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If Mark McLoughlin and Zachary Rathburn aren’t cooking at Charlee’s Pizzeria, they’re out shaking hands with the restaurant’s customers.

“Everybody that walks through that door, we treat as if we’ve known them our whole lives,” Rathburn said.

“Nothing but positive vibes inside these walls,” McLoughlin added.

Charlee’s, named after Rathburn’s daughter, first opened in September 2019 on Thompson Road in East Syracuse but closed in October due to COVID-19. The pair reopened at a new location in Armory Square on March 8. Run by McLoughlin, Rathburn and a small staff, it serves New York-style gourmet pizzas, wings and various sliders.

McLoughlin and Rathburn, childhood friends who attended Liverpool High School together, said they started the business with the goal of having fun and “putting smiles on people’s faces with food.”

When the pandemic hit, the two saw their customer traffic from nearby businesses and hotels nosedive. They went from having a line out the door to having no customers, McLoughlin said.

“It absolutely destroyed us,” he said. “We lost everything.”

McLoughlin’s dream had always been to have the restaurant downtown, and eventually they found their current location in Armory Square. By all accounts, it’s a massive improvement, as the previous spot was out of the way, had no sit-down area for customers and was run down.

“Over here, we’re smack-dab in the heart of Syracuse,” he said. “It was kind of a no-brainer.”

A self-described foodie who comes from an Italian family of cooks, McLoughlin always had the idea of opening a restaurant in the back of his mind. Now that he has, he makes sure that the food always lives up to his standards. That includes everything being homemade and a dough that took six months to perfect.

“If I wouldn’t eat it, I’m not putting my name on it,” he said. “And (Zachary) feels the same way.”

“We put a lot of love into everything we do,” Rathburn said.

McLoughlin’s favorite item on the menu to make is the maple cranberry bourbon chicken wings. The cooking process involves torching them with a plumber’s torch, which adds a caramelized flavor to the meat.

To stand out from other pizza joints, McLoughlin and Rathburn are coming up with new culinary creations to add to the menu, they said. This means ever-changing offerings and an absence of a paper menu. McLoughlin compares Rathburn and himself to two mad scientists in the kitchen, like the show “Breaking Bad.”

“They’re creating an illegal drug, but we’re in here creating some amazing food in the kitchen,” McLoughlin said.

McLoughlin compared him and Rathburn to two mad scientists in the kitchen coming up with new culinary creations to add to the menu. Courtesy of Mark McLoughlin

The interior of Charlee’s is also true to Syracuse and the SU community. A wall inside the pizzeria shows Otto the Orange holding a slice of pizza in one glove and an SU pennant in another, with one foot stomping on the Duke University Blue Devil.

Charlene Bertolini, who works at Charlee’s, said the restaurant wants customers to feel like it is a comfortable place for them.

“We love to treat customers like our family,” she said. “Every time someone comes in, we try to always talk to them and ask them how their day is. We like to build a good rapport with them.”

McLoughlin said he and Rathburn feel grateful that their business has survived the pandemic so far.

Going forward, their goal is to turn Charlee’s into a franchise while continuing to please people with their food. And, based on the support they’ve received from the community so far, McLoughlin is encouraged by their potential.

“We could see where we’re going,” he said. “It’s to the moon and beyond for sure.”

Published on March 23, 2021 at 6:25 pm

Contact Austin: [email protected] | @AustinCLamb