Flyover — Restaurant in Columbia

After staring blankly at the menu for ten minutes, contemplating my existence while reading the descriptions that were far too long, a handful of items were decided upon.

The falafel salad was decent. The falafel itself was flavorful and housed onion, cucumber, and orange bell pepper. Diced beets were nice, but made little sense with the middle eastern theme of the dish. The sweet fruit was exceptionally misplaced. It came with a small naan, an item traditionally enjoyed with olive oil and za'atar, though there was only a couple of small drops of oil for presentation, and no dry herbs.

The fried cauliflower was disappointing, with the most tasteful thing on the appetizer-like dish being the feta cheese. The smokiness of the sweet potato puree was acceptable, though slightly chunky.

The catfish was abysmal. The sauce, remoulade, consisted of mayonnaise with added blended oil and a couple of mild spices. The fish was barely visible due to how much sauce was doused across it as if it was dressed by Callen Schaub. The slaw underneath was wet and covered in a similar mayonnaise-based sauce that forced the breading to disintegrate off of the fish filet, and the fish itself was flavorless. I cannot express the heinous disorder of this entire dish. I implore you: please remove it, or entirely overhaul it by separating the only two items it consists of and drastically reducing the use of sauce.

The boom boom shrimp lacked the spice that the menu claimed existed. The rice it was placed over was quite mealy and mimicked the texture of chapulines, and the mango garnish was massively overpowered by the vinegar it was tossed in.

The florentine pizza crust smelled of yeast and was dry, and the only thing allowing it to be balanced was the watery cheese on top, likely due to the spinach and onions being transferred onto the pizza prematurely before placed in the wood burning pizza oven.

Service was good, food was fast; but the restaurant was very loud, allowing for the music volume to be raised and further increasing the volume level of the patrons, overwhelming the atmosphere for dinner hours. The volume made it difficult to hear the low-talking staff.

Overall, fancy words on the menu for people on the "nice side of town", when in reality it's on the corner of a strip mall.

One experience was enough, and I recommend that others do, indeed, flyover this...

We got there and we were directed to the bar. Greeter stated there would be nothing else available for 2 hours. Ample seats were available by the way. We also didn’t need 2 hours to eat but whatever. The bar was fine. The greeter sat us down right beside a couple that was already seated. We wanted to give the couple a little elbow room so decided to leave a seat open between us and them. The greeter proceeded to slide our plates back toward the empty seat as to say “sit where I instructed” we thought maybe he misunderstood that we were trying to give the other couple a little room as the seats were very close to one another. We then asked if we could just slide the empty seat down a tad to give the couple and us some space he stated yes and when we proceeded to move the seat a few inches away the greeter responded “well not that far” granite we love being around people so the seat hadn’t been moved but a few inches. Also keep in mind there were plenty of other open seats open just in case he was worried about other customers coming in and having a place to sit. We felt very unwelcome and before even sitting down we decided to leave. No words no back and forth, we just politely walked back to our car. We shouldn’t de forced to sit right up under one another. Also on the way out one of the staff behind the bar was seen giving us the deuces. Confirmation we were unwanted. The last thing we needed was for those same people to be the ones preparing our food and drinks. We will...

We don't frequent Columbia's culinary scene too often (being from Austin, TX), but anytime we are able to venture north and visit family here, Flyover has become an absolute must.

The food is fantastic. Period. Having grown up in "these here parts" and years later building a palette for amazing food in ATX, this is a place that stands so much taller than most restaurants in this part of the state.

Seriously. You can't go wrong with the pretzels, mac and cheese, catfish, any pizza, or the many other tasty options they keep fresh by changing the menu every so often. Cocktails are equally awesome and the service consistently provides a level of professionalism / team work that is so very apparent.

The evening started with some humor too as a host walked into the patio screen door, but took it like a champ, bouncing right back into action in spite of our trying to hold laughter in.

You can't go wrong with Flyover. Stop reading and head...