Cuisine Review

Night after night, some manage to keep tables full, make a decent – maybe not enormous – living and have fun cooking. Chuck’s Place, on Old Shell Road near Florida Street in MiMo, has always struck me as this kind of place.

A few years ago, I had a pleasant lunch in what could only be described as an added-onto starter home. My fish was good and the meal was quiet – my friends and I were the only ones dining. I live nearby and often times have wondered what dinner would be like.

Chuck’s is small and old-fashioned in décor. Not even close to being fancy, it is clean and friendly. You will find no copper lighting fixtures or funky tableware here – to visualize, think Korbet’s, if you can remember it. Korbet’s was an old-line continental restaurant at the Loop where the Korbet’s Shopping Center is now located (Water Table, Blockbuster and Smoothie King).

The menu never changed and neither did the food. It was a classic that served veal cutlet, snapper almandine and the like, all with a salad and a starch. The waitresses never left and the setting stayed the same. There were puffy vinyl booths, starched white tablecloths and napkins with inexpensive utensils. It was definitely not haute cuisine.

Chuck’s is in this style of restaurants started often by Greek and Italian immigrants with simple preparations of beef, seafood and veal, with a nod to Southern tastes. Nothing really matches, but when put together it is a return to at least my youth of dining out. As one in our group said “it is nice to come somewhere that is not all styled out.” Not that we are in danger of that happening in Mobile, but I hesitantly agreed.

There are three dining areas at Chuck’s – the porch, a main room and a “smoking” room. The ceilings are a bit low and not wanting to feel claustrophobic, I requested a table on the porch for five. Chuck’s may, or may not be busy, so at night it is a good idea to make some sort of reservation to be safe. Some friends had eaten there a few weeks before and there was only one other table. Chuck’s was filled up with two turns of the tables on our Saturday night, so much so that Chuck himself was our waiter! Chuck made sure to tell us when we arrived that the air conditioning did not always reach the front, glassed-in porch. We were warm, some more than others, but I survived.

Chuck is quite pleasant, talkative and entertaining. He has a long story to tell about how he got to where he is today. It is inspiring and I encourage you to ask. He likes running his small operation his way and at his pace. He would like to be open more, but like so many others, has a hard time finding wait staff. They have a nice, affordable wine list and the beers came with crisply chilled glasses.

There are plenty of selections on the main menu, but the daily specials appear so interesting that you might find it hard to look beyond them. On the night we went, the specials were a fried seafood “tower” of grouper, soft shell crab, shrimp, crabmeat and cream crab sauce ($18.75); “San Remos” – sautéed shrimp, crawfish, oysters and scallops with sweet peppers, mushrooms and garlic, with clam juice and olive oil, tossed with linguine ($16.95); “Muffie’s grouper and shrimp” – baked grouper topped with angel hair pasta, sautéed shrimp, green olives, artichoke, sweet peppers, mushrooms and lump crabmeat with a special seasoned sauce ($17.95) or encrusted grouper coated with andouille sausage and Dijon mustard, grilled and baked in the oven, topped off with a sweet pepper sauce and jumbo lump crabmeat $17.95.

The menu has several veal selections, some fried seafood plates taken from items found on the “tower,” chicken or veal picata or Marsala and beef. To start off, there is an eggplant crawfish au gratin ($8.95) that I caught a glance of that looked worthy of ordering and a cream of crab soup (cup, $4.50) and garlic oysters that both sound worthy of a try.

Two at our table immediately chose the encrusted grouper special, my wife wanted the scamp almandine ($16.95) and another chose the shrimp scampi ($16.95). The beef tenderloin choices such as Charlie’s tenderloin (big on names here) with a crawfish buerre rouge sauce ($26.95) or the Neptune tenderloin (with au jus) had my attention, but Chuck suggested a cowboy rib eye ($24.95) pan seared and topped with mushroom marsala wine sauce that is not on the menu. All dinners come with a green salad and on that evening a choice of twice-baked potato, acorn squash or sautéed vegetables.

The salads were green and red leaf, with a tomato wedge, both fresh. The vinaigrette was dark and complete with Italian spices. Others had the blue cheese, with nothing I remember being said either way about it. Chuck bounced back and forth between the kitchen and making sure we were all happy out front. I was amazed at how fast our food came from the kitchen.

All in the restaurant seemed content and satisfied. My steak was delicious, cooked correctly with large sautéed mushrooms and a Marsala sauce that was thick enough to coat, but did not envelope the meat. The twice-baked potato was most definitely old school, heated up under the broiler, a slightly reddish top due to paprika sprinkled on top and slightly dry.

The scamp almandine was about medium in thickness with a light buttery taste, not greasy with slivered almonds. The scampi, it was reported to me to be as you might expect, good, but not great.

The two specials more than hit the mark. Chuck had ground the sausage and mixed it with the mustard, and after grilling the fish, he coated the sausage around the fish and finished it off with the sauce and a light blanket of crabmeat. The fish was able to be enhanced by the sausage and Dijon rather than overpowered by it.

Chuck’s is old school, and some of you may not like that. But every once in a while it is good to go back to the comforts of our past.

Kinnon Phillips is Lagniappe cuisine editor. Contact him at kphillips@lagniappemobile.com.

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