Good Charlie's — Restaurant in Texas

I like this place. I'll start off saying that. Upon arrival we had to wait I don't know three or four minutes for a hostess to seat us. That wouldn't be a big deal if it was busy but it was almost empty so not sure what was going on with that.

Then they came and tried to see this told us to hold on a minute while they cleared out a booth, which was also interesting since the whole place was almost empty It seems like to could have already had it cleared or status at another seat. But this is kind of besides the point and only for management to see because it wasn't really an inconvenience.

Okay onto the actual dining experience. The server didn't know much about the menu. We asked her if she had any IPAs on the drink menu and she said she doesn't know she's not real familiar with beer. So we flipped it over and looked at the menu and there was two there so that's good. They serve a local Hopadillo and also local Yellow Rose IPA. Both of those are good and they were a dollar off on Mondays for all day happy hour which put a 22 oz at $8.

When we asked her what her favorite thing on the menu was she immediately, well actually she said it's kind of hard to say, and then pointed to the most expensive thing on the menu. So this is a ploy of servers to beef up the bill so it also beefs up the tip. We settled on a couple of items. I got the 1 lb shrimp mix, which included an alleged 1 lb of shrimp along with their Cajun trio of corn potatoes and sausage. I got half of a corn on the cob and about one red potato cut into quarters, maybe two potatoes, in a small amount of very thinly sliced sausage. There was a total of 15 shrimp on the plate. I didn't think it was even close to a pound of shrimp. I ate 8 and brought 7 home. Those seven weighed in at 4.5 oz with sauce so probably 4 ounces of shrimp, being this pound of shrimp weighing in at 8.5 oz, it just over a half pound. This is concerning because shrimp doesn't lose any weight during cooking since there's no fat. This amount of discrepancy leads me to believe intentional misleading and improper weights and measures, a thing God and customers alike despise.

It was really good, but only half of what I ordered. Thumbs down 👎 for that.

My wife got the gumbo and ceviche. It was also excellent in flavor but lacking the substance. The ceviche was mostly veggies (onions, peppers, cilantro, etc.) and just barely any fish and what was there was very tiny pieces. The gumbo was also mostly chicken and rice with no seafood but a couple pieces of shrimp. Again, the flavor was great but it was lacking the main ingredients.

The place was beautiful, but after spending $75 for lunch, plus tip, I probably will not be returning. They even had a deal where if you bought a gift card you got 20% bonus! We had talked about getting a couple of gift cards as we usually do this with places we like, but even with 20% added on to what we purchased, it didn't seem like it was going to be a great deal.

It's truly unfortunate because this place has great potential. If the owner is reading this, I hope that he will correct his staff and instruct them to put the proper amounts of valuable ingredients into the valuable food that...

So where do I start. We went here for the time with family, including my wife, son and his grampa and grandma. We were excited to try it as its new, close to home and had heard it is owned by Citizens Grille which for the most part is a great restaurant. Walked in, the place looks amazing, and sat quicky even though it was just me and my wife, they sat us anyway. They serve wine bottle water which is fine, but I won't lie, my wife had to ask the server for more. He was pretty slow overall. He seemed super new, which is understandable as its a new restaurant. But just bringing water should not be a chore. List of what we ordered and results of it. Crabcake was one hammered patty, smelt like fish, smothered in tartar, and it being 18.95 , it was disgusting overall. No crab flavor at all. Gumbo was ok, but seemed like it hadn't been cooked for long as it was just firey. No depth, but I will admit it was the best thing we had that night. Hushpuppies. What a disaster. They were overcooked as hard as rocks and super dark telling us they don't change their oil regularly. In fact all the fried food we ordered looked amd tasted like that. Catfish and fries were the same quality and the catfish was more like the frozen box fish you get at the grocery store. It didn't even look or taste like catfish. It was also slimy. My son's granny got the salmon and she did in fact like it a lot, which is good because she's the pickiest off all of us. Sea Bass. Yikes... My wife may have ate a quarter of it, texture was rubbery, did not taste like sea bass at all, the shrimp fried rice under it was tasteless, hard, and the shrimp tasted like overcooked potato chunks. She did give feedback to our server, but he pretty much blew her off. Side asparagus was good overall, and my son got through his chicken tenders and fries... Overall it was a major disappointment. For the prices they charge (sea bass was 38.95) we expected Pappadeux quality. Not even close. They have a lot to do to make it better, and we are steering clear of it in the meantime. If things don't get better soon, they will be gone just like the restaurant before them (burgers and boudeux) VERY Disappointed. People, PLEASE read all their reviews. There are a lot of the same complaints, but with a 4.5 overall review, something is not adding up... I gave atmosphere a 3 as its really nice inside, but that seems their main focus. As well as the bar. Too bad, we had such high expectations. They definitely dropped the ball... Food took FOREVER for us to get, (we were in there for two hours) and what we received we...

First of all, I want to say that the service was great and the atmosphere was really nice. However, the food was less than good. We went in on Sunday July 16th around 1:00PM to get lunch. I good friend told me about this place and I love oysters so I was excited to check it out. We were seated quickly and our server was on the ball, getting our drink and appetizer orders. We had the artichoke dip which had shrimp and lobster (I think) in it. I ordered a cup of lobster bisque and the charbroiled oysters, and my wife had the fried fish dinner. The dip was heavily salted, my wife loves way too much salt on her food so it was perfect for her but it was way too salty for me. I did have some and other than it being over salted, it seemed good. After that we got the bisque and her fried fish. She liked her fish but said it didn’t have much flavor, I tried it and confirmed that it was a big bland but the fish was cooked perfect. My lobster bisque was more like a tomato soup, I know it is tomato based but this one was very tomato’y. The bisque also has cubed chunks of what I could only assume was imitation crab and very little lobster if that is what it was. The texture was more like crawfish. The oysters didn’t come out until after we were done with everything so basically when we should have been getting the check by then. The oyster meat on 4 of the 6 oysters was smaller than the size of a quarter. I have had baked, broiled, Rockefeller, ect and never had any this small and the meat was not separated from the shell, I had to use a knife to cut it loose. In addition, these oysters were to salty to eat. My wife, I mentioned earlier loves way too much salt, said that they were too salty. I ended up eating them but was close to just leaving them on the table. I don’t know if this was just today or if this is the norm, but I eat oysters about once a week if I can and this wasn’t up to par with any of the places I have been in the past. I would rather drive to Kemah and eat at Crazy Alan’s Swamp Shack. Their oysters are so big I couldn’t finish a half-dozen and they were perfect. I hope that this was just a one-time issue, reviews seem to be pretty good overall, this is just my experience. I may go back but there are a lot of options between my house and Good Charlies. My recommendation is that, if you have the word “Oyster” in the name of your restaurant, make sure that you do...