Charlie's Bar and Restaurant — Restaurant in San Nicolaas

Dec2023: 2 ⭐: This location was recommended to my family by word of mouth. I was disappointed after this visit. These restaurants are taking advantage of the tourists and the money we save all year to spend here in Aruba.

This location was fairly easy to find but not that easy to locate parking. There was an available area adjacent to the building a couple hundred feet away to park free of charge. The building is an old structure with a lot of different memorabilia on the walls, the doors and the ceilings. This corner building restaurant has a very limited seating area. In the corner there is a local singer playing his tunes. This local singer, seemingly, only plays to one beat that he starts in the background before he starts on his instrument. We were greeted by a server that was clueless about the menu offered by the restaurant. We placed an order with rice for our entrees and were served fries instead of what we ordered. The server failed to even address the mistakes. We asked for frozen drinks and was told that it was not possible and outside the capabilities of the bar?!?! Wait a minute...this is a bar and restaurant? Soo, no bartenders over there? We ordered water and was brought water in a bottle. No cup and no ice, just expensive bottles of water. Our meals arrived at the table with incorrectly added items, but we were hungry, so we just ate. The server couldn't remember what we ordered when he was asked when the food arrived. There are six or seven tables in this place. What was the server doing? He most certainly wasn't at our table waiting on us. Each table seemed to have a person or family member assigned to the table. As we sat there, more people came to this location and were questioned whether they were eating or drinking as we were. Eaters were allowed to sit inside immediately. Anyway, the food was not as expected and was even a disappointment. The beef sirloin was mostly fat and tasted like processed meat. The sauce served with it was just camouflage sauce to cover the taste and obvious fat not trimmed from the meat before cooking. The meat was seemingly the low quality type and potentially the previously frozen type. My family owns a restaurant where I cooked, served food, and worked the cash register. This meal would not have been served to my family or guests. One entree of was supposed to have shrimp. Couldn't find one of the shrimp in it. This whole restaurant experience left a bad taste in my mouth and a "fine dining hole" in my wallet for dinner. The server seemed upset that he didn't know how to work the credit card machine and that I realized at the last moment that he charged a service fee to the final bill. The server said he was "told" that the service fee wasn't a tip. I said it is a tip for my purposes so I am not tipping after a mandatory service fee of 15% of the bill. It was an insult after the injury. You now, want to demand a tip for really awful service. No thanks, I'll take my business and year long savings to...

I was expecting this place to be a bit of a tourist trap but my brother really wanted to go so we stopped in for lunch/early dinner on our way back from Baby Beach. The atmosphere is very cool with a mishmash of all different junk and art plastering the walls and ceilings. There was live singer in the corner doing covers and playing guitar. It’s quite a small place but it wasn’t too busy (around 2-3pm) and we were seated immediately. The menu is pretty small and I felt the prices were a bit high (not terrible though), especially for the San Nicolas area. We got the ribs (which was a special of the day), the tenderloin, and a pulled pork sandwich. The sandwich was not on the menu and not mentioned as a special, our waiter just offered it when we asked about the hamburger joke on the menu. So I’m not sure if this is a regular dish or not. All the meals included a salad and a plate of “home fries”. They had two choices of salad dressings on the table (a creamy dressing that I was told is dutch and a house style oil and vinegar) and dish of homemade hot sauce. I did not have high hopes for the food but I was thankfully wrong. Everything was excellent. The pulled pork was tender and the bbq sauce was very tasty, the tenderloin had an incredible flavor and the ribs were fall off the bone (though I should note they were not your typical ribs, they had a sort of brown sauce and only came with two large ribs each). The side salad was basic but nice and the home fries were hot and crispy. They were not what I would call home fries in the US, they were more like potato wedges and were only seasoned with salt like fries. Still they were very good. The homemade hot sauce was nice and fresh as well. Overall, I really enjoyed the meal as well as the ambiance of the place. I don’t know if I would go all the way to San Nicolas from the high rise area just to eat there, but I would definitely stop in again after a relaxing day at Baby Beach or...

Writing this knowing I’ll get a nasty response from the owner but I truly don’t care because I’m heartbroken. What happened???

Weve been coming here since my grandparents 40+ years ago and never experienced the issues we did until this year and the recent reviews show this.

The second we showed up we were told off that they’re a bar/restaurant when we were there for drinks and are paying customers. I have plenty of photos of inside over the years, that’s not why I was there. And not a tourist spot? where do your signs come from then? Locals?

We were told we’re not getting in when there were empty seats because it’s full and we didn’t recognize any of the workers we’ve seen for the past 10 years.

This place WAS the spot to go when you’re on this side of the island. Friendly staff and good prices, everyone was social and you’d meet people from all over. Not anymore. It’s truly sad and I’d love to know what happened that apparently traumatized the owner into being so aggressive with their longtime patrons.

I have photos here with my grandparents who’ve since passed away, with my parents and family, since the 1980s. And my dad and I walked away today knowing we won’t be going back, and it’s genuinely very sad.

Good luck running it the way you are now....