The Trading Post; Southern Food & Spirits — Restaurant in Emerald Isle

One of my worst experiences in a small and locally owned restaurants. My wife, grandson, and myself have eaten and it was a pretty decent meal the first time. The 2nd time we brought 3 friends of ours thinking it might be the same, man were we wrong. As we arrived at 5:20 pm on a Sunday there were few patrons and we were escorted directly to the outside table. Our waitress came and took our order about 10 minutes after. As we sat and watched people come in after us and receive their food we were curious about our food but said nothing as we listened to the live musician. We watched the next set of customers come in and get their food the waitress finally came over after 6:15 and apologized