O'Charley's, Good Food, Good Times Restaurant

Saturday evening we decided to check out a new Restaurant in our neck of the woods in Orlando. O'Charley's Restaurant opened recently at the corner of Turkey Lake Road and Sand Lake Road in Orlando, Florida. The actual address is:

8081 Turkey Lake Road
Suite 700
Orlando, FL 32819
407-354-0010

This location is approximately 7 miles and 13 minutes from Disney World. Just down I-4 at the Sand Lake Road Exit.




We weren't familiar with this restaurant and it's a nice looking place to eat with a full bar.

Since we were planning on having dessert we decided to skip the appetizers this time.

I ordered the Create your own combo that has 7 entrees to choose from and comes with either soup or salad and one side item from a long list. You can choose from shrimp, ribs, grilled chicken, fried chicken tenders, fried catfish, and sirloin steak. You get two entrees plus the other items for $12.99 and 3 entrees plus the other items for $14.99. A real bargain for the amount of food you get.

Side items include broccoli cheese casserole, smashed potatoes, french fries, rice pilaf, broccoli or baked potato.

The waiter brought us a basket of very hot fresh rolls and butter before our meal. Not being a big bread eater I only ate a part of one and it was a wonderful roll.

My meal was started with the baked potato soup, which is different than other restaurants in that it is a cheese soup base with bacon and potatoes in it. The portion size that came with the meal was a full bowl and a good size. I enjoyed the soup although I would have liked more potatoes in it. There were very few.

For my main course I chose the fried catfish and sirloin steak combo with a baked potato. When it arrived the waiter asked me to cut into my steak to make sure it was cooked properly. I did and it was actually a bit medium when I had ordered medium rare but I'm not that picky about my steaks. I order medium rare because I'll eat anything from the rare to medium stage and this one fit into that range just fine.

My catfish came as two small portions but plenty enough to go with the steak which looked to be between 6 and 8 ounces in size.

My baked potato on the other hand became quite a comedy of errors. The first one I got and I did get many was stone cold. Cold enough that it didn't even melt soft butter. By the time my waiter came back (not his fault he had tables all over the restaurant) I was about half way through my meal. I informed him it was cold and he got me another one telling me it was right out of the oven. I thanked him and he walked away. I touched my hand to the new potato and it too was stone cold. So I decided not to wait for him to return. I tracked him down and told him that there must be something wrong with their oven as this one too was stone cold. I even picked it up in my hand to show him how cold it was. He looked mortified and took it to the kitchen returning in just a few minutes to the table with one that you could actually see steam rising off of. Now that's how a potato should come :-)

So crisis averted and I finally got my potato. Although the one thing I never did see was a manager or chef come out to apologize for my inconvenience of having to go through all of that in order to get a hot potato. It would have gone a long way with me had someone of authority done that. Tsk, tsk.

My husband's meal was the chicken Tender tacos. He said they were as they were described on the menu but he was actually hoping they would be better.

We then decided we would order the special Cinnamon Sugar Donuts. They are supposed to come hot and dressed table side with cinnamon sugar and tossed to coat in a paper bag. Ours arrived in the bag with the cinnamon sugar in sort of a lump in the bottom. Not tossed table side except by me. But by then the cinnamon sugar didn't really stick to more than the few that were closest to the lump. It came with a cream cheese dipping sauce that tasted more like cream than cream cheese and was very very thin. Almost watery thin. The donuts themselves weren't something I'd order again I don't think. They were heavy in texture like the oil wasn't quite hot enough when they were fried.

Overall I'd give this restaurant another go though. The prices were good, the service was okay although I saw that other tables had more attentive waiters than we did. And the food was good, but not great.

Maybe we caught them on an off day so usually I'll give it one more chance before I decide that it's not for me.