3. Charley's Steak House

Big Disappointment
My boyfriend has been to Charley's many times with his father and he loves the place. But when we went there in May 09 I found it to be a huge disappointment. First we were seated in a room with the most obnoxious family who were very loud forcing the rest of the room to yell to speak to their party. Then the service was horrible, the waiter rarely showed up to our table and when he did he brought us steaks that were not cooked to how we ordered them. I mean come on if you are going to pay that much for a steak you better at least have the thing cooked accordingly. This place is overpriced and if you are not going there to drop tons of money on wine and additional items then you will get ignored by the staff and be put in the crappy(loud) section of the restaurant.. I would choose Outback over this place any day of the week.

I can't believe the people who write positive reviews for this place. They must either be retired and never go anywhere decent, or they're friends of the manager. In my opinion Charley's is WAY OVER-RATED. We had a $250 meal in August 2008 and were very disappointed both with the food and the service. Especially the food. We should have paid attention to a few of the negative reviews we read before going to this place! Our appetizers, as well as both steaks were luke warm at best. When we brought it to the waiter's attention he took them back to the kitchen for "warming". Come on, even a mid-level roadhouse restaurant would offer to replace the steaks! They weren't even tender. The service was mediocre at best, the valet parking guys were not the least bit friendly, and the host or hostess was non existent. The food and service were just not anywhere near the caliber that you would expect from a good restaurant. In my opinion Charley's is one of those places that might have been good several years ago. But, if you're visiting Clearwater or Tampa today there are dozens of restaurants I would go before ever returning to this place!

Read the reviews -- for me, I have had nothing but great service and good meals at Charleys. Living in the area and working on Kennedy, I frequent many of the better Tampa restaurants and Charleys is indeed one of them (albeit there is always that "errant night"). I had to laugh though, while one reviewer had an issue with Charleys, they extoll Berns which I think is the lowest restaurant I have been too. (I have been to Berns 4 times and will NEVER return -- each visit was mediocre to bad, the last was outrageously bad; service, food, shabby ambience, noise! ALL Disgusting!)