Critic's Review
Chuck's is a leftover steakhouse from the 70's, when places like Beefsteak Charlie's were the place to be. Chuck's reminds me of Beefsteak Charlies more than a little.
The location on SE 17th is open for lunch; but this one is only open for dinner. I'd never been to this location before. It has one of these annoying parking lots where the spots on the south side have meters and the spots on the north side don't. So of course everyone parks on the north side, and you end up having to walk a ways when none of the spots on the other side are taken.
This chucks is separated into 2 big rooms; one is a pretty bright bar area with diner style booths; and the main dining room which is dark and dated. The booths are good sized, and there is a pretty good light so you can see what you're eating.
Service here started out very strange, the first thing my server said was "Welcome to Flannagin's". I wasn't sure if he was joking or what. He took my iced tea order (they had wine for $7.25 a glass but I wasn't drinking this evening), but didn't take my food order, which I'd decided on right off. I wanted to get to the salad bar but I had to wait for him to come back. I ordered the large prime rib (14oz) and a loaded baked potato and the salad bar. Entrees come with either the salad bar or soup or a caesar salad; but there's no point in coming to Chuck's if you're not going to do the salad bar.
The salad bar is smaller than I expected; smaller than the one on SE 17th street. They only have one big bowl of lettuce, which is mostly iceberg with some romaine and other stuff mixed in. It's very similar to the salad bars they have in supermarkets, which most of the usual suspects with some flatbreads and about 12 different dressings. They did have crumbled blue cheese, so I was able to enhance the otherwise not so chunky blue cheese dressing.
They also have bread; unfortunately the dark bread had raisins in it; I was hoping for a good pumpernickel but I didn't want the raising. The white bread was good enough, although the butter was nearly frozen and spreading it on the soft bread made a mess of it.
I was about 3/4 done with the salad when the prime rib came out; unlike the newfangled recent grad chefs from the local cooking institute; presentation is secondary at Chuck's.
A good sized slab of meat, a medium sized potato, au jus and some horseradish sauce. The prime rib was a mixed bag; not too fatty or grisly; the darker meat was moist and delicious but the center cut was very lean and dry. I don't really like au jus, but I had no choice with the leaner meat. The horseradish wasn't the best I've ever had but it was good enough.
I ended up getting another half plate of salad, so while for $28 you wouldn't think that this was a tremendous bargain, but I had to push myself to finish this, and I'm a big eater. All told, this was a lot of food.
If you value the salad bar at about $8 (they get $10 for it ala carte), it's not a bad price. But the steak was no better than you get at the Outback, so if you're not into salad bars there's no real pull to the place.
They say that once the coronavirus nonsense is over, they'll be opening a new Chuck's in Fort Lauderdale.