Tupelo Honey Southern Kitchen & Bar — Restaurant in Asheville

Service: I used to work in the service industry for 8 years. It takes a lot for me to leave a negative review, but this should stand as a warning for prospective customers, because I wasn’t the only one to have my experience while I was there.

The server, Jamie, was hands down the most unfriendly, no-personality server I’ve ever encountered. It was akin to trying to interact with a cat that wants no interaction.

It took ten minutes for anyone to come to my table. There was a total of eight occupied tables between inside and outside (where I dined). There was a total of 6 tables outside. I ordered a spicy Bloody Mary which was delicious. However, it took another ten minutes to get the Bloody Mary. When she delivered the drink she asked if I was ready to order? I told her that her menu was quite large and I had never had southern food before so I was unsure what to get. Instead of saying ‘this is a popular appetizer’ or ‘I really like this’ she said ‘Ok, I’ll let you think about it’ and walked away. She came back another 10 minutes later and asked me if I was ready? I said I hadn’t decided yet and she was about to walk away when I said ‘because I have questions.’ So I asked HER what her favorite app was or what was a popular and she told me. So I said ‘ok, I’ll get that’ (fried tomatoes; I’ll get to that later in this review). Before I even had a chance to ask her about menu items, she said ‘ok’ and walked away. Another 15 minutes for her to return with appetizer. She set the appetizer down and said ‘what did you decide for your meal?’ I said ‘well like I said, I’ve never been here before and have never had southern food so I don’t know what is ‘appealing.’ She made a couple of suggestions and walked away (not a smile or personality in sight.) Frankly, she seemed annoyed I had questions. When she finally returned another 10 minutes later, I told her what I wanted and off she was. Again, this restaurant was, what anyone in the service industry would consider as ‘dead.’ So there was zero excuse to be so inattentive.

Food: I have never, not once, in all of my dining experiences across the country, had such bland and inedible food. The fried tomatoes were mostly just batter. You can’t even taste the tomatoes. I also ordered the half sandwich and two sides. The Brussels sprouts were dry, firm and flavorless; inedible. I tried to give one to my dog who loves Brussels sprouts - she wouldn’t even eat it. The Avocado sandwich was ‘meh.’ As well. The only thing that I ate was one out of four of the Fried tomatoes, the small spring salad, a few halves of the Brussels sprouts and I got boxes for the rest. I don’t know why I did because I doubt I’ll eat it. For one person, for a spicy Bloody Mary, on side, and one half and half meal, and a small dog meal that my dog reluctantly ate, the total was 46 dollars not including tip.

Back to service: Finally the check was dropped and when I say dropped, literally dropped with no eye contact and in fact dropped and turned away. She was not busy at all. She was walking around like she had two tables. No sense of urgency. Meanwhile, a new table had been seated (an older couple) and I was getting annoyed for them that it took so long for someone to come to their table. Also, like other people have commented, after what amounted to 1.25 hours, not once was my water refilled.

Again, the restaurant was ‘dead’ according to typical service industry standards so there was no excuse for the poor service lack of friendly service.

Some people have said to go to the downtown location but even if the customer service is more friendly, the food was the most unsatisfying food I’ve ever gotten at a restaurant.

Atmosphere: The outside chairs are hands down the most uncomfortable and awkward chairs to sit in. When I got up to leave, I looked and felt like an old woman hobbling out of there.

Manager: Please do not leave a comment as it will just annoy me because the bland food and poor customer service cannot be remedied when you have servers who are...

We went in for an early Father's Day dinner around 4 pm. Our party consisted of four adults and a baby. When we got there, the restaurant was almost completely empty. We were told that we would have to sit at a high top because two large parties were coming in, a 16 and a 30 top.- (it didn't add up because the restaurant seats more than the 46 supposedly coming in and with the parties already there it wouldn't have come close to filling up the place). But it was inconvenient because we had to hold the baby in our lap, but no problem, all of us have worked in or owned restaurants before. So we understood. But parties walked in after us and were sat at other tables that we were told we could not sit at because of the large parties supposedly coming in. Which never did while we were there.p

The restaurant was dirty with food on the floor. Not just where we were seated but was visible throughout the restaurant. I understand when you have a rush (which I'm sure they did much earlier as it was fathers day) and not being able to clean. But the staff was standing around and the tables were already reset. So you think they'd clean underneath. What's the old restaurant saying.. "you got time to lean, then you've got time to clean".

