The Back Porch — Restaurant in Alabama

We have eaten here a few times. This is a convenient spot to get a hot meal. The food is average and overpriced, and the staff has been always helpful and friendly. But I just had a bad experience.

I called in a to-go order as I had done before. The friendly voice that took my order was very helpful, kind, and patient. She asked for my phone number and said she would call when the order was ready. After about an hour, I drove to the restaurant and walked in. I was concerned that maybe they forgot to call me or maybe they had tried but wrote down the number incorrectly.

I told the lady at the front counter about my concern about not receiving a call and that it had been an hour, so I wanted to see what was going on. After I gave her my name she said that the food on the counter was mine. I asked if the food had been there long. She felt the bag and said it was still warm. Then she proceeded to tell me that call in customers do not understand how busy the restaurant eat in side is and that the eat in side does not understand how busy the call in order is. She said that the phone was just ringing and ringing and ringing.

I was hoping for "We are sorry we didn't call you." Instead, I got a lecture on how busy the phone is. I felt as though I needed to learn how to be a more understanding customer to better serve the working staff at the Back Porch. I wanted to talk to the manager to see if they had training on how customers should think, feel, and behave so that the staff at the Back Porch would have a better working experience.

Of course, I didn't. Most of the staff is awesome! But this experience was demeaning. $50 for a to go order for two meals and the food was barely warm and the key lime pie was at room temperature when I got home. It was a...

After moving up here we went by locals rave reviews and experiences and decided to try this place out. We got here yesterday afternoon, Wednesday, around 5:30 and was seated immediately. The waitress was a joy…the food however not so much. The wine is served in plastic cups, side salad is lettuce, a lot of shredded cheese and a few tiny tomatoes. I ordered the seafood platter with the sweet potato fries and it was awful. The only part of it that was hot was the stuffed crab. It appeared to be one of those you buy at Sams Club and throw in a deep fryer. Everything else on the FOAM plate was barely warm and the fried oysters were cold, soggy, and tasteless. Even the fries were barely warm. My husband had the fried Catfish which was piping Hot. He said it was good but has had better. My guess is they cooked mine first, set it aside and it cooled down while they cooked his. Also if you put fried hot food on a foam plate it will melt the foam. Not sure why all they use is plastic tableware. No sanitizing automatic dishwasher? I can only imagine all the trash using only disposable plastic ware creates. We were both very disappointed in the food after reading all the rave reviews. We might give it another try one day. Maybe it was just an off night…food wise. Service by our waitress...

We were told it would be a 45 minute wait to be seated but that's no big deal. What we weren't told until after we were seated is that they were short staffed in the kitchen so it would be 45 minutes to an hour to get our food, which would make a total of at least 1.5 hours to wait on food. We actually didn't have to wait long to be seated but we waited almost 2 hours for our food. People that were seated after us kept getting their food before us, so we started asking questions. We had ordered an appetizer as well and it took them an hour just to get that to us. We were finally told our food was being plated only to wait another 15 minutes! When we went to pay our ticket, the only thing they did was take our drinks off our meal ticket as an apology for all our trouble. Taking the drinks off our ticket didn't even save us 10% off the meal. The other couple we were with didn't even get a discount off their ticket at all because she had asked for a side salad that she never received, so they took their drinks off their ticket to cover the cost of the side salad. We got there around 5:15 and didn't get out of there until 8:30.

The meal was just ok too after having to wait so long. Everything was very deep fried so I couldn't finish because all that grease wasn't sitting well...