two or three times a year to go to Greenville, shop, hang around the lovely redone downtown area, and finish up with dinner at Charlie's Steakhouse.

What is wonderful about Charlie's is best expressed as a flipside of what happens when we visit, typically, an Outback Steakhouse. We leave feeling like we spent too much on dinner, it wasn't that good, and about half the time we got annoyed by either a too-perky and attentive waitperson or just the slog of waiting around for a table.

When we visit Charlie's, we never feel like it cost more than the value of the food, the food is consistent and excellent, and it feels like going over to a favorite aunt's or friend's for dinner. The staff is incredible; on about half our visits a wonderful lady who's worked there for 20 years (20 years!) waits on us and she's a textbook waitress. Always right ahead of you with what you might need next, chatty and warm, and not a pest. On this visit we also chatted up the owner who was seating folks about her new Smart car, and a younger waitress who was also well on her way to being as good as the vets.

I get amused because the menu includes quite a few seafood and chicken choices... but what's the point? The steaks are the equivalent of the very best you could do at home on a really good grill: well-selected, seasoned almost not at all, and perfectly cooked. They do all the little stuff well here, and that's what I love about Charlie's. Outback should send senior staff here on a regular basis to bone up.

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Baklava

Steak For Two

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Posted By Shannon Dodd on August 7, 2003 10:57 PM

Based on the recommendation of the Roadfood book, we stopped to eat at Charlie's July, 2003 on a driving trip from Atlanta to Washington, D.C. We had dinner there and the ambience was very unique and enjoyable. The restaurant has been there forever and the inside is definitely a trip back in time. The greeter and staff were all especially friendly and helpful.

One item that should be mentioned is that the women's restroom is located up 2 flights of stairs and is therefore not accessible to those in wheelchairs or others who have difficulty with stairs.

In regards to the food, the salad dressings are homemade and all 3 (thousand island, blue cheese and ranch) were quite good, although the salad mix itself was nothing specical. The french fries were the best part of the meal and are a choice that comes with the steak. It should also be mentioned that getting the half & half of french fries and onion rings costs an extra $3 - the exact same price as adding the onion rings from the appetizer menu.

Unfortunately, the reason we came to the restaurant was for the quality of the steaks and we found them to be extremely lacking. The steaks we ordered (the T-bone and the Strip) were both very thin, overcooked, and appeared to be pan-fried. There were no grill marks or seasoning of any kind on the steaks. If the steaks had been as good as suggested, they would have only needed a little salt to be wonderful and juicy. But, as it stands, there appeared to be a good reason that the waitresses were pushing their homemade steak sauce for the steak - it just wasn't very good at all.

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