Our server, who was also the bartender, was disappointing. I don't say that lightly. We had to go find silverware, couldn't get a refill, and had to ask for salad dressing from other servers. Then, I had to go wait by the kitchen to ask for a Togo box after our server said she'd bring us one after we paid, and we sat there for almost 10 minutes waiting. I could understand if she was the only bartender on duty and had drink tickets coming into the service bar she had to make, but the restaurant was almost completely empty, and she was standing there. She and other servers came to our table to drop food. We had app plates and dishes stacked, not once were they prebussed. We tried to ask the servers, but they scurried off so quickly that we couldn't ask them to take them. It was almost comical and became a joke at our table. But you would think seeing the mound of dirty plates in the middle of the table which we had to move to get our entrees onto the table that you would take them.

Another issue was the servers fingers touching our food when setting it down. I understand that it happens sometimes but not with three different servers who all had visibly dirty nails. The management should really set some hygiene standards, which is common practice in most restaurants.

The food was blah at best. It's the same tired menu. Unfortunately, this goes for the location in downtown Asheville as well as I ate there 2 weeks prior. It's like the restaurant group has gotten lazy and are resting on their laurels of previous success when the restaurants were actually places you wanted to go eat or recommend to guests coming into town.

We used to love these restaurants so much that we even had our rehearsal dinner for our wedding there two years ago when they were still good. With so many other choices and new restaurants coming onto the scene in Asheville, I'd recommend you try somewhere else besides the Tupelo restaurants. I really hope they get some new leadership because whoever is at the helm now is running it...

I get it, places are trying to bounce back from COVID and are running at 50% capacity and what-not so I expect some delays in service. We showed up (party of 2) and were told it would be 15-20 minutes for a table. Hostess said she would send us a text when table was ready. Cool, no problems there. The problems I did have are as follows;

Hostess never texted us that our table was ready even though we received the confirmation text when we put our names in.

Drink orders were screwed up all around. First, one of the servers tried to bring us a glass of red wine we didn't order. Secondly, another server delivered the beer that I had ordered to another table that hadn't ordered it (that guy got a free beer he didn't order, so can't be mad at that...good for him).

When we finally got to put our orders in with the server (30 minutes or so later) we were told there was no fried chicken left. Let me say that one more time...the FRIED CHICKEN at a restaurant whose menu is mostly FRIED CHICKEN was somehow nowhere to be found. Gone. Catfish was gone too. I understand materials run out...especially at the end of the day after a busy weekend, however, it would probably be a good idea to tell people this when they get there and not after they've been sitting at a table with a menu for 30+ minutes! They did still have boneless buttermilk chicken, so my wife reluctantly ordered that instead.

Finally got the food and the chicken batter was DARK brown and obviously left in waaaaaaay too long (see photo). My wife had to peel all the breading off as it was too hard and even tasted of burnt toast. Additionally, the gravy on the chicken was dried onto the chicken and appeared to have sat out in the kitchen under a heat lamp for too long. When I asked the server if this is always how the chicken comes cooked, she looked at it and replied "yeah, pretty much". Oh. Okay. Funny, that isn't what any of the other pictures of this exact entree look like as posted by the restaurant on Google or yelp, I checked. Regardless of how it is normally cooked, I do not know of any person in their right mind that enjoys eating burnt fried chicken or any food for that matter.

When the server recognized we were not necesarily satisfied with our meal she offered to bring us a dessert on the house (well, actually what she said was "on me", coming off as though she would be the one paying for it). We declined the offer as they were closing soon by this point anyways.

Maybe it was just a bad night for this place. All I know is we will not be going back, so the proprietor of this place need not reply to this post with apologies or promises of "we'll do better...