Early Girl Eatery — Restaurant in Asheville

I can totally see now why there was no wait at this place compared to all of the other establishments on Haywood road. There wasn’t a single thing that was positive about our experience. We waited 30 minutes initially for our food. The excuse was that the Kitchen got backed up (hmmm ok why did both tables beside us receive their food fast🤔) all of our food arrived cold or lukewarm. I sent my eggs and French toast back so all I had was bacon to eat. Eggs came out hot but waited an additional 15 minutes to get a new order of pancakes instead of French toast. Once again the excuse was every one was waiting not just us. All of my family was done eating by the time I got my food correct and had to sit and watch me eat. Our server was nice enough but had tables all over including the bar stools and outside so we didn’t see her much. We had 5 people and an infant. We were charged the 20% automatic gratuity for having 6 people. That is not ok. The server screwed herself out of a good tip for doing that. We had 5 adults not 6 the baby was not served and don’t require anything from the restaurant. The excuse was they provided us a larger table to accommodate the baby. I said no you tried to cram 5 people in a booth either way and had we not had the baby I still would have said no way to a booth with 5. So either way we would have requested that larger table. I wasn’t away restaurants were charging by the chair these days. When I inquired the server seemed very unwilling to change it so the manager “Natasha” came, wow what a rude lady. She was very argumentative and wasn’t going to budge even after explaining to her for the 3rd time how bad our experience was. We always tip more than 20% anyway but the principle of it was the issue. So unfortunately the server received a 10% tip from us today. I never do this but they need to learn and realize what is appropriate. Had they treated the situation differently I would have never had to write such a long and harsh review, but because of the attitude and way it was handled everyone suffered and we won’t be returning. I should have read the poor reviews about service and cold food prior. But lesson learned! (FYI the manager said we were taking up space at a larger table....if the food hadn’t taken 45 minutes total and they hadn’t spent 10 minutes arguing about the bill with us, they could have had those tables available for others to use quicker! Instead it was...

Almost there. I actually ate here twice, over two consecutive days.

The first meal was simply a biscuit and gravy. The gravy was flavorful for what it was but was very runny. I'm used to thicker gravy with more solids in it, in this case there was supposed to be bacon (I think I saw a speck of what I hoped was bacon). The biscuit didn't have much loft either compared to a traditional southern biscuit. I also had fries this morning. They were awful and I had to send them back. The vegetable medley replacement was perfect, with excellent flavor and correctly cooked squash. The vegetable medley carried this entire meal and is the only reason I came back.

The second trip was more of a brunch. I ordered the pulled pork sandwich. I prefer my pork to have more bark and seasoning on it, but I understand this would add cost and the portion was generous. Overall it was a good sandwich. Their BBQ sauce was some weird tomato/vinegar hybrid that tried to play both sides of the tomato vs. vinegar based sauce war, but failed at successfully emulating either flavor. I again ordered the fries but specified they be cooked completely and fresh this time, after a short discussion with the waitress. They were edible but not good. I believe the fry oil was old or had been overheated.

The atmosphere and potential is there and they even had some great menu items, but I hope they are able to resolve these issues. Fries are a fairly basic staple and should be very repeatable in quality and taste.

Also, anyone who knows what Haricots Verts are without Googling it is going to instantly cringe when they see them listed on a menu at a restaurant like this. I hope they are at least French-style green beans. However, I would argue an Italian bean (the flat kind) would be a better fit with the rest of the menu and the overall theme of this restaurant. If the existing beans are to be retained, and if I were running the place, they would simply be called "French -style Green Beans."

I would eat here again, if only to uncover other hidden gems like the vegetable medley. They definitely do well regardless of my opinions, there was a hefty wait on a weekday by 10 am, so bear...

I've always been an apologist for the issues (lack of staffing, slow response times, general inattentiveness of what staff they have) we encounter at the Early Girl West Asheville location because the food is good and they have a covered outdoor patio that we can bring the dog.

However, today, Sunday, October 19, may have been the last straw. We (party of 2, plus dog) arrived a little before 10am. Maybe 1/4 of the tables were full and there were only two people working the dining room and patio. They were responsible for table service and seating people.

Waited about 5 minutes for even an acknowledgement and then another few minutes for them to seat us. After seating, took another 10ish minutes for anyone to come to our table when we ordered drinks and our meals, roughly 10:10.

As we waited, the restaurant started to get more crowded and other outside tables started ordering. One particular table (3 people), was seated about 10:20, ordered by 10:30 and received their food at 10:45.

At this time in enquired of multiple people inside as to how a table that was seated nearly 30 minutes after us could receive food before us. I was met with excuses and a general lack of concern. One particular server (not ours) indicated that if we didn't want to wait any longer that we could leave.

During the time that we waited after ordering, our server visited us once for drink refills and indicated she knew food was taking a while but she was checking on it. This was clearly a lie because when I enquired at 10:45, I was told they would get it done as quickly as possible.

We waited until 11am and then were unable to wait longer due to our schedule and left. I dont know if this was a mistake by our server, the kitchen or otherwise but it was a failure on so many levels and the lack of information or anything resembling concern for our issues was unacceptable.

It is disappointing that this location continues to spiral downward as Early Girl is an Asheville staple and the area...