Johnny's Char-House

So this is going to be one of those where I should have listed to the yelp reviews.  Parents, my 20yr old son and myself went on a Friday night. (Sep 28)  WE were greeted and seated and the placed looked nice.  However for 7pm on a Friday the place was dead and I mean dead.  There may have been two other parties seated.  What does that tell me....food wont be good.  If i was with my dining partner formerly known as my wife we would have turned around and left.  However my mom wanted to try the place so we had a seat.  I ordered a cocktail and the rest of the table had sodas or coffee or something I don't recall.  Salad came out in a decent time along with soup.  Than we hit the pause button and it was like everything went into slow motion.  Drink refills forget about it.  More bread, maybe later.  Due to the fact that they were not busy I could see straight into the kitchen and observe all of the employees having a really good time and munching away.  There were several waitstaff having conversations, it just want with their customers.  When the food did come out my rib eye was good and cooked the way I like it.  My son did not like his food nor did my mom.  My dad had some pasta dish with seafood in it and he said it was just a bit better than Red Lobster.  Overall the experience was just barely OK and at that price point it should be better.  Our server never did a quality check and my mom wanted something to put on the greek chicken which she said was bland.  By the time he stopped chatting with the girls and came over it was to late.  He also never asked if anyone needed another drink or if anyone wanted desert.  So there you have it just not very good.

I have worked in the food service industry for 30 plus years and I have never experienced a restaurant that has such great potential but has found a way to completely turn a potential into an utter train wreck. Let's get the positive out of the way- the décor of the restaurant is very warm and inviting. It is a clean looking place with a vast majority of stone and wood themes running up and down the walls and the soaring arched ceilings. The dining room is comfortable and has a ski lodge type feel which is probably more associated with the efforts that were put into the design and interior detailing from the first restaurant group- The Canoe Club. There are booths that line the perimeter of the main dining room, a large bar to the north of the building with a mocked up stage and a large private room to the east of the main dining room. When the warm weather calls, there is a large outdoor seating area to the east of the private dining room which is fenced in by well maintained shrubs offering an elegant atmosphere. The parking lot is clean and has enough spaces to handle large crowds.

Unfortunately, the infrastructure and the "hype" could not save the lame execution.

My wife and I arrived on a Friday night at 6 PM and were promptly seated in the middle of the large open dining room. Our menus were presented along with ice waters and a warm mini- bread loaf on a wooden board which was a nice touch and certainly beckoned the promise of a great meal. Our waitress was friendly and went over some evening specials, grabbed our drink order and promptly returned with two glasses of wine. We felt at home and ordered some crab cakes but when the crab cakes arrived they looked as if they were prepared in the kitchen by an apprentice and at these prices I started to get a bit suspicious. There was decent flavor that again promised reward so we forged on and ordered our entrees.

My wife ordered a Mediterranean "spring" salad and I ordered the grilled Greek "style" lamb chops with Greek potatoes and asked for a side of tzatziki sauce which completely puzzled our waitress. She had no clue what tzatziki sauce was and after a short description I realized that this authentic Greek restaurant did not offer the sauce on the menu so I gave up.

Within 15 minutes the dinners arrived but we were quickly disappointed. The salad was a joke and looked like it had the poorest quality tomatoes that one could buy. The cucumbers were definitely precut from another day only to be tossed in with the rest of the hodgepodge that left my poor wife scrambling for a bite of my lamb. The chops were terrible- tough and grizzly with hardly any flavor with some pathetic "Greek" potatoes that did not have a hint of lemon, garlic or oregano. The rice on the plate was bland and underwhelming. As I sat there chewing on the chops I started to see the illusions come crashing down. I noticed the uneven service staff and the crowds that were not coming in on a Friday night. I observed management staff that peered oddly out to the dining room like sharks on the prowl and I realized that this was a loser in the making.

Our waitress came around and dropped the check and we never saw her again as it was obvious to me that we were no longer part of the equation once the ordering ceased. Our meal came with downtown prices and Les Brother's quality.

It is quite sad to see this place failing but Johnny needs to pay attention to this last part. Hire a CHEF. Hire an executive CHEF that has a pedigree and pay him or her and then stay out of the way. If you are charging 30 bucks for lamb chops- you better bring the prime cut EVERY time for EVERYONE. Serve a fresh salad with fresh plum tomatoes and not some tomatoes that could not past the mustard in 90% of fast food establishments. If you are Greek and you cannot make Greek food happen how are you going to make Italian and American food happen?

I'm not sure why there are 77 filtered reviews of this place?!? Yelp needs to recheck that craziness.

Anyway, we came here on a Friday night and it was really good! The bar was packed and they had live music going on. Large circle bar in the middle of the room.

The building is beautiful - I'm glad someone took it over after the Canoe Club....such a shame to let it sit empty. When you're sitting in the dining room, there's a huge fireplace and vaulted ceilings. Very pretty!

Food was delicious. Steaks come with soup or salad and your choice of potato.  Our steaks were done perfectly - charred on the outside and juicy and tender on the inside. On the menu they have steaks and Greek food, seafood and pasta dishes so there is something for everyone.

Prices were on par with steak places in the area. I just hope this place will last. I didn't even know it was there until someone told me.

Service was really good too!