Charlie's Diner — Restaurant in Spencer

I was a regular at Charlie's for 7 years when the diner was still located in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 2001, it lost its lease and the owners had to remove the diner structure from its site on Plantation Street. Eventually, they found a new location in Spencer, and reinstalled and expanded there, and about the only thing that has changed (thankfully) was the view out the window.

Charlie's is a classic Worcester built diner serving up THE quintessential New England diner experience. Food here isn't fancy, but it is solid, tasty, and memorable -- memorable in the sense that you can go out and sample all kinds of exotic cuisine the world over, but you'll always want to come home to a seat at Charlie's.

I've tried just about everything here, but on our last visit we started with the soups. I had the homemade pea soup and Mrs. Roadside had the turkey noodle, both of which could be described as meals all by themselves. The turkey noodle had chunks of fresh roasted turkey, ample vegetables. The pea soup had that soul-satisfying stick-to-the-ribs quality too rarely found in any short order restaurant these days.

My main course of bourbon-marinated steak tips served with real mashed, gravy, and peas and carrots would fit well at the table of a much more expensive steak house. Mrs. Roadside loved the clamstrip roll with fries, and we both polished all off with grapenut custard.

As good as the food is, it's almost worth your while just to go and sit at the counter for an hour just to soak in the atmosphere, which feels as if you've stepped back in time to a simpler more neighborly era. You will not find anything like this in any Wendy's or Dunkin Donuts (thank god).

As a long time customer of this great place, I can best describe a meal at Charlie's thusly: You can have it your way at Charlie's. Just don't think you're...

Let me start by saying that the food and service (waitstaff) was excellent. The venue was beautiful. With that said - the owner (I guess it was the owner, he never introduced himself) was rude. Rude from the very moment we walked into the venue. We rented the venue for a special occasion and paid VERY good money. We felt from the moment we opened the door to the venue that we were "in the way" and a complete bother. He passively aggressively told us to keep the door shut to save heat (even though our guests would be coming in through those doors). He said, " the heat you have now is the only heat you get." That was our welcome. He was absolutely no help to us when we asked questions and instead of offering help while trying to decorate his answers were, "if you put holes in the wall or tape on the wall, you can come back and paint it." And directing us to a near by hardware store instead of offering to assist us. The last straw was when he charged us $54 !!!! for simply cutting OUR cake. We could have cut our own cake and he could have told us that he would charge us for this service, but did not. What venue CHARGES a customer to cut a cake that they can cut themselves. The very least he could have done was to inform us of this charge. He was even seen taking the food that we paid for into the back for himself or staff. Food was never replenished. What you see you get. When you run out, you run out. I have worked with many, many venues and have never had this sour experience. So beware. Thankfully we all had a wonderful time but he completely put a bad taste...

We have always eaten in the diner part, at least once every summer, when we are residing in Massachusetts. We got there tonight at 4:30 and the diner part had closed at 3 PM, so we went into the bar area. There were numerous specials and a large, two-sided menu. I chose 4 pc. fried chicken, off of the regular menu, with my sides onion rings and salad with honey ginger dressing. I was surprised to get two breasts and no thigh 🙁, along with the drum and wing. The breast meat was so flavorful and juicy I couldn't believe they were white meat. The coating was so crunchy! The onion rings, which may or may not have been freshly made (very uniform), were not greasy and very delicious. The honey ginger dressing was very creamy and not TOO gingery, but with a tiny nip on my tastebuds. My entire meal was wonderful. My husband chose one of the specials, meat lasagna. It was a large, meaty portion that came with very garlicky garlic toast, also very good. His slight complaint was the sauce, but when I tasted it I noticed a lot of parmesan cheese, which he doesn't care for awfully much. Didn't stop him from eating every bite! Changed from 4 ☆ last time to...