The Rickhouse — Restaurant in Bardstown

Bottom-line: Undeserving of their storied reputation.

Several of our friends in Tennessee encouraged us to visit The Rickhouse during our weekend stay in Bardstown. Then our local innkeeper highly encouraged dinner at the Rickhouse, as well as some tourists we happened to encounter during our stay. So, we happily made our reservations for Saturday June 30th.

The walk to the Rickhouse was pleasant and the restaurant was very nicely appointed. The hostess greeted us warmly and asked if we wanted a wine and bourbon menu as she walked us to our table, we said yes. We loved the barrel shaped table.

Once at the table it took several minutes for us to be visited by our server, not a major problem, even though it took close to five minutes. During our wait we looked at the menu and discovered we didn’t have a bourbon menu after all, so when our server finally arrived we asked to see one. It took her at least two minutes to return with one and she intimated that she had to steal it from another table. We ordered our food and a flight of bourbon. The ordering of the food was a bit odd, as the server kept discouraging us from ordering what we wanted? My wife attempted to order two different food items and the server was quite vocal that we didn't want to eat that. I found this very strange.

My wife’s salad came out and the presentation was gorgeous. She said it was very enjoyable. I asked about the flight of bourbon, as I assumed it would come out during our wait to receive our food. The server went to check and didn’t return. After 47 minutes, yes almost an hour, I flagged down the server and told her to cancel the flight of bourbon. She said it was almost ready, I very politely told her I no longer wanted it, as I assumed my food would be out shortly. But, alas, it was still minutes away.

When the food did come out, the steak (I wish I had a picture to share with the reader) was significantly blackened. In fairness, I did order the steak medium well, but the steak was charred on the outside to a degree I hadn’t encountered before and found to be rather unpleasant. The steak was a ribeye and after almost five decades of eating ribeye’s this one was one of the chewiest and least flavorful I have ever had. The steak came with two sides. I asked for a baked potato, which was just that. No frills, which is just fine. However, the second side was supposed to be macaroni and cheese. I chose this because several friends had suggested it. Unfortunately, I received the potatoes au gratin? I didn’t realize this until a second bite. This dish was comical in taste and presentation. The potatoes were seriously under cooked and then ‘garnished’ with break crumbs and parsley perhaps? It was overdone and undercooked all at once – a rather extraordinary feat.

The server did not apologize for the missing flight of bourbon, the mistaken case of the potatoes au gratin, although she did finally bring me the macaroni and cheese, which sadly did not live up to the hype. I left most of the steak on the plate as it was not edible. I didn’t complain to the server as the restaurant was very warm and we wanted to move on with the rest of our vacation. I would have thought, given the long wait for our food, roughly one hour from the time we ordered, the missing flight, the mistaken potatoes, the empty water glass that was rarely filled, the warm interior of the restaurant and the half-eaten steak she would have taken a hint and asked if we had enjoyed the meal.

Nope.

I paid my bill and walked briskly from the Rickhouse for the one and only time I will ever eat there. This event was very disconcerting, as the reviews were impeccable. All I can tell the reader of this review is this, if I took the time to review this restaurant on vacation, you can assume it was very...

I have been traveling an hour to eat at the Rickhouse for years. I brought a friend and raved to her bc it was a new experience for her. Server was new but she helped with drink selection. We ordered warm Brie salad. Got one and had to wait on the second one. We got bread when we asked after entrees were served. We asked if we could get a premium side and we’re told the salmon is on a bed of sautéed spinach. It is the side. This is the menu item I typically always order. Right before ours was served the table next to us had ordered the same. There was spinach, then couscous and the salmon filet on top with blueberry sauce. Beautifully presented. Ours came right after and our time to dine was 6:30. (Early in a dinner evening) Our plate had a scoop of couscous with what looked like a serving spoon pushed in the middle to create a large divot. Salmon was beside it and looked as if it was blackened. No blueberries, no sauce. The sauce was burnt. And lastly no spinach. No explanation. She was walking away after having picked up the salad plates. I asked if she wanted the bread plates. She asked if we wanted bread. In previous meals bread is served before salad is served. We were asked if we wanted bread. (?) My friend ate half of her “blackened” salmon and did not take it home. We asked about the spinach. We’re told they ran out. It was approximately 7:10 ish. She asked if we would eat brussel sprouts. Not offered any other side just brussel sprouts. We did not get a side for each of us although the spinach side was left off both orders. We got one serving for both of us with about 7-8 of them. Bread came a bit later. There were 2 tables near us that had errors on their orders. Another staff person…?someone from the kitchen…came around and asked if everything was ok. There were multiple tables open. When we’re done we tipped the server well in cash. We continued to chat for a little bit after we finished trying to eat what was not worth the price. The salad was the best item. Couscous is couscous. Yet all the while we were talking the host and the server were in and out of the doorway looking at us and talking. Finally with several empty tables we felt uncomfortable with this repetitive behavior and left. I have recommended this restaurant to many ppl. I don’t know if i will travel an hour unless something changes. I hope the persons I recommended Rickhouse to had a better experience than mine and more like the reputation Rickhouse has had. A place like this is as much about the experience...

I want to be clear that this review is only about the poor quality of the menu items we ordered. The serving staff was great, and I know they can do little to change how the kitchen and/or management monitor the quality of the food being made.

My wife and I ordered three items: shrimp and grits, the grilled Caesar salad, and steak linguini.

Starting with the shrimp and grits, the menu describes the grits as a “grit cake”. We needed to apply actual force to cut into the grits, and the sauce had no chance to soak into the grits given how dry and packed it was. There was no char or cake shape at all to the grits. The shrimp, while decent sized, seemed like they may have been frozen before being cooked. We thought this because the texture of the shrimp was tough like rubber.

The Caesar salad was two romaine hearts that were lightly grilled, with bacon crumbles and croutons. I will say the char on the romaine did give it an interesting and good taste. The Caesar dressing, however, seemed like it was from a bottle and tasted like plastic.

The steak linguini came out on two stacked plates, one of which was exceedingly hot. This led us to believe that the dish had been prepared well ahead of time, and then placed into an oven to heat once my order was made, given that it took 10 minutes from when I placed the order to when the entree was brought out. The pasta and cheese on top was baked into an almost plastic-like shell while underneath were over-cooked noodles in luke-warm sauce. On the subject of the sauce, it had no taste. It was advertised as a Parmesan cream sauce, but there was no taste of Parmesan to be found. Finally, the linguini was pre-cut into two to three inch pieces, making it impossible to pick up or twirl onto a fork.

Given the number of good reviews for this restaurant, maybe this experience was an outlier, or maybe because we were there within the last two hours of operation the kitchen staff did not pay attention to the quality of what was being served. Regardless, for a location that is portrayed as one of the more “upper scale” locations in the area, this was an enormous disappointment and I could never recommend or think about...