Nine Mile — Restaurant in Asheville

We have been coming to 9 mile since my children were little, and now they are in college. So many many years of visits. This last experience was a little underwhelming though. We know it’s a busy place, and the host was excellent, but the server was almost nonexistent. My son was quick to point out that she refilled our water once and was not there much but was very quick to arrive to get the check and pick up the credit card. Other than that, we did not see her much at all. The other thing that was a little underwhelming was the margarita, I really didn’t finish it. We drank about a third of it. It was heavily orange juiced and really sour. I know it’s a batch cocktail, and I’ve had it there before, but maybe this batch was off? It just was so sour and orangey that again, we really didn’t drink it. I switched to red wine. Our food was good, but it wasn’t wonderful. I had the tuna, which in the past has been fine, but in this instance I found several stringy pieces that were really hard to chew, so about a third of that was an issue as well. Again, I’ve not had this issue with the tuna in the past. The salads were good, I love that spicy dressing, and could just put it on everything. And, of course, the natty bread was up to its usual excellence. I really wish they would bring back the ‘soon come’ dish or an equivalent, because it is a favorite of my family, but I know that dish has been gone for years. I still love the fact that they have so many options such as the zucchini noodles for gluten sensitivity, and they are really wonderful with allergies and switching things out if you are a vegetarian or vegan or any sort of combination. They are really lovely about that. But overall, our impression was… Again, underwhelming. Between the spotty service and the chewy tuna and the really sour cocktail, it just wasn’t a great experience this time.

We are accustomed to the long wait, and we will often just walk around the block and enjoy the day. We love the loud festival atmosphere, and none of that was a problem. The real issue was in the elements that I mentioned above. We also understand that since Covid and the hurricane, it’s tricky to find good help and it’s tricky to resource items, and so we have really been trying to go to our favorite local restaurants and eat out even more than we normally do to make sure everybody gets back on their feet, and we are usually very patient with issues, especially post – hurricane, but this experience was just...

This is a belated review but I can't stop occasionally remembering how bad the food was so here we go:

We came here with pretty decent expectations bc the star rating was so high and it's literally in boujie Montford so we figured it would be good. It took a bit for the plates to arrive, though I didn't care bc that usually means the food is cooked with extra attention and care. So I got the unfortunate surprise when the rice with the curry chicken bowl arrived, and wow it was HANDS DOWN the worst rice and some of the driest chicken I have ever had the misfortune to eat. The white rice was in hard stale chunks, like they literally just microwaved old+low quality rice from the fridge or freezer. (Rice is literally a Caribbean staple; how can Nine Mile be so bad at cooking rice???!). And the chicken was so dry!! The only thing good about the dish was the curry but even the best curry cannot mask the texture of the chewing through hard rocks of rice and dry dusty chicken.

Maybe it was a bad day. There was a decent crowd, though we went in before there we would've had to wait. The servers were nice but clearly overworked. This speaks volumes about poor upper management I guess. But I can't forgive the restaurant for putting out food this bad. It wasn't worth even $1, and especially not the crazy price they sold this truly awful dish to us for. To the people of Montford, I feel for you. To the tourists or foodies of Asheville, go to Guajiro or Island Pan (in the asheville mall) or Little Chango instead. They are all soooo much better it's not even a comparison. Nine Mile is probably a tourist trap cleverly disguised as a hole in the wall now that I...

i came into Nine Mile with high expectations; it was voted the best restaurant to represent ‘True Asheville’ in some local poll and the reviews are generally very good.

nothing about our meal was especially bad, but everything about it was meh. the pre-entré salad had a very nice sesame dressing, but there was twice as much as necessary on it. there should not be a puddle of salad dressing left on the plate after i’ve finished eating the greens. the herbed butter bread was a little too salty and herby. i ordered the Cool Runnings entré, which was fine, it just could have been a lot better without much more effort. the chicken breast was not quite dried entirely out, but it was close, definitely overcooked. the veggies in smoked gouda sauce tasted good but, again, there was a bit too much of the sauce. the biggest disappointment on the plate was the roasted jalapeño pineapple salsa; there was approximately 3/4 tablespoon of it hidden under the edge of the rice, the pineapple was obviously out of a can and the jalapeño was virtually non-existent. literally the only flavor i could get from it was washed out canned pineapple, nowhere near enough flavor to stand up to the other flavors on the plate. the black beans were good and the rice was cooked well. i asked for a side of the mango scotch bonnet hot sauce when it was offered; too much acid, not enough heat. it was like everything else, great in concept but off the mark.

overall, i’m not unhappy, i’m just disappointed. the portion sizes were good and the bill was perfectly reasonable, the whole package just felt...