Famous steak house closes after 30 years

VENUE WAS THE GO-TO SPOT FOR LATE-NIGHT DINING

ONE of Cardiff’s best-known restaurants has closed its doors for good after 30 years of trading in the city.

Charleston’s, famed as a late-night steak house located on Caroline Street has been a city centre institution since 1991.

Charleston’s, which opened at 7.30pm each evening, was afforded a late-night licence and permitted to open until 6am – making it the city’s go-to spot for latenight dining.

But its owners, who opened up a sister restaurant earlier this year, said the antisocial hours and the coronavirus pandemic made it impossible to keep the venue going.

Owner Carmella Azzopardi said she decided to close the doors for good during the last coronavirus lockdown.

Signs outside the property at 46 Caroline Street show it is once again up for lease.

“It was wonderful there all those years, very happy memories,” said Carmella.

“But I’d been there for 30 years, and I’m getting older now – I’m tired.”

“It was open from 7.30pm in the evening and I’d be there until four, five, six o’clock in the morning.

“We had a late-night licence and all that really took its toll on me, it took my health away.

“I decided it was time then to do something a bit more sociable, and that’s why we opened Black Salt.”

Black Salt, run by the owners of Charleston’s, opened on Whitchurch Road earlier this year, some four years after plans for its launch were first revealed.

Carmella said that the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the hospitality industry made it impossible to keep Charleston’s going.

“It was dreadful,” she said. “We were upstairs, we weren’t downstairs to be seen and even though we had regulars it was hard.

“It wasn’t so bad when there were the vouchers for money off, but when they changed it to 10 o’clock in the evening which wasn’t worth us opening - and then there was no booze served.

“Nobody would come up, it was terrible. We didn’t open back up after that. We couldn’t open, we couldn’t. We had no outside area, we had nothing.

“It really broke my heart to give it up, I was depressed over it and I still am.

“It was a very hard decision to do, it was like our second home for 30 years.

“But it was hard over the years and did make me tired.”

Despite the closure, Carmella says she has “very happy memories” of her time running the restaurant.

“All the celebrities used to visit us. Charlotte Church used to come up and sing for us, she met Gavin [Henson] there, all the stars used to come up – we had them all,” she said.

“We had all the sports stars, cricketers, rugby players, singers, Dynamo was there three nights in a row – we had loads up there, it’s all memories.

“We had a six o’clock licence so we’d stay open and they would be singing and entertaining, the customers couldn’t believe their eyes.

“They would come in and eat and then put on a performance.”

Charleston’s was one of – if not the only – late night restaurants in the city, something Carmella says she was “very proud” to run.

“When I got that six o’clock licence we were the only place in town that didn’t have to have doormen. Because it was so well run by a woman and there was never any trouble they allowed us not to have doormen,” she said.

“Every other place in town with that licence had to have doormen.

“It does make me proud, every situation I handled. As a woman in town in the late night venue industry, nowhere else in town had that, I’m very proud of myself.”

While Black Salt was initially intended as a sister restaurant to Charlestons, the recent closure has meant that owners are now solely running it.

“Some of our regulars have followed us to Black Salt because we’ve still got the same brilliant steaks, the same brilliant prices – but lots of people don’t know where we have gone. But we do miss our customers and we had some of the same ones coming in every week and some are wondering where we have gone.”