Charcoal Corral — Restaurant in Town of Castile

We just got home from the "Farewell to Summer" Super Cruise at Silver Lake Drive-In today. A great show with lots of great cars and really nice weather. We definitely wanted to eat here after reading the good reviews, so we walked over to the Charcoal Corral for dinner around 3 PM. There were a few people in line ahead of us, so maybe a five minute wait to order. Not very busy at all at that time. We ordered a grilled chicken breast with sweet potato fries, a three-piece broasted chicken dinner with sweet potato fries, and two sodas. We waited 20 minutes for our buzzer to tell us our food was ready. It didn't take us long to realize that our meals must have been sitting somewhere for quite a while because none of our food was hot, just barely warm at best. The broasted chicken was also overcooked, tough, and dry. I took the fries and the broasted chicken back to the counter and told them I'd like fresh orders made. The two girls at the counter looked at each other like, "So, what do we do now?" They must have figured it out because a fresh order of fries and chicken dinner was delivered to our table 20 minutes later. The second chicken dinner and fries were VERY hot and noticeably better than the first one. At no time did anyone apologize for the poor quality of the food or why our food wasn't served sooner. We finished our meals and left. So, for those of you playing along at home, our two meals with sodas and tax totaled $33.94 on order check #799. Based on the poor food quality, the disconnected food service, and the rather high prices, we can't recommend this place. That's so sad because the atmosphere here is very pleasant with a lot of character, plus a really nice mini golf course that looks like like a lot of fun. And, with the Silver Lake Drive-in theater right next door, this spot is a great destination for a day of fun for the whole family. Park the car, play a few rounds of mini golf, have some dinner, some ice cream, and then drive over and watch a movie at the drive-in theater. We ate here fully expecting a much better experience than what we received. If they fix the problems with the poor food quality and the food service, we might eat here again. Thanks...

We are giving it a 1 star. We usually enjoy going here but the service lately has gone down hill. There has been several recent times we have gone and the Ice cream parlor has been the worst. Very unorganized under extreme traffic as well as when there is no one there but one customer. Our recent trip today 8/25/24 the place closed at 10 pm. We stopped at about 9:30 pm coming home from a long day at the state fair. We decided to choose getting ice cream like we always do here. We walked in 2 girls were working what looked like the usual cleaning before closing time. We were talking out loud what we would like one girl looked at us turned back around and continued cleaning. Mind you my loud 7 year old was saying what she would want . I said excuse me. Still they kept cleaning. We stood there for a few more minutes talking what we wanted still no one would come up to take our order! I get that cleaning everything is important at the end of the night but down right ignoring customers to clean rather than make another mess to clean again before close is bad customer service. I worked at Subway in Perry I know about the night cleaning before you leave and how much more work it is to clean again before close. You still serve your customers till the time the place closes! You do not just ignore them in hopes they go away so you don't have to do more work. I'm sorry you cannot tell me this isnt the case. The girl who was in front of us cleaning looked right at us as we discussed what we wanted! Then turned around and kept cleaning. Not even a sorry we are closed (which they were not it was just about 9:30pm they closed at 10pm ). We stood there waiting a few more minutes even after i said excuse me and she refused to turn around. Very poor work ethics very poor customer service. This place is really going down hill bad! Your workers need more training on customer service and time management to make it work to keep customers happy while getting your work done. The ice cream parlor is by far the worst part...

Pizza is actually VERY good and very consistent. As someone else mentioned, it's basically like an EZ BAKE OVEN system with pizzas rolling thru the oven on a conveyor system, but they really are delicious, and the crust is some of my favorite after having literally hundreds of different pizzas from all over the country and even working in pizza shops years ago. Their Chicken BBQ's area awesome as well. Personally to me, all the other food is just typical burgers, dogs and chicken finger type stuff, nothing really all that special, but nice to have a little variety. Burgers are not nearly as good as places like Tom Wahls, or other individual burger joints, even though they are a bit pricier here. The other down side is they don't take credit cards. They DO have a couple discounted ATM's on site, and you can also purchase gift cards online, so they may help some out a little. They say this helps them keep prices down, and while I do understand the underlying reason and the advantage to the BUSINESS, it's DEFINITELY an inconvenience to MANY customers, and somehow, the prices are still NOT any lower than other comparable places around that DO take credit cards. In fact they tend to be a bit on the higher side for most things, so I don't really understand. If this supposedly helps them keep prices down, why isn't that passed on to customers rather than just an extra profit in the owners' pockets. You would think with all the attractions and fun things to do that they have, those things would HELP bring profit in, and if anything allow them to have LOWER Prices for food than other choices around, rather than HIGHER prices. Maybe they lose profit on those attractions and have to make up for it by charging more for food?? All in all, it's a fun place to go, decent food (some things better than others), and service is "ok". Nothing to write home about, but generally decent with occasional longer waits or...