Nellie's Southern Kitchen — Restaurant in Belmont

I will never ready at this restaurant again because of treatment by the hostess. After my engagement, I thought that Nellie's would be a great place to do my bridesmaid ask in June. I made dinner reservations and looked forward to the date. Being from out of town, I just found Nellie's online and decided to call for reservations. I had no idea that a local festival would be happening on the same day as my reservation. The restaurant had no parking on site from the festival, and this caused myself and my friends to be late. The hostess came to me 5 minutes after the reservation time and asked if my party was coming. I explained we didn't know about the festival. Everyone was desperately looking for parking blocks away. The hostess told me that living in another town wasn't an excuse for not knowing about the festival and that I needed "to learn from this experience." She then told me that if my full party wasn't there by the next 10 minutes I would lose my reservation. She then checked in every minute or so to ask if they were coming and made snide comments about how I didn't know about the summer festival. I let it go, because I didn't want to cause a scene. I also didn't want to assume that the hostess was treating me this way because I am a black woman. I checked on my friends and family and they were all on foot, trying to make it through the festival. After everyone arrived, the hostess made us wait for an additional 10 minutes because our table "wasn't ready" -- even though there were two open tables (one with 6 seats and one with 5). And she had been rushing me for the past 15 minutes.

There were 6 people in my party. The hostess sat us at the 5 person table and when we asked to move to the 6 seat table we were told it was for another reservation by the hostess. We also asked our waitress, who told us it could be fine, but street checking with the hostess [who we could see], the waitress was told that we could not sit at the other table. To fix the situation, our waitress brought a chair for our 6th person that made my friend have to sit in the aisle. She was bumped into by servers and other people during dinner. When the other reservation arrived about 30 minutes into out dinner, we found out that the reservation was for 4 people -- they didn't need the 6 seats. The hostess seemed very happy with herself and smiled at me when she saw me realize we could have been sat at the 6-person table all along. She then posted herself away from the hostess stand, near our table and watched us multiple times during dinner. I assume she wanted to see why I was giving out boxes to everyone. The hostess' behavior was egregious. It made my experience stressful and I was unable to enjoy my bridesmaid ask, because of her. We were also sat close to the live music which made it difficult to talk to one another, but the woman performing sounded very good. My best friend complained to the manager about the hostess, and was just given a weak "we're sorry." As we left she came and told me that she - the manager - hoped I had a good time. I told her we would never be back. The hostess never apologized. She just looked at us while the manager spoke when we left.

The food was okay. The banana pudding had hard bits of banana that did not look appetizing. My friends that got the chicken enjoyed it. Mixed drinks...

Update to my review below: We will not be going back here and I'm changing from four to two stars. The service is still great except the bartender doesn't know how to make a long Island iced tea, even the second one we got was sub par. The food is very inconsistent. Yes they make great fried chicken, but both times I've been here they skimped out on the gravy and I needed to ask for more because the plate was dry. They also removed the green bean casserole from the menu that I raved about below. Also the chicken and dumplings written about below is now served with a spoon meaning they purposefully changed the recipe so it's now soup like. Lastly, our waitress recognized that we had been waiting for our food a while and offered to bring some hot rolls and butter to us for free in the mean time. The rolls came out 5 minutes after we got our entrees, and they were all piping hot but still raw in the middle. Disgusting. All five of us that went this time agreed that it was not a good experience. Original post here: The atmosphere and wait staff here are incredible. A great meld of modern, "high tech" simple design, and old, down home country decorations. A live band every night gets all the patrons singing along and some get up and dance. Nellie's does a great job of changing up the normal restaurant vibe. The food on the other hand was hit or miss. I ordered the two piece dark with two sides. The pinto beans were good, but the Mac n cheese was absolutely awful. It seemed like it wasn't cooked because there was separation of cream, butter, and cheese; some of the internal cheese was still whole shreds, not melted. I also ended up getting one dark piece and one breast, but when I informed the waiter of this, he corrected the issue promptly. My wife got the chicken and dumplings with the green bean casserole. Both of these items were DELICIOUS! The chicken and dumplings were stick to your ribs kind, not soup, and the green bean casserole had a great flavor and nice crispy topping. Overall, I recommend patronizing this establishment, but steer clear of the...

Update: the GM reached out to me about this experience and refunded the items we had issues with and offered to have us come back a second time. I really appreciate their kindness and understanding with the issues that I had addressed in this review. I just wanted to make anyone aware that Nellie’s did right their wrongs here and took into account the suggestions I had made about having their servers more knowledgeable about allergies or have a special menu available.

This was disappointing to say the least. The hostess sat us in what felt like a broom closet. (See photo) A high top table with walls where you can barely get in and out of the seat without feeling embarrassed that you might knock the table over and I am not a big person. We ordered the fried green tomatoes, which come covered in Parmesan cheese and remoulade. When it says “served with remoulade” I didn’t expect it to be slathered on the plate with the tomatoes already sitting in it with cheese on top. I’m also lactose intolerant and asked the waitress if we could get a replacement. Which she charged us for. And I specifically asked our waitress which items did not have dairy and she said the fried chicken and the catfish. First of all, the fried chicken clearly states it is buttermilk battered which would not be okay for me to consume, so I just took what she said with a grain of salt and ordered a grilled chicken sandwich. We paid $120 for a fatty steak and about a 1/4cup of greens, a chicken sandwich with fries and a few drinks and our 2 plates of tomatoes one of which I was not even able to eat. Needless to say we will not be back for a visit at Nellie’s, experience was mediocre at best and you can get better food for $120 elsewhere. Maybe even cheaper and better tasting around the corner! And you probably won’t have to wait an hour and a half to actually get your food too. Oh, and they gave us the wrong drink. Asked for an old fashioned and got some sort of maple syrup drink with bacon floating in it. It...