The Blue Coyote — Restaurant in Blue Ridge

My family came out to eat here during our vacation. When we walked in we were a bit underwhelmed with the atmosphere (very basic and boring) but we were at least excited to see very few guests inside (no more than 15 people total). We hoped we'd be able to get a quick lunch and continue with our day. We ended up ordering two burgers, a caesar wrap, the BBQ pulled pork sandwich and two kids plates. We also ordered the mozzarella sticks as an appetizer.

We proceeded to wait for over 45 mins before even our appetizer was served. When the mozzarella sticks arrived, they were good but only consisted of four massive sticks. While the taste was good, we would have preferred the four massive sticks had been made into more smaller sized mozzarella sticks to make for easier sharing amongst us. In addition, the tremendous amount of cheese inside each stick made eating them a laborious process of chewing for an eternity before you could swallow. Again, taste was good, but overall it left us wanting.

Our food finally arrived after at least an hour since our arrival. We were immediately disappointed to find that every single dish was a complete disaster. The burgers had obviously been finished a long time before the other meals and had sat underneath the hot plate, drying out the edges. Every single piece of bread in our meals was stale. Not toasted, but literally stale bread. The BBQ pork sandwich was the most disappointing of it all. It was lukewarm (obviously microwaved), literally looked like someone had taken an ice cream scoop through a container and just plopped it half on the bread and half off. There was hardly any meat and was swimming in sauce. On top of that, every single dish was served in a basket with wax paper and frozen crinkle fries. I could literally go to the store and pick out the exact brand of frozen premade fries they used.

With the exception of the burgers, everything else served to us was obviously either frozen or microwaved before being served. If this was a cheap eatery, I wouldnt complain as much, but the BBQ pork sandwich on its own cost $14! We ended up feeding our children some of the food as they were starving but the rest of us ended up sending our dishes back and leaving without eating lunch.

The server apologized and we made sure to leave her a nice tip as the issues had absolutely nothing to do with her. She told us there was only one cook working in the kitchen. Even so, I could understand a single cook taking a long time if he was serving quality food, but this was an almost empty dining room and obviously low quality food.

Hopefully, our experience is a fluke and not a common occurrence, but other reviews I've read seem to indicate this is the norm. Honestly? This place needs to be featured on the next episode of Gordon Ramsey's...

My husband and I came in last night for a few late night drinks. At first the bartender was pretty rude and short with us. We got our drinks and started talking to the guy next to us, who turned out to be the manager. He was extremely friendly and chatted with us all night, until close. After a while of talking with him, the bartender lightened up and started being friendly as well. They encouraged us to come back and eat and talked about the change for the better in ownership and management. Since we are on vacation we had a very long day today doing some site seeing and hiking and didn't get back to our cabin until late. We attempted to eat at several other restaurants in the area with no luck, so decided to go back here to give their food a try. We sat at a booth and expected to get table service as it appeared others tables were. After about 10 minutes with no service my husband went to the bar to get menus and drinks. It took a while, but they were busy, so totally understandable. After, another 20 minutes or so we still had no one greet us or even acknowledge us, even though several servers passed by on numerous occasions. They avoided eye contact and looked away if we tried to get their attention. I finally gave up and went back to the bar to wait another 5 minutes or so for the bartender to never even look up and acknowledge me. I was finally able to stop a server as she was walking to the bar and ask if I could order food with her, which she agreed. She took me over to the server station and took my order there. After another 10 minutes she came to our table and explained that the kitchen had closed 10 minutes earlier. I explained that we had been trying to order for over 30 minutes and everyone had been ignoring us and she just blankly stared at me like she didn't understand English. I realized I was getting no where with her and we decided to leave to try and find other food as we were completely starving at this point. We went to the bar to pay for our drinks and waited at least another 10 minutes for the bartender to decide to help us, this was after she walked away from the bar for a few minutes. May be an okay place to drink and hang out and maybe their food is actually good if you get a chance to try it but they obviously need more competent servers and more staff. The change in ownership and management does not appear to be...

I was waiting on the review to come below. I was at the restaurant when this incident occurred I was actually at one of the tables over. Yes, there was a confrontation but it was not due to the servers fault. First let me start by saying I 100% believe in customer service but I also believe in kindness! The server was extremely busy. She not only had them as a table but had a huge table of maybe 15-20 people and also had multiple other tables she was handling. The table was unhappy that the server was unable to tend to them the way they wanted. They did have another server who was running around assisting them. That server brought them their drinks and let them know what was going on. Their food had already been put in 30-40min prior but they weren’t happy that they saw their server at the large table. When the server came over to ask what was the problem they demanded their food. The server told them their food wasn’t ready yet. That didn’t matter. They wanted their food because they thought she was getting the large tables food. I overheard the argument and the server told them the large table was not even getting food at that point. They didn’t care. She asked them what could another server do for them that she couldn’t and they responded bring us our food. She said it’s not ready yet SO you can either continue waiting for the food or you’re more than welcome to leave. It really was as simple as that. And to say the restaurant wasn’t busy is just simply not true. The restaurant was packed. Inside and out. I usually do not input my opinion on these things but I saw this coming a mile away. It’s easy to get on here and make false claims to persuade people but it’s just absolutely not true. I feel terrible for the server but I applaud her for standing up for herself. The customer is not always right. A little bit of patience and kindness would have went a long way! I saw this server doing laps around this restaurant trying to appease everyone! So let me leave a positive review for her because she deserves it! I definitely recommend trying the blue coyote if you’re ever in the area. The food is amazing and the service...