C as in Charlie — Restaurant in New York

Having just eaten here, (June 2025), I honestly don't know why this restaurant is rated so high on Google. I disagree. Would give this place 2.5 stars for avg: 2 stars food, 3.5 stars service, 3 stars atmosphere.

First, IMO, this is not a true Korean restaurant but veils as one. I've had Korean food hundreds of times. Charlie serves tapas-style, Korean dishes but there's very little Korean about these dishes. Let's say Korean-influenced.

Our party sat outdoors for prime dinner hours. Hot dry, weather. Indoors has ceiling fans going with doors wide open. Outdoors is the better call.

Service was adequate. Questions answered. Orders taken timely. No service issues. Maitre'd was helpful and accommodating. Our server wore a Mets hat, and was going a mile a minute. Nice guy, honest, hustling bc clearly overwhelmed. I saw he was the only exclusive server outdoors, I could be wrong. Maybe a server colleague called out sick, who knows. He intentionally would talk so fast taking orders because he was overseeing the entire outdoors, at least 10 tables, up to 12, not including indoors, couldn't see. The maitre'd, she would help on occasion bringing checks, helping clearing tables. Then they have a bunch of runners delivering food to tables.

Overall, the food was not impressive. Average at best, I rated it slightly below avg.

Carrot tartare (shavings) and pita. Tartare lacked flavor and the fried pita was stale. Nothing good about this dish. Avoid this dish.

Sliced octopus with tomato chojang, some citrus and julienned onions was refreshing. Octo slices is about 2 mm thickness. You get little octo but just enough, the octo was fresh, kudos there.

Popcorn chicken is like a general Tao chicken. Doesn't taste like a typical gochujang sauce, not spicy at all. It's very sweet, like a plum sauce or something. You need rice with it to cut the sweetness, but don't get any with it (it's not Korean lol).

Potato nuggets. Fried, halved fingerling potatoes. Such a Korean dish (sarcasm). Crispy, salted potatoes. Was ok, but nothing impressive.

The mushroom bibimbap. What an effing joke. It's sauteed mushrooms and a poached egg over white rice. THATS IT! That's not bibimbap!!! By definition it's rice, veggies, protein optional, sauce. Textbook, it contains ingredients for bibimbap. Call it a mushroom rice bowl. This is not a typical bibimbap. Again, not Korean!!!

Oxbone cream pasta. Underwhelming. Lacks flavor. They use spaghetti. The cream is watery consistency. The pancetta helps to bring flavor, but not enough to overcome the lackluster flavor. This is basically carbonara. Also not Korean.

Baby back ribs. Dish is 3 bones. It tastes like boiled ribs with some homemade bbq sauce. Meat is soft, kudos there, but the sauce lacks flavor to say this rib dish is tasty. Not very Korean.

With tip came to $ roughly 175 for the bill. Felt full after all these dishes, but so disappointed.

I would not...

Tl;dr: Good overall, but does not do a great job of presenting both Korean and Southern flavours; would not recommend in light of the hefty price tag until the recipes are tweaked to better incorporate both Korean and Southern flavours.

So this is an interesting one. Starting with the unambiguously good things, the service and vibes are good. The food comes out quickly and the staff is friendly, so all good on that.

Onto the food. My party ordered the Crab Drop Cream Soup, the ribs, the oxtail pasta, the chicken bites, the dessert bagel, and the banana pie.

Regarding all of these dishes, I noticed a trend: the texture was always on point, but the flavour left something to be desired. Allow me to explain. The premise of the restaurant is that it is a sort of Korean-Southern fusion spot, so the expectation with the food items is that they will blend these flavours and tastes. The food items, however, generally (although not all) fail to deliver on this, and tend to be pretty one more.

Starting with the crab soup, I found this dish to be the only item that fully delivers on the premise, having both interesting Korean sweet and Southern creamy flavours, so good on that (although the sweetness was a little overpowering).

Moving next to the ribs, these were cooked perfectly and had the perfect fall off the bone texture, yet failed to deliver on the Korean-flavour end of things, and just tasted like generic good ribs. The exact same goes for the chicken bites and the pasta, with the chicken just tasting like regular honey garlic popcorn chicken and the pasta tasting like regular creamy meaty pasta.

As to the dessert bagel and the banana cream pie, the dessert bagel was basically just a reconstructed ice cream cone (no problem with that, but not very fusiony), and the banana cream pie was just that: a banana cream pie (again no fusiony stuff).

These things being understood, then, to summarize my review, this place gets a 4/5 because, while the food, vibes, and service are good and the texture is great, the flavour simply does not sufficiently mix or balance Korean and Southern flavours.

In light of these things and the hefty pricetag of the menu, I would not recommend going to this restaurant except for the soup until the chef's re-tweak their recipes to better balance their flavours and properly deliver on the fusion promise of...

The food, the service, and the atmosphere were amazing, but I must say it's the bathroom that really grabbed my attention.

Let me paint the scene: you approach the singular bathroom at the end of the restaurant. It's a sliding door - interesting - you open it and are immediately blinded by a bright blue light that seems to emanate from its walls. As your eyes adjust you begin to notice a soft male voice murmuring... is he counting? You look up. It's Michael from Vsauce. They've projected his three-hour recitation of prime numbers on the wall above the toilet. Strange. Unsettling. Intriguing? Directly beneath him is a taped up photo of young Arnold Schwarzenegger - "DO YOU EVEN LIFT BRO?" roughly scrawled across it. You look down - there's a tab attached to the toilet seat cover - "LIFT, BRO". You take a seat to pee and look to your right. There is a banana duct-taped to the wall. Okay, you think, this is definitely an homage to that one art exhibit. You look ahead. There is Listerine and bowl of lollipops underneath an image of a man holding a guitar. This is arguably the most normal part of the bathroom. You go to wash your hands and notice a small piece of paper taped to your left. It's got writing on it that you can't read....the letters look backward? You look into the mirror and see its reflection. "Employees must wash hands before returning to work." That's actually kind of clever, you think. You search for the soap. There is a large white snail on the sink. You put your hand experimentally underneath its head and nothing happens. You're confused. Maybe it's not soap after all? You press on its shell. Pink goo gushes from its mouth - you've cracked the code! You exit as Michael's count approaches seventeen thousand. Your mind is frazzled from the visual, auditory, and mental assault of this bathroom. You can't help feeling as though you've missed something. You go home and write a silly...