Charlie's Creole Kitchen — Restaurant in Dallas

First timer here. I hate to leave a sad review ...i had high hopes based upon the reviews. We stumbled upon this place while staying at a nearby hotel but the visit just wasn't pleasant unfortunately.

I think the waiter we had meant well. Very warm & friendly and welcoming but I feel like maybe he was assigned too many tables. When you mix friendly & talkative with too many tables it can backfire on you. I felt the time lapse in between him checking on our table was too long. We had some questions about the menu and he graciously got them answered but then forgot to put in our appetizer order in so we watched another table that came in after us get their food before us. While watching the waiter chatting up other tables. Overall though nice guy. He was the only bright spot in the entire visit.

My sweet tea was decent. Im very picky about my sweet tea. It was acceptable but I've had better. Im not a drinker but my mom was sad to learn. THEY DONT HAVE THEIR LIQUOR LICENSE YET SO NO COCKTAILS. The lemonade that my mother was served tasted horrible. Im not a fan of country time at all but it tasted like country time but worse. There was an odd after taste. I encouraged her to have it replaced...she refused.

I really enjoyed the crawfish fondue but the bacon wrapped shrimp seemd awfully bland. The sauce with it. Oh no. Horseradish overload. Unbearable to me. Nose was burning.

My entrée was one of their combo dishes. Crawfish Etoufee with rice & fried crawfish & i added the side of fries & catfish you see in the pic. The pic shows what the full plate looked like vs how much i ate. I didn't eat much if you can see. Now I've Never had Etoufee before and the reviews say this place is authentic so i just kept it instead of returning it. I thought well maybe its just me but i can't imagine anyone from new orleans saying this dish was good. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on it being authentic but GOOD no sorry...it was so bland even if I'd added salt i still don't think that would've helped it. My mom tasted it and also frowned. Maybe we just visited on a day where the cook was having an off day. My mom had a fried seafood platter and she said it was ok. Nothing special..i tasted her red beans. We both liked those. Oh and a few of my crawfish pcs had a soapy or just some kind of a clean after taste to them but ive had that at other places too. I think its to be expected with seafood i guess.

We were also served a salad and coleslaw. The coleslaw was huge chunks of cabbage covered in what tasted like italian dressing. I took one bite and let it sit. It was very odd to me but i guess maybe that's just their signature way of making it.

A waitress later came to take my plates and made no mention of why i had left so much food & wasn't asking for a to go box. Guess some places just don't care or just assume the person wasnt hungry.

I don't live near to ever return but the reviews mentioned other items i kinda wish i would've tried instead but i had never had etoufee before and just felt that was the day to finally try it. On my next vist to New Orleans I'll have to try it there and compare. Since all these reviews say this place is authentic, maybe I'm the crazy one and its supposed to be bland no matter who makes it. Also 2 customers walked out after ordering their food. They didn't wait for it. Apparently the area of the bar they were sitting at had a computer and other papers & such nearby. Apparently one of the workers asked to scooch in on the side of them. i guess she needed to use the computer or something and i think this annoyed them so they just left. I can see that being an annoyance. I don't think i would've left but maybe would've asked to be reseated or she couldve asked them if she could...

DO NOT GO TO THIS RESTAURANT.

The manager of this location provided the single worst dining experience of my life. She embarrassed herself, her staff, and scarred the reputation of Dodie's. Her attitude is repugnant and her customer service skills are non-existent.

I live in the lower Greenville area and have always enjoyed visiting the Dodie's location a few blocks north. When my friends were looking for a place to eat lunch, I was quick to recommend Dodie's. Because of the St. Patrick's Day block party, we decided to eat at the Dodie's near Richmond Ave. It turned out to be a horrific mistake.

Our party of eight enjoyed a great meal and received very good service from our waiter. We ordered appetizers, entrees, and some beers. As we were enjoying our meal, we didn't know our experience was about to be ruined by an arbitrary policy and an incompetent "manager".

At the conclusion of our meal, we requested split checks. As a former server, I know this is extremely common amongst large groups. Our waiter explained that for this day only, the restaurant had disallowed split checks. Had we known this at the outset of the meal, we would not have stayed. So naturally, we asked to speak with the manager to see if something could be done.

Unfortunately, we did not speak with a manager. We spoke with a raving lunatic posing as a manager. She greeted us with hostility. She lied about being the "general manager". She lied about their computer systems not being capable of splitting checks. (They use Aloha. As most servers know, Aloha allows for split checks. Furthermore, she could have simply split the checks by ringing our orders in under separate tables.) She lied about people waiting for our table. Then she threatened to have us arrested for wanting to split our checks.

She threatened to call over "my 6'4" police officer" if we did not "just give me a credit card". After we informed her we would not be able to put the meal on just one card, she called over a uniformed, but off-duty, Dallas police officer. Once he arrived, she agreed to let us manually split the check up ourselves. While we were passing the check around the table to separate the charges, she hovered over us launching childish insults and threatening to call 911.

During this spiteful display of "service" she called one of the members of our party "stupid or something" and repeatedly asked the off-duty officer if she could call 911. Once we gave her the separated check with each of our cards, which she asked us to do, she stormed off to close out the bill. When she returned, we were surprised to learn that she could not figure out how to separate the bill in the manner SHE requested, so she just split it evenly amongst the cards. She advised to us to "fight it out yourselves". To make matters worse, upon inspecting the bill we discovered a mysterious $18 addition. When we brought this to the attention of the police officer, she ran off and brought back $18 in cash for her "mistake". Furthermore, multiple people in our party were ultimately charged two to four times for the meal.

I regret taking my friends to this Dodie's and will never return to this location. We should have gone to the Libertine. I hope her employment at Dodie's is not representative of how they want to...

Do yourself a favor & Don’t waste your time or your money!

The first time I tried this restaurant was maybe back in 2018/2019 & I remember feeling like I had a positive experience, specially because of my excitement for what seemed to be a decent option to finding something close to authentic New Orleans food. Being a NOLA native myself, I always said that I would definitely be back to visit this place and was so excited to one day introduce this place to others.

Fast forward, I finally decided to re-visit this place again years later, & I even brought some of my favorite New Orleans natives with me because I was really expecting the same great experience from before. To my surprise, our experience was completely different than what I had previously experienced and unfortunately for me I had overhyped the experience for my guest.

This place was extremely disappointing for everyone in my party. We went on a Sunday, which is a busy day for that area. We thought the restaurant was packed because of the full parking lot, however everyone must’ve been elsewhere as it was pretty dead inside the restaurant. We were advised to seat ourselves, which we did. The restaurant itself is dingy & and we immediately noticed the saucers and silverware weren’t clean. But even still, everyone knows sometimes the best restaurants are the holes in the walls, so we decided to stay.

The food is not good, at all. Two of us ordered roast beef po-boy sandwiches that came with a side of fries and onion rings, fully dressed. First of all, they used sliced roast beef deli meat, and instead of an au jus sauce, they provided a thick brown sauce that they referred to as gravy. If you’ve ever had an authentic roast beef po-boy, you’ll understand why this is a big No No. They probably need to rename it as a “roast beef sandwich” on the menu because it’s definitely not a po-boy. The worst part was that myself and my other guest who ordered the same dish both fell ill with food poisoning later that evening and two days later l, we are still trying to recover!

My other guest ordered the catfish with red beans, and advised their fish was severely under-seasoned, but mediocre at best. Their side of red beans was supposed to include smoked sausage and they never found not even one piece of meat. They also fell ill immediately after leaving the restaurant.

To put the icing on the cake, this establishment has an additional service charge if you wish pay with a card, as cash is preferred. So for all 3 meals with the tip, everything came to $94. To avoid the additional service fee I paid in cash, & it was directly handed to the waitress. However, for some reason on the way out of the door we were flagged down by the owner/manager and questioned about paying the tab before leaving, as it was apparently still showing open on her end. Had we been of a different ethnicity, this question probably wouldn’t have been asked. It would’ve been much more professional, had the owner/manager checked with the waitress before hounding us down on the way out of the door. Overall, our experience was horrible, and we will never return to or recommend this place to anyone else ever again. Being a native of New Orleans, this place is not representative of authentic New...