Chuck’s Steak House is Good Family Eating

Chuck's Steak House is such a Darien institution that it might have been here since the Redcoats disrupted Moses Mather's sermon at the First Congregational Church during the Revolutionary War.

Actually, Chuck's arrived a little less than 200 years later. Joe Russo, the current owner of Chuck's Steak House, says that the Darien branch of this regional chain opened in 1968. 

And, the surprise is that Chuck's was started originally in Hawaii.

In 1953, Chuck Rolles opened the first Chuck's Steak House in Waikiki (which explains the surfing décor). Rolles attended restaurant school at Cornell, and when he went home to Hawaii he opened a restaurant that provided good food without the frills. His intention was to compete with the tuxedo-service and multiple-utensil restaurants that had opened in the hotels there.

According to Chuck's Steak House lore, the all-you-can-eat, self-serve salad bar did not exist in the continental U.S. before Chuck got busy in Hawaii. Credited with bringing the concept to the mainland, Rolles was honored by the Hawaiian Restaurant Association for inventing the salad bar as well as for creating a really fabulous restaurant.

"It's sort of a loose chain," Russo explained. "We probably see Chuck a couple of times a year," he said about the founder, who has retired to Colorado.

Russo started working at our local Chuck's in 1982 as a dishwasher while he was still a student at Darien High School. He is a classic American dishwasher-to-restaurant-owner success story.

Even when Russo went to college in New Haven, he worked at a Chuck's. When he came back to Darien, two of the managers of the Darien Chuck's had opened a restaurant in Virginia Beach, so there was an opportunity for Russo to run our local Chuck's.

And Russo was the man for the job. After some years of work, Russo bought the Darien Chuck's in 1990.

Why is Chuck's so successful? Good family eating in a comfortable environment.

My daughter Charlotte dined there with her friends before I had a chance to go. "I love this place," she said to me.

I took my daughter to eat at Chuck's (with me this time), and we learned that all the entrees, even burgers, include the self-serve salad bar–one of Chuck's main attractions. It's a classic salad bar with a choice of iceberg lettuce (for the really traditional) and dark leafy greens, and the various fresh fixin's: carrots, beets, mushrooms, bell peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions, shredded cheese, olives, garbanzo beans, toppings, various kinds of dressings, and bread – you name it!

The nice thing for me was watching my 13-year-old daughter gobble a salad and exclaim about how good it was.

Then came our entrees. My daughter's teenager-cheeseburger fixation is practically an obsession, and the Chuck's cheeseburger with lettuce and tomato accompanied by well-done French fries was the answer to her prayers. I tried it, and it was truly delicious. Now we will no longer have to travel to South Norwalk to get a good burger on my kids' birthdays.

Grant, our waiter, said that the ground beef for the hamburgers is "fresh ground daily here." And it shows.

I tried a New York strip steak sandwich, another popular item. This was a delicious grilled strip steak on Italian bread with iceberg lettuce and tomato, cooked exactly how I wanted it. I never know how they do that.

I decided to challenge Chuck's. Instead of the more traditional side of baked potato or French fries, I ordered fresh steamed broccoli.  And this was perhaps my biggest surprise–the broccoli was suspiciously good (did they add something?) and steamed to the right degree of al dente.

By the end of our meal, I had exposed myself as a reporter by taking photos of the salad bar and our food, and people came out of the woodwork to tell me how much they loved Chuck's. Jim Flynn, a waiter, has been working there for 30 years. "I think it's a great value to the customers, and the owners are great," he said. "I've already put my kids through school but I still like to work here. There's gotta be something good here if someone stays thirty years."

Other customers, who wished to remain anonymous, joked and exchanged greetings with the staff. It was like being in the old sitcom, "Cheers."

"This is one of the best burgers ever," Charlotte said. 

And I agreed with her.

But the nicest part about the evening was sitting face to face with my teenaged daughter, enjoying the comfortable atmosphere and actually having a conversation. The Chuck's cheeseburger is apparently the way to her heart.