South City Kitchen Avalon — Restaurant in Alpharetta

I am very disappointed in my most recent visit to this South City Kitchen location. Typically, South City Kitchen delivers exceptional service alongside their contemporary Southern style cuisine.

Unfortunately, this location left much to be desired for in terms of quality of service.

I chose to introduce a friend to the Avalon development for their first time on a Friday night. We decided on dinner at South City Kitchen. Upon arrival to the restaurant, it took longer than what is expected to be greeted by a host. Once encountered by the non personable male host, he failed to properly greet myself and my dinner companion. He seemed aloof by 2 Black guys dining in the establishment for a Friday night dinner. He commented that we were dressed very nicely and asked if we were celebrating anything special. Mind you, we are dressed on same par as everyone else in the restaurant, so the dress comment seemed incredibly patronizing. I indicated to him that we were not celebrating anything special. Just two friends out enjoying Friday night together.

Fast forward as we wait an additional 10 minutes before even being greeted by a server for a standard basic introduction and perhaps glasses of water. Once finally receiving a server, he is incredibly frantic and informal with us. Yet I observed, that he maintained a professional grace and demeanor with his other tables.

We place our orders for drinks, appetizers, and entrees. Our items come out noticeably inconsistent from other South City Kitchen locations that I am accustomed to. My dinner companion is displeased with his Shrimp & Grits entree which he complained tasted like the shrimp had spoiled and/or certainly was not fresh. The entree was sent back and exchanged for the fried chicken entree. My friend was disappointed in this entree as well, but for reasons no fault of the restaurant.

When our bill arrives, our server hovers our table until we insert our credit card. He immediately rushes over to collect the bill and payment method once observing it is ready and then returns curtly wishing us a great night.

I have never received such blatant discriminatory service in my life and I was highly embarrassed for the restaurant. The next morning I called to detail my experience to the restaurant management. Upon investigation of my detailed experience, I was contacted later that day and offered an apology and an invitation to return on the restaurant's dime by Jeremy Erdman.

I will pass on the invitation. This South City Kitchen location lost a customer for life and I am big on spreading information by word of...

Went here for a work dinner with a table of 8. It's sort of tucked into/behind the hotel's valet service area which I missed my first time looking for it

The ambiance was very nice and the setting was very inviting. It looks fantastic. The hostess was very nice and greeted me with a smile Nd helped me find my party without a hiccup.

Once seated our waitress began to bring the experience backwards a bit. She seemed a bit pushy and short with our questions. I'm not sure what was going on but I got the feeling that the smile being worn was very fake and the energy, punctuation, etc put off a negative vibe. At one point I saw her grab the utensils off the table, whisper "oh these aren't even dirty" then place them back on the table. I'm sorry what?!

The appetizers we tried, both the burrotta cheese and fried tomatoes were very tasty and I'd totally order them again. I think most of us expected a burrotta plate to come w some sort of mechanism to place the burrotta on (i.e.: bread or crackers) but that was not the case here. Our waitress mentioned she'd bring bread out to accompany it (eventually). Enough time had passed that eventually someone asked about the bread( in her hand) which she sort of snapped back "well this isnt for you". Again, food good, service subpar.

The entrees came out and they were great. Hanger steak is what I ordered and it was spot on the money. The fried Brussels were great too but be sure to share w 2 or 3 people. One caveat here(again w the service): 1 person ordered a salad for dinner(no entree) and they ended up bringing this out before the entrees and leaving salad person empty handed during entrees time. I guess this is a pet peeve of mine but waiters and waitresses should not deliver like this or atleast ask about it.

The real kicker in the service bag is their selection of to go buckets.... yeah...buckets?!?! Lol. A transparent, tall, Tupperware that apparantly we are suppose to slop our leftovers into? What an absolutele cluster F of an idea that is for all things not soup.

We finished the night at the bar and the...

2.5 stars is how I’d rate this place.

The servers were polite and respectful.

For context date nights for my wife and I are rare. We are long time customers, but our last two visits (Fathers Day and tonight ) were pretty disappointing. Severely undercooked is the key description. Today we order the pork belly appetizers which is just a single piece of pork belly on kimchee greens, and this came out raw and cold in the middle (which we didn’t realize until my wife and I both took bites of it, gross). Ok, no worries we let the waiter know, he handles it well and has another one fired up. Front of house manager apologies and all is well and fine. The replacement pork belly shows up which we cut in half and it’s literally just as cold and just as raw in the middle. Flashback to Father’s Day and we had sweet potato hash where the sweet potato’s were barely cooked and basically raw. We let them know we weren’t interested in another pork belly appetizer.

Entrees were decent. The fish of the day meal was fine, cooked well and tasted fine.

While we obviously didn’t have pay for the pork belly appetizer, when the bill came, we were a little surprised that there was not an ounce of any kind of discount or offer of anything to compensate. Probably different personal opinions here, but being from the restaurant industry, if I served my guests raw pork twice, they would have been well taken care of by the end of the night.

The reality here is two fish dinners, some fruit carpaccio appetizer, and a sweet tea came out to $127.00. In metro Atlanta, there is no shortage of amazing food and for $130 bucks for two people, you won’t have any problem finding something ultra tasty with service that’s just as great if not better. South City just isn’t one of those places anymore. Hoping it can be again, but right now it’s just not.

Now it’s a wait and see game to see if we got any level food poisoning. Will update this post if indeed we did indeed...