Tillie's — Restaurant in Dripping Springs

We made a high tea reservation for 1pm to celebrate my birthday. My friend and I were looking forward to this. It is a gorgeous venue with delicious tea and food. Unfortunately, the service was slow. And I’m not saying this in a snobby, “I ordered my food and had to wait 20 minutes to receive it blah blah blah” sort of way. I mean it was slow in an ungodly, “is this even real? Am I being punked?” sort of way.

We were seated initially at 1pm in a timely manner. Cute little table and they had a handwritten card that said happy birthday on it. Love the little details! Then 45 minutes pass and we still have not been spoken to by our server, whoops. We both drove an hour to meet at this place for tea and we were incredibly thirsty. We had to flag someone down just to get water. We were told our server would be with us soon, and someone who was (supposedly) not our server took our tea order. We got the tea and water around 2pm, an hour after having been seated.

Another 40 minutes go past and we still have not met our server (nearly two hours into being seated!) We are starving. I flag down a women in black with a name tag and ask who we could talk to about getting our food (which- and I cannot stress this enough-was a set menu and ordered prior to our arrival). She walked ten feet away to talk to a man at the register for a minute and then walked back and said “I just went and spoke to the kitchen myself, they are making your tray now and it should be out soon.” Cool cool cool. I mean, we saw you the entire time. You definitely didn’t go to the kitchen. But that’s fine, we had been waiting so long at this point that we found it kind of funny and par for the course at this place.

We got our food around 2:30pm- I took photos when it arrived so I have time stamps. It took an hour and a half for us to receive food that was ordered way in advance of our arrival. Every time we wanted water, tea, etc. we had to find a random worker and ask for it. I’m not shy but my friend was kind of embarrassed each time we finally decided to ask for something. If I hadn’t been there to speak up I imagine she would still be sitting at the restaurant hoping for a glass of water to this day, lol!!

We were also told throughout the 2-3hour affair that our waiter would “be right with us.” We were given several different names… spoiler alert- We never met the guy. Met a lot of other nice people, though.

All this to say, the place is adorable in a cute area of dripping springs, the tea and food were good, and everyone we interacted with was very kind. And not all the service was slow- once our food finally arrived they certainly did not hesitate to bring us the check! LOL!

Honestly though, I do recommend it. The people were kind (although I suspect our waiter either quit the second he saw us or never actually existed). However, if you are going here please take my advice and carve out 3-4 hours of your day for it, bring some snacks/water, and prepare to sit! At least the chairs are very comfortable :)

For the restaurant- I love that you allow people to sit at your tables for so long. Maybe next time give them their water/tea/food and then let them sit for 3 hours? So they don’t have to awkwardly ask random workers for everything? Just my two scents, do with it what you will. Thanks for a lovely...

We had Mother’s Day brunch and it did not go well. I’ve had a prior experience at Tillie’s that was amazing, so this experience was quite shocking and disappointing…bordering disastrous. We arrived a little before our 11:30 reservation and were seated by 11:35. We didn’t receive our first course for at least an hour. We have 2 young kids (one of which ordered a kids meal item). Our waitress was not around much. Finally I went in to find a manger and ask to at least get my daughter’s main course. While I couldn’t locate a manager, the lead bar tender was very helpful; soon after speaking with him all of our food came out. Later we received the associated wine pairing. The portions were way off and it was way too much food for the 3 of us doing prix fixe. Then the waitress brought 2 platters of dessert, however she didn’t first clean it the main meal, provide clean plates or utensils for dessert. So we sat for another 20 minutes waiting for the table to be cleared…while the dessert sat there getting warm. Finally another wait staff brought utensils and half of the table was cleared. Getting the check was also interesting and a long wait. Meanwhile other guests simply left - this was a complete and utter failure of planning and execution. It’s so sad for a place that has such promise. My husband didn’t even look at the bill - just gave the card so we could leave (kids were beyond ready). Turns out they only charged for a glass of champagne and 1 flight. We assume this was due to the horrible experience, but what is odd to me is that neither the waitress nor manager made any mention of the service issues. Other staff members apologized, but there was no ownership…or attempt to really course correct the situation. Pretty baffling experience for a high end restaurant, but I guess there was some recognition due to the lessor bill. Again, we arrived by 11:25 for an 11:30 resy and paid our bill around 2:30. Mind blowing that the experience took that long and was so poor. I hope this is not the new standard for Tillie’s.

Update: it’s now 4:45 pm and they called my husband and left a message letting us know there was an issue and we were incorrectly charged. They asked that we call back and sign a credit auth form to pay for the rest. Zero acknowledgment of the service issues. I’m at a complete loss of words here.

Update 2: They reached out a day later, acknowledged our review and have offered a gift card. I will say that I'd like to give Tillie's another shot - but will be a while and I want to see major leadership changes, extensive staff training and owners' taking action to turn this around. It's such a pity to see Tillie's being run in...

What could have been a beautiful celebratory night in a majestic setting where we had a delicious meal, cocktails, a bottle of wine and rented a room at Camp Lucy was instead long wait times for drinks, empty glasses, biscuit that taste like KFC, over cooked entre and sub par service. My husband and I visited for our anniversary and were extremely disappointed. Upon arriving the two host were very welcoming and kind, wishing us a happy anniversary and then asking us to wait at the bar while they prepared our table. We made our way into the beautiful dining room to find it very empty and waited at the bar. We pulled up the menu with their QR code and proceeded to order our drinks. The bartender was short with us informing us that the drink my husband ordered was no longer on the menu because it was seasonal. During the time it took him to pick another they sat us at our table. Shortly after someone brought us water and then we waited quite sometime before our waitress finally came over. I was still waiting to get the drink I ordered when she took my husband order. It was at least 20 minutes from the time we ordered drinks that we finally received them. I would understand if they were busy but there couldn't have been more than 25-30 people dining in that evening and 4 -5 wait staff plus service staff to support them. When it came to ordering our food the menu that is listed online was not the menu that they had once you scanned the QR code on the table. The menu was extremely limited and the single desert offered was strange. I ordered the special, a pork chop inside a squash and my husband had the steak. While waiting for our food to arrive our drinks sat empty and we waited for our server to visit our table. She made eye contact with me and kept on walking. She finally came over and we were able to ask for a second round of beverages. When our food arrived his steak was very good but my pork chop was extremely dry. I will say the brussels sprouts were quite good but still didn't make up for the awful entre. Our waitress tried to make it better by offering me another entre but with the limited menu, there was nothing else that seemed appealing. Since we only have one anniversary a year, we like to make that evening special and are willing to spend some good money. We drove almost an hour one way to visit Tillie's and got a babysitter. If I wanted to receive a short tempered and inattentive staff I would have had my toddler wait on us and cooked my own...