Čarlstons
Restaurants
By Andra Kunstberga.
16.01.2014
A Riga favorite for as long as anyone can remember, Čarlstons was once one of the very few professionally run restaurants you could always rely on for great food.
It’s still just as dependable as ever, with a warm and friendly ambiance and unstuffy interior. The music is buoyant and upbeat, the décor comfortable without trying to be flashy.
These days oriented as a “BBQ restaurant and bar”, what’s relatively new is the leisurely Sunday brunch, up for grabs between 11am and 4pm. Chef Harald Mekša and his team set up a rich selection of enjoyable food, and the kids, if you have them, can run amok in a large adjoining playroom. A character called Little Dill helps the little ones prepare tasty morsels to eat, and they can also watch cartoons, make use of coloring books, paste or do multitudinous other creative stuff.
The brunch (€14.20 per person, €7.10 for kids aged 7 to 12, free for the under-sevens) is laid out starting with typical breakfast food – crispy cereals, several types of omelets, homey pancakes with jam, healthy salads with freshly baked bread, and morning coffee or tea.
It continues to early lunch, with, for example, shrimp-shell broth, mussels and barbeque-style meat dishes. The brunch is then wrapped up with exquisite chocolate truffles, cakes and desserts.
If you venture to Čarlstons at any other time you’ll be rewarded with mouthwatering dishes like Jack Daniels pork (€11.35), a pork chop on the bone marinated in whisky and served with a whisky-grain mustard sauce, or slow-cooked St Louis back ribs (€15.65), which have been smoked for four hours and glazed four times with St Louis barbeque sauce.
Grilled sea bass (€18.50) is marinated whole in fresh herbs, covered with sea salt and fresh lemon juice, and glazed in melted garlic butter.
Authentic old favorites include Caesar salad and French onion soup. But the BBQ dishes are the ones to head for – prepared daily, with the slow-smoking starting up to 14 hours beforehand over alder wood. Come with a big appetite.
