Truman's Bar & Grill — Restaurant in Columbia

I used to be a frequent patron of this establishment, and enjoyed the friendly atmosphere and staff. It isn't out of the ordinary for my friends and I to rack up tabs in the hundreds of dollars. If you've lived in Columbia for as long as me, you can remember a time when this bar was a bit "darker" than it is now. The management worked for several years to weed out "certain" persons (see their super-restrictive dress codes, etc which were really only enforced against "darker" persons).

Even so, the bar staff was friendly enough to me (not the "lightest" person, but not the "darkest" person), so I kept coming for their heavy-handed drink pours and decent prices on good food. That is all and well, up until a night just a few weeks ago.

A close and trusted friend of mine had an experience which will make me permanently boycott Truman's Bar. A little bit of background: my friend was a frequenter of Truman's and often spends $100+/wk at that establishment. My friend is "lighter," (if you know what I mean) but was accompanied by a "darker" friend of ours on this particular night. Near the end of the night, and AFTER paying his tab, my "lighter" friend decided to ask for an itemized receipt for his tab, because the upon further reflection, the tab seemed to be a little bit higher than the normal amount.

Apparently this innocent request was perceived as hostile by the staff bartender, who immediately went on the defensive, and enlisted several of the locals to tell my friend he was no longer welcome at Truman's. My friend's "darker" acquaintance came to my friend's aid, protesting the situation, and was subsequently accosted by several of the locals and the bartender, who apparently thought it was an appropriate time to make use of the term "boy" (yes, in that racist/slavery tone that you heard played back in your mind), before telling the "boy" to pay his tab and get out.

After being kicked out of the bar (yes, for simply asking for an itemized receipt AFTER paying the tab), my friend called for an Uber. While waiting for the said Uber to arrive, the bartender and the locals (which had now essentially formed a "posse"), came outside to accost my friends and tell them to "get off the property" (because you know, encouraging people to drive home while waiting on a safe ride is apparently an acceptable practice at Truman's). To make matters worse, the bar staff called the local police, and my friends were issued citations for "trespassing" on the property (where they had just spend hundreds of dollars). That's not my idea of how you "reward" loyal patrons for choosing to spend their hard-earned money at your establishment -- but maybe I was just brought up with a sense of common decency.

For those that made it this far through my review: At the end of the day, it's up to you to pick a place to eat and drink and spend YOUR hard-earned money. I for one, am a huge proponent of supporting local businesses -- but I can no longer support or recommend this establishment after personally witnessing and now hearing about this most recent occurrence of racist practices. I'll take my friends/co-workers/family to a different establishment that deserves my business and my hard-earned cash. If YOU choose to support Truman's,...

The foods good. Nice atmosphere and most the servers and cooks are friendly. I wouldnt work for them tho. I had the experience to be employed here and ended up getting shorted on pay when I was training. When brought to upper management attention I was ignored and dismissed. But for a place to eat it's great!

Update! No that would be me! Yup Chyanne Kitson, n your absolutely right my parole officer did tell me I couldnt work there but he also gave me time to b able to give you notice. Which I did. And I did text management after I told them I couldnt work there. They never answered me. And by shorted I mean I was paid server wage when I was suppose to be making min wage since I was training and not making tips. My check was $21 and sum change. Glad I can finally get a response after making a review. It wasnt even a bad review for real... but very professional of this company to put an employee or ex employees personal information and business out there, I didnt even post names of the "upper management" myself outta respect, plus isnt there some kind of law about that.... oh and, Love how you made sure to state everything you could about me being a felon and the directives from my parole officer. Even made a point to say parole officer instead of probation so it was known I've been to prison. I dont know if you thought I'd deny it and be ashamed or something but I'm not. So what I messed up and went to prison, I learned my lesson and I've changed. As for my name, I wasnt trying to give off a false profile. Farley is my maiden name and I had this profile long b4 I was married and just never changed it. But thank you for being such a professional company with your comment...

Have you seen the show on the Food Network called Restaurant Impossible?? This place is an excellent candidate for that show. It is dark, dirty, horrible atmosphere. Food is terrible at best. Everything tastes like it was frozen and they just warmed it up or put it in a fryer. We went for the breakfast buffet and after tasting everything on our plate, we asked if we could order something different. So we ordered off the menu, thinking it would be better. It wasn't. Additionally the place was gross. They only had a couple of servers working and there was no way they could keep up with cleaning all of the dirty tables. And when they did, they would just set dirty dishes on the ledge of the raised-up section of the restaurant and leave it there. I would never ever go back to this place and am so glad that I didn't take any out of town guests there. And another thing is that the place is called Truman's, so I naturally thought it would be a welcoming restaurant with a fun Mizzou theme. However, it was dark, the floors were sticky, and the decorations on the wall consisted almost entirely of beer and booze advertisements. I just thought this place would have more than 1 or 2 mizzou decorations. This was a total waste of money and time (because we were there over an hour and there were only about 5 other...