The Esso Club — Restaurant in Clemson

A coworker and I were in town and The Esso Club was recommended to us. We always try for the local mom and pop places when we are on the road.

When you pull up to the restaurant, there is a tiny parking lot that was full since it was lunch hour. There is plenty of outdoor seating for when the weather is nice.

Once inside, you quickly realize you are in a Clemson University sports bar. There is a ton of memorabilia on the walls, including pictures, jerseys footballs and much more. Pretty cool stuff to look at, whether or not you're a Clemson fan. Where the memorabilia is not covering the walls, there are TVs to watch whatever sports are on.

We were greeted promptly and seated right away even though it was during the lunch rush. The service was very good until after our food order was placed. It seemed as though not only we were forgotten, but our food was as well. Customers that arrived after us were already leaving, and we still hadn't received our food. It was a solid 30+ minutes before our food finally arrived.

Once our food arrived, our service returned to being great. I ordered the beef tips with gravy, sides were cucumber salad(which is not really a salad), Mac and cheese, and peas. My coworker ordered the fried chicken since it came highly recommended. My meal was pretty good. The gravy was a little too salty for me, but I don't put much salt in or on food. The Mac and cheese, and peas were very good. The cucumber "salad" was a little lacking. As in lacking any other ingredients that would make it an actual salad. My coworker said the fried chicken was easily beat by KFC or Bojangles.

Overall it's a pretty cool place, great service and good food. If you're looking for a sports bar with better than average sports bar food, this...

Absolutely terrible. All hype and zero delivery. The wait staff does not like being outside so they let you sit out in the heat and ignore you while they spend time in the AC. I had to go check on our meals about 4 times after waiting 1 hour and 10 min and they were all huddle around the drink stand by the bar. Drinks ran dry and it took over 1 hour and 40 min to get anything out of them after complaining to anyone that would listen. I saw many people enter the building, eat and leave, while we were still waiting for our lunch. The inside gets better service than the outside. After getting the manager out of the kitchen and waiting 1 hour and 40 min for a sub par lunch she did NOTHING to fix the problem and somehow with the server standing there threw her under the bus and still did NOTHING to fix the issue.

The manager took zero responsibility and refused to make it right. Nothing about that meal was worth talking about. The worst part was the lack of responsibility and that fact we have to keep asking where our meals were despite everyone else around us getting served. Disgraceful!

The food was subpar. Portions are absurd and not to mention took almost 2 hours to come out of the kitchen all while people who showed up after use were served and left...

Know that I don’t leave negative reviews unless something was really bad about a place, but our experience last night was something out of a comedy. Everything was GREAT until we got our entrees. Beer was cold, apps were solid. Entrees come out and one member of our party has a bun that’s so hard on his chicken sandwich that it made a loud thud when you would tap it. So he sent that back to be replaced, sandwich comes back, and my friend takes a bite and the chicken tastes like it’s gone bad and smells fishy. Another member of our party orders the sliders, they forget the grilled onions, and they bring out raw onions when he asks for the grilled. He gets a few bites in and finds a cooks hair in his slider. All three orders of onion rings we ordered were so greasy they were inedible.

We let the waiter know, he says they can’t comp the uneaten meals. So we ask him to get his manager. Manager doesn’t show, but they only comp the chicken sandwich. Waiter walks away and we see a roach running across the floor towards a pos system. By far the worst restaurant experience we’ve ever had. A party of six, most meals half or uneaten because of food quality/cleanliness, and they only comped one meal. Won’t be returning, and you probably...