Taste of Soul Restaurant and Food Truck — Restaurant in Burlington

If I could give this establishment ZERO stars I would. My review is based solely on the lack of professionalism and intergrity of Nancy and her staff. I booked Nancy’s Taste of Soul for my bridal shower. Up until the day before my shower everything was mostly ok.

THE DAY BEFORE MY SHOWER AT 9PM, Nancy calls me to say that the space I booked was flooded and I could not have it there. She asked if anyone in my party was handicap because she had a smaller space across the street upstairs (Soul Anchor). She NEVER mentions anything about compensentating for the inconvenience and incomparable room, and NEVER mentions that she’s having another event downstairs in the same space. I ask HER about being compensated and she replies “if I have to find you by the end of nite and put cash in your hands I will”. I also have to ask about there being an event downstairs and she responds and says yes but my event will be ending when theirs is starting. Lies.

Fast forward to my event. I had my bridesmaids arrive 12p to drop off things to setup (up until this point Nancy would not give me a clear answer on when they could drop things off and said she would give me an answer at 12p…at 12:01 I told my girls to do what they needed cause she was playing). My start time for my event was 2p. When they arrived nothing was setup. Not a decor in sight. LOL! Some of them was refused access into the building. And the ones that were given access was met with RUDE staff (Ms Nancy included). Ms Nancy herself was caught talking about me in front of my guest saying “I told her to cancel”(lies) and continued complaining about the presence of my girls while she was setting up.

Now let’s talk about the food, items were missing from the contract. Fish was the only protein on the menu and a whole table didn’t get any. And when asked I was told “the kitchen is closed” and that they had to close the restaurant across the street to support the two events at Soul Anchor. Lol, huh?

Nancy never showed her face at my shower to apologize to me, nothing. Never found me at the end to “give me cash if she needed to” cause homegirl definitely needed to. She lied about my event ending when the event downstairs would be starting because both events were literally at the same time. I had to pull up on her after the event to speak with her husband to get a half response (she was unavailable, allegately). And then text her for a week of no responses to get my money back.

Nancy is unprofessional, has no integrity, and a poor representation of a black-owned business!!! She’s clearly trying to bite off more than she can chew by running a restaurant, catering, and event planning business without the staffing and training to support all three.

DO NOT BOOK WITH THIS LADY…unless you like to fight cause you might have to lay hands....

I have never been so disappointed in my service and food like this visit. I chose to go to Taste of Soul for mother's day to celebrate my sister and my mom. First things first... service was horrible. Our waiter T.O. didn't bring out our drinks until we were all finished our meals. When I go to other restaurants, the first thing we get is a drink. We continued to ask him for our drinks throughout the entire visit. We were all packed up ready to go by the time we received them. The food wasn't good... it wasn't horrible but it was bad. Four of us had the Swai fish... huge disappointment. I cannot even describe the taste but it wasn't good. The side of rice seemed dry and the alfredo sauce that the fish was topped with had a burnt taste. The so called seafood alfredo only came with 3 shrimp and a whole bunch of pasta. The shrimp were a nice size but where was the other seafood we were supposed to receive?! The nice part was the owner. She came around and said happy mother's day to everyone and gave all the mothers flowers. When she asked how the food was, we could barely get any words out. A few of us was just being nice and the others said nothing at all. Our bill came to $238.38 for bad service and poor food. We were forced to pay a $37.00 gratuity for the service. I normally don't mind that and even pay more depending on service. I'm always leaving big tips because I'm sure it's hard serving a party our size but I was livid that I had to pay T.O. that money being as though we barely seen him and had to find him to get our drinks and our bill. After asking for the bill several times, my mom just left and said, when he see us leaving, I bet he'll give us our bill then... She was right! Huge disappointment. I think the owner is nice and I would love to support her but she has a lot to fix within her business. This was a disaster. I'm even more upset because I'm the one who chose to go there and now that's my mother's memory of her mother's day...

So unfortunately this wasn’t my first time trying this restaurant and my last. I spent $31 on food that was not only mediocre, but for my restaurant notes to be neglected. I’m pescatarian and haven’t eaten meat in 9 years. I ordered fish, shrimp, with sides of collard greens (for my sister) and Mac and cheese. It’s imperative that my food is prepared and packed how I asked because I’ll get sick from eating anything with meat in it. I asked that my collard greens wouldn’t be packed in the same platter and my Mac and cheese be packed in the same container as my fish and shrimp. That was ignored, and there was juiced from the collard greens spilled to the bottom of my bag and also spilled over into my Mac and cheese leaving it soggy. The collard greens were made with beef broth or chicken broth. The quality of my delivery instructions were poor, there’s no way whoever packed my food didn’t know that there was spillage all the way to the bottom of bag cause there was too much of it, the Uber eats driver had to hold my bag a certain way and even he said it was packaged poorly. I wasn’t able to eat my Mac and cheese side inside of the platter. Now let’s talk about taste too. My shrimp was not seasoned AT ALL. Very bland and not enjoyable. My catfish was good, nothing special, it kind of tasted like chicken which threw me off but I’m assuming the breading or something is used the same way for everything they fry, no big deal. My cornbread wasn’t really cornbread, it tasted like cake.... it was cake. The Mac and cheese was wayyyy to milky or cheesy, however you want to call it, and there were burnt parts in it on top of that and not seasoned. I only gave this place 2 stars instead of 1 out of courtesy, and because the delivery driver got out in the rain to give me my food and he HIMSELF was friendly but I wouldn’t give the restaurant credit for that. I feel like my $31 could’ve been spent elsewhere and I was really excited to...