Jimmy Mac's Restaurant — Restaurant in Bryson City

Our family (4 adults, 2 young kids) visited here while on vacation for the weekend and had an awful experience. The hostess Katelyn first estimated a wait time of 15 minutes — not only to our group but at least a couple of other groups that walked in around the same time. Instead it took over 30 minutes before we were seated (it's a tiny space). We had to wait for another 10 minutes for our waitress Amber to come take our drink orders. She did arrive back quickly and took our food order, and we luckily didn't have to wait too long for that to arrive. We were disappointed to see that the kids' menu fried shrimp meals for both of our kids still had tails on the shrimp — not exactly edible to a toddler, so we had to take extra time to cut these off. The side salads were surprisingly full of a variety of good vegetables and a nice portion size. The crab stuffed mushrooms were dripping with excessive oil, but very tasty. Things started going from "meh" to worse when our waitress completely abandoned us (and was nowhere to be seen in the restaurant) for at least 30 minutes. One of our kids was so tired from waiting so long and understandably wanted to leave. We got the hostesses' attention and told her our waitress forgot about us and we needed drink refills and the check. She seemed surprised and said she would help us out, but then she also completely ghosted us and left the building (or at least the dining area). We were all extremely annoyed at this point, and it didn't help that there were two young (~6 and 8 years old?) kids in the restaurant who appeared to be related to a staff member. She proceeded to yell at them loudly for everyone to hear, and then also had them BUSSING TABLES AND WORKING!!!! What kind of illegal racket is this place? I lost all patience, walked to the kitchen to get anyone's attention since Amber and Katelyn were still nowhere to be found and a 3rd older woman finally saw me after a very long few minutes and I explained our situation. Her response was "no one told me you were waiting" and she tried to help. Amber magically showed up a minute later and also said "no one told me you were waiting" and had a terrible attitude. She never apologized and simply said "I had to fill 2 to-go orders" which never explained why she ignored us for over 30 minutes. I can understand that staffing challenges and food supply issues are prevalent now more than ever, but this complete and utter lack of service was unacceptable and ruined our family member's birthday we were trying to celebrate. There wasn't even a manager present to talk to about our issues at the time, which came as no surprise. They should be reported for ignoring child labor laws and train all of their employees to have better common sense and courtesy! Do yourself a favor and go anywhere else besides this...

Edit* I can't seem to respond to my response, so firstly, I did not mean to imply your son was any issue at all. He was nothing short of professional and got our drinks very quickly. He was not a problem. What I meant was there was a whole table of adults sitting there that I didn't realize were servers and of all of them, it was the child that got up, which was very responsible of him. I appreciate your response and I wasn't really even going to review it at first because the food was good and fine for the price, but when I saw a lot of people mention super long wait times and disorganization among the servers, I felt our experience was similar. I thank you for your response and your desire for growth and I hope to give it another try!

I wish I had read the reviews before going because I see that our problems are very common problems for them that don't seem to be anything they will be fixing anytime soon. I really truly hate to complain, but when all the reviews mention the issues we had, I feel differently about it. From the start, we just stood there to be seated. We didn't realize that the table with people sitting on their laptops was the servers and not other diners. Finally a literal child gets up and comes to seat us, and the child is the one who got our drinks for us. After a good long while, someone else comes to get our order. After another good long while, someone else brings our food. The food was pretty decent, not too bad, but not worth an hour + during a slow time. As I was eating, I kept hearing the phone ring with people asking about the Valentines dinner that evening. I overheard the server that answered say "I don't have the menu in front of me but it's all good stuff." As a server myself, what? I would have been reprimanded for saying that. Keep a menu and any pertinent info by the telephones. What's "good stuff" to you may not be good stuff to someone else. My daughter was really beginning to not feel good and couldn't eat and just wanted to go, but it was taking soooo long to just get checked out. We had a different person for everything and everyone seemed very unorganized like they had no idea what they were supposed to be doing. The entire time we were there, there were no more than 7 tables to 3-4 servers, so there was no excuse at all for the long wait times. It sucks because the location and the restaurant itself are so cute, and I loved the old historical feel to it. It was in a good location for just walking around the town. We spent about an hour and a half in there, with less than 15 minutes being...

Well...we came in, went up to the host stand. There, we read a sign that said Please Wait to Be Seated. So...we did. We waited. We made eye contact maybe once or twice with a few workers, but they continued about what they were doing and did not acknowledge me and my boyfriend. A table right next to the host stand was filled with servers, completely ignoring us. They were seated, about 4 or 5 of them, eating, so I assumed they were “off the clock” or “on break” but finally, one of them did get up and come to seat us...greeted us while still chewing her food. We were rushed to order immediately when we sat down and then from that point on, the service seemed nonexistant. I ordered the cheddar burger and the cheese seemed...not right. It tasted even worse than it looked. I did not have more than 2 bites before calling it quits. The fries were really the only highlight of this experience. The server did not once ask how our food was....all I experienced was a lazy staff that could care less. We ordered to go food shortly after placing our “dine in” order because we were from out of town and wanted something to munch on later during our trip home. Really wish we didn’t. We waited about 30 minutes after we were done eating for the to go food that we ordered at the beginning of our meal and ended up throwing it away because it had the same horrible cheddar cheese on it and the chicken looked “interesting.” I had started looking at the reviews while waiting for our to go order and realized what a mistake we made by choosing to eat here. The locals that leave reviews really must have their heads in the sand. I’m all about supporting local businesses, but come on. I’ve been a server, and now I am a manager in the customer service industry. I always tip over 20% and I have never left a review for a business, but I felt the need to do so this time. I was amazed at laziness and carelessness I experienced. Have some pride in your job. Not sure if this place has a manager or not, but if so...they should be ashamed. If it’s just the owner and his family running this place, then I get it. I read the reviews about him, and apparently he really could care less. So yeah...don’t be fooled by the 4 star rating like I was. Read the real interviews in between that are 1 stars and that’s what you really get...