The Charles — Restaurant in Dallas

The Charles is incapable of delivering on a group dining experience. What started out with a great call with Duro Hospitality at the beginning of the week to discuss details, ended with a surprise birthday dinner filled with flaws, disappointment, and standard gratuity added to award them for their inadequacies.

All diners in the restaurant were subjected to uncomfortable ambient air temperatures inside. It’s Texas in the summer, get your air conditioner checked if it can’t cool a dining room that’s open to the kitchen. I’m sure the staff would appreciate it too. Plates always come out here when they’re ready, but for our party of 9, entrees came out 5-10 minutes apart for different couples, leaving us to make the decision to wait until everyone had their entree, rendering cold food for some, or eating in front of others while they waited for their food. A medium-rare bavette came out mooing so actually order up to medium if absolutely rare won’t work for you. I deliberated with Duro on Monday and confirmed they were good with me bringing my own cake. I dropped off a custom ice cream cake from a local bakery 5 hours before our reservation and shared no less than 3 times at drop-off that it needed to be frozen up until 20 minutes before serving. When I arrived at the restaurant I shared with the host and waiter that the frozen cake would need to be pulled out 20 minutes prior to serving - every single person nodded along and said that’s no problem. Much to my disappointment upon bringing the cake to the table, the double layer cake had melted down and become so distorted from its original shape, the restaurant hurriedly attempted to smooth its edges down and pass it off as remotely presentable. To add insult to injury, they would not light the sparkler candles (two small sparklers, not the massive torch sparklers some restaurants use) and instead just put them atop of the cake and told the table they couldn’t light them. Soon after, a dessert was going out to another table with a regular candle on it, so why not just substitute that onto our cake so someone can blow something out on their birthday? When I talked to Duro initially, they explicitly said I could bring my own candles in as they just use standard candles and that the only 2 things that couldn’t be accommodated were confetti and balloons as they are disruptive to other diners. The ice cream cake saga continued at the end of the night. My companion asked for the remainder of the cake to take home since no more than 1/2 was plated, at which time Chad said they had none left because it had all melted down since they didn’t put it in the freezer. He made some comment about not having a freezer that could fit it - a standard square cake box no larger than 12x12 inches. Perhaps the Consumer Health Division within Dallas Code Compliance should pay a visit to see if they are operating a walk-in freezer or not these days. I’ve worked in restaurants before and never had such a full walk-in.

All in all, many past reservations at The Charles cannot get me past this disappointment of a surprise birthday experience. They offer private dining starting at $10,000 so perhaps that’s the only way to have an acceptable group experience here. Try Georgie or Uchi for a truly legitimate and hospitable...

The Charles Major disappointment, to say the least. The evening started off good, we were sat down and our waiter Rome came and introduced himself. He was very welcoming and told us he would be back to talk about the menu and tell us about great special they are having. After he disappeared for 20 minutes he returned and we started asking about appetizers. He said they didn’t have an appetizer menu but some of the plates were small and could be eaten as appetizers. That’s when he upsold us on the tasting menu, he explained that the tasting menu is a 4 course creation of the chef and would be an exclusive dining experience and built it up as a meal we would never be able to experience again all for the “bargain price” of $99 each. Since he really did put the sales charm we decided to trust him and go with the tasting menu, I guess since he sold us that he figured his job was done because we didn’t see him much after that. First course was Salmon Crudo, 2 crostini’s and a salad that was very similar to a caprice salad but with cream instead of mozzarella. The first course did taste good but very underwhelming, just smaller portions of the regular menu. Nothing special. Second course was a linguini with caviar, the linguini only had a lemon butter and the caviar just to added a bit of salty flavor on top. Pretty bland and underwhelming once again. Third course was the sliced Steak Picanha with a side of baked mushrooms and a side of breakfast style cubed potatoes with sour cream. The steak seasoning was not good, it was seasoned sweet and left much to be desired as the main course. I literally had 1 slice and my wife had 2 slices, we left the rest. The mushrooms were good but not something I would order twice. The breakfast style potatoes were completely flavorless and unseasoned, just baked with sour cream on them. Fourth and final course was desert, by this point I was frustrated and decided to make a comment to my wife in front of the waiter to see if it would get his attention. When the waiter was setting down the desert I said to my wife “dinner has been really disappointing, the best part was the first course and it was raw uncooked food”. The waiter had no reaction. The waiter walked away and never acknowledged my comment. So we each had one bite of the Dark Chocolate Desert, it was awful. Did not find it necessary to go for a second bite, come on how can you mess up chocolate desert!! Then Rome finally came back, asked us why we didn’t eat the desert and I told him we didn’t like it at all. He seemed confused but didn’t bother asking how we liked the rest of our food, No one asked us the entire night how our food was or if we liked it. I guess they couldn’t be bothered. So we came, we ate, we were served disappointment after disappointment, paid and left feeling ripped off. Not a single employee knew about our disappointing dinner experience because no one cared enough to ask, even after we sent back uneaten food. First person to ask us if we enjoyed our dinner was the gentleman at the Valet booth, I told him about the disappointing evening. He apologized, I just told him “no worries, not...

There is Dallas. And then there is The Charles.

Walking through the doors is not walking into a restaurant. It is stepping through the looking glass. One foot remains planted in Texas. The other is pulled somewhere else entirely. Call it Milan. Call it Manhattan. Call it the version of Italy that exists in the back of your mind when you crave something beautiful and rare. Whatever you call it, you stay. Because you do not want to be anywhere else.

The night begins with Chloe. Sharp, warm, perfectly attuned. Not just taking an order but reading the table. The kind of service that happens before you notice it. Hospitality that comes from instinct, not script. The kind you remember long after the plates have been cleared.

Austin glides through the room like a man conducting a quiet symphony. This is his floor. Timing is precise. The flow feels accidental but is anything but. Every guest is seen. Every detail absorbed. Hospitality lives in the space between presence and invisibility. Austin lives there comfortably.

And behind the bar is Declan. He does not make drinks. He builds experiences in glass. His cocktails arrive like well-written songs. Nothing wasted. Every ingredient in balance. They do not scream for attention. They do not need to. The first sip whispers. The second confirms you are somewhere serious.

The food comes next. A procession.

The whipped ricotta is an ambush. It looks simple. It is not. Rich, cold, devastatingly addictive. The kind of opening round that signals you are about to get worked. The charred octopus arrives with smoke and salt and perfect restraint. Tender. Honest. No tricks.

Then comes the black truffle cacio e pepe. This is where the kitchen flexes its muscle quietly. The house-made pasta is silk. The balance between decadence and discipline is surgical. This is the dish you order when you know you may never return, but you want to leave with no regrets.

The wood-fired branzino arrives next. Skin blistered, flesh pristine. The kind of execution that only happens when the kitchen has nothing to prove. They trust the product. They trust their hands. That trust is earned in every bite.

And then there is the room itself. Velvet booths. Marble bars. Lighting that flatters every flaw into submission. This is not décor. This is stagecraft. You are in Dallas, but you are not. You are in a private world carefully designed to remind you that this is not dinner. This is an event.

Harry deserves mention. Because great restaurants are not one-man shows. They are teams. Teams built on trust and pride and an unspoken agreement that every plate, every pour, every guest matters equally. Harry represents that heartbeat. The invisible force that makes the night seamless.

Duro Hospitality is not building restaurants. They are building sanctuaries. Escape routes from the ordinary. Rooms where service is religion and food is sacrament. Where confidence replaces ego and execution replaces pretense.

If you are the kind of person who believes in the possibility of one last great meal before the lights go out, The Charles belongs...