Charlie's Trio Cafe — Restaurant in Alhambra

Came here recently for outdoor dining to take advantage of Charlies Trio's happy hour specials. For the most part, the food was pretty good - but if you're looking for a happy hour with more unique drinks that have more alcohol content, I would say to look elsewhere.

For the happy hour menu, well drinks are $5 as well as an assortment of beer. Ordered the vodka cranberry, which was alright. I felt like there was a lot of ice which definitely watered down the overall drink, but the flavor and taste was there. Several people ordered different beers, vodka sodas and thought those were pretty decent.

As for the happy hour food - I really enjoyed their roma gorgonzola ($8) as well as the calamari ($7.5). The gorgonzola was pretty much like a flatbread with spinach tossed on top. The bread was more chewy/crispy like with some of the cheese being a little burnt, which gave it more flavor. Calamari was also decently sized with good flavor when eaten with the house marinara.

Hot wings ($8.5) were alright; 8 wings with ranch sauce served on the side. Nothing too special, but good food to eat when chatting/drinking. Some people ordered the mac & cheese ($9) and broasted chicken ($8.5); they enjoyed what they ordered, so those items seemed pretty good.

Only thing that we didn't enjoy was the risotto croquettes ($5.5). These sounded really tasty - panko crusted, stuffed with proscuitto and mozzarella - but they were super hard and heavy. Would avoid this the next time.

We also created our own pizza and added sausage and pineapple - I feel like we ordered the 16" for $18 and added toppings for $2.75 each. Pizza was definitely huge and had enough slices to feed all of us. There were probably about ten slices - super warm and tasty fresh out of the oven. I think it could have done with a little more sauce, but we all enjoyed it.

They also have complimentary bread and oil, which was nice. Overall atmosphere was pretty chill - we were sitting outside and there were a ton of people from restaurants next door just hanging around. Worker seemed to be fairly attentive at the beginning before disappearing towards the end.

tl;dr - Pretty decent place for happy hour if you want to eat something for a decent price that's quite filling. Will be back if I'm...

I relied on the very good reviews and was very disappointed. In this current uncertain times of Covid 19 it is especially disappointing when spending money on food that is inedible. It's such a waste. I know what good food tastes like as I don't mind paying good money for great food. It's when the food is not good that it bothers me. The prices here are not bad they are reasonable but the food ended up being expensive because I had to go order food from another restaurant since I couldn't eat the bad tasting food. I ordered a pizza, lasagna, and minestrone soup. I'll start with the good.The minestrone soup was decent and the bread they provided was good when dipped into the soup. I finished both. If something is not good I won't eat it. Now to the part of my order that was not good and I had to throw out. I could only eat one slice of pizza and threw the rest of it away because it was not good. It had very thick low quality cheese.The lasagna was not good. Their wasn't any marinara or tomatoes really just a bunch of cheese. All I tasted was cheese and not very good cheese. I forced myself to just eat the ground meat for some kind of nutrition and threw out all the rest of it. I am sometimes perplexed how places can have such good reviews and then I try them and they are not at all good. I don't understand how this could be and I tell myself don't these people have any taste buds. I won't be coming back here. One last note is the service I received was friendly but service should be friendly at a restaurant. And I only ordered to go so I don't know about their sit down service. Also workers were wearing face masks and clear...

I ordered the grilled chicken and broccoli from the children's menu because I told the waitress that I did not want anything too big. She suggested the children's menu. When I received my plate it was a small thin slice of chicken which was dry and tasteless, and what looked like a pound of broccoli which I couldn't eat all of. When the waiter asked how my meal was, I told him it was dry. He apologized and said he would let the cook know. Then my bill came. I was charged more than the children's price. I asked the waiter about it and I was told that he could not charge me the children's price. I paid my bill and left. I later called to complain and spoke with the waiter who was one of the 2 people serving me. He might have been training the waitress. Any way, he said he would have the manager call me but of course, no one called. Needless to say I probably won't be returning although I would have liked to have tried...