Blackwater Restaurant & Lounge — Restaurant in Chillicothe

Decided to stop in because Wabash Barbecue across the street was strangely closed.

We were seated immediately and got our drinks in a somewhat timely fashion. But it took quite a while for us to get our onion ring appetizer. For our entrees we ordered salads, and we literally waited nearly an hour for them. The restaurant wasn't close to full when we walked in, but more and more people were coming in, and the people that were seated well after us were getting their appetizers and entrees just fine........us, still no salads. I finally went up to the front to tell them to just put our orders in to-go boxes, and one of the servers said she would take care of that. A long time passed, still no salads. FINALLY our server comes back, and she tells us when they make our salads they know to put them in to-go boxes. (It's now been 45 minutes, and our salads are still being made?) Told her we needed to leave but we would like to speak to the manager. She says she'll go get her, and despite us telling her we needed to go, she leaves no check.

More time passes, our server doesn't come back, our food still doesn't come, one of the couples who came in after us have now eaten and are paying and getting ready to leave, and no manager. Whoa! Someone appearing to be the manager comes in our side of the restaurant and is checking drinks and tables, but starts to pass us by. We graciously ask if she's the manager, and she says she is. She asks if everything was fine, and we told her it was not, which was why we had asked her to come to our table. Turns out our server never told her we were requesting to talk to her.

To shorten this up, the positive of this is that the manager did what she could to rectify our inconvenience as much as possible in a professional manner. Comped us what we ordered and what we had eaten, and gave us a certificate for 20% off our next visit, which will probably not get used, honestly.

Thank you to the manager for doing something to fix the situation on the spot; most places around the KC area will just apologize and tell you the next time come in and they'll "take care of you" if you mention the manager's name, but curiously won't ever write anything like that down to give to you to bring in. (And you can all guess how that works out the next time you do decide to go back to that particular...

We got 2 open face beef with mashed potatoes and green beans on one and mashed potatoes and fruit bowl with the 2nd. Those are supposed to be shredded beef so when ours came in a slice it was camouflaged with mashed potatoes and gravy. As I started chewing I realized it was nothing but fat and gristle as you can see in the bowl picture where I tried to dig around and find any actual meat. The other picture is my daughter’s plate. You can see where it was just a large slice of fat and gristle too. My husband is a butcher and he looked at it and said it was the cap off a ribeye. So basically they tried to feed us the trash and thought we wouldn’t notice.

When we complained they took off the price for the meat but made us pay for the sides. If you get caught trying to screw the customers over at least have the decency to make them not pay for the entire plate 🤦‍♀️

Oh and my husband got the tenderloin and it was mostly breading. He said it wasn’t even tenderized. But he didn’t say anything to them about it.

Son got the chicken strips and onion rings. It was the only good thing they had. Don’t waste your money because they don’t know how to make the things they...

Between the wife and I, we came up with a 4.5 score. We got there closer to closing time, place was empty. Ordered a couple side salads, lettuce was not iceberg lettuce! I ordered their Blackwater burger, which is a 1/3 lb patty that seemed to be hand packed, not pre frozen, with 1 strip of thick candied bacon. Asked for crispy bacon. They got close, but not quite as well as I would have liked. They took it back and tried to cook it more, got close enough I was ok with it. A few minutes later, they came out with 2 more full slices that they tried a different way. It was perfect. Wife had their smokehouse stacker. It was pretty big. She ate about a third of it and took the rest home. She also had fried with hers. They tasted almost homemade. She had a sweet tea, and I had a long Island. We will be going back. We both enjoyed the food.

Update: Dropped from 4.5 to 3.5 star. Service is still good, but food is starting to become more bland. Just ordered the Philly cheese steak, the steak had absolutely no flavor, even after putting ample amounts of salt and pepper on it. All I tasted was cheese,...