Hickory's Smokehouse Standish — Restaurant in Wigan

22/05/2025. Reservation made for a party of 3 on a Birthday present trip. Waited for order for about 25minutes. Complimentary water(?) & popcorn. (Always free in USA.) Servers were doing well until they dropped the full platter meal (£65) and continued to place the steak meal (£27) in front of 1 of 3 of us. They promised to renew the order completely. Platter was later, but the steak had been kept warm(wasn't). Upon request, there was no offer of complementary drink to compensate for the added waiting time. The steak meal was slightly warm. The new platter seemed OK. I was surprised, no listing of sweet corn, refried beans or sweet potato. In all I felt it was a venue that masqueraded as an American smoke shack. But, let itself down, in my opinion, by lack of American service standards and lack of attention to small details. Servers where doing a good job, but bound by rules of the house. I have been to USA repeatedly and by comparison this venue failed to inspire me to return to this site. Not a lot to inspire me to return. Good luck.

24/05/2025. I had hoped to see a management response on here, but it seems only 5* reviews get a public reply. Made an impression on me.

25/05/2025. Thank you for your reply. Unfortunately I do recognise corporate responses. Maybe sometime someone will answer the points raised. I commented about a specific location and products. The local representative should have been able to respond without corporate input. The response offered confirmed the lack of flexibility and rigid doctrine adopted by this venue. Your corporate dept needs to empower local agents to make on the spot decisions. They do in the real Southern states of USA. Service being paramount. Customer is valued above all else. One poor public impression results in future problems. You only get one chance to make a first impression. Adopt that attitude for success. Hence, your venue remains a place I will not be revisiting...

Hickories…. Let me start with the positives, the food is delicious and well presented. The venue itself is beautiful and well decorated. The couple of times I’ve been the staff have been friendly and welcoming. I recently visited again for the second time. It was the weekend so I understand how much busier they was from my first time coming in the week. However me and my family was on a timeline and needed to be elsewhere. Nothing to do with hickories. But anyway I asked for the bill where I was waiting for a couple of minutes I was then given a phone type of thing and the waiter walked off. I then realised this wasn’t the bill this was a short survey type of thing. I then asked another waiter could I get the bill. When I got the bill I had seen they took nearly £6 tip.. with a comment underneath saying our tips don’t go to our high bosses they go to the waiters/waitresses. If you don’t want to leave the £6 tip just tell one of us and we won’t make it awkward “we promise” it says.. I just find it awfully cheeky to take money from people without atleast asking. I think if you wish to tip somebody it’s because of there exceptional work. And they make it awkward for you because you haft to ask for your £6 tip back.. I paid it in the end but something so small like this will not let me...

We were a party of 4, two adults and two children. We had booked in advance and the restaurant was just starting to get busy as we arrived at 12:30.

We were seated straight away on a small round table. The table was only just big enough to fit the condiments on and we were supposed to find smaller parties sat at bigger tables.

Our food order was taken quickly and the food arrived around 20 mins later. In order to fit our food and drinks on the table we had to remove everything else. We ordered the sharing platter and found most of the meat to be very salty. We have eaten at similar restaurants in the US and the quality of meat there was much better for similar price.

When we had finished eating it took someone 25 minutes to come and clear our plates. We didn't get the usual "Is everything alright with your food" check and nobody asked if we wanted more drinks. We did order dessert which took around 10 mins to arrive and my youngest really liked getting the 25 cents to go and use the candy machines. Once finished we asked for the bill and again waited over 20 minutes before having to ask a second member of staff.

Maybe we were unlucky with both the food and the service based on the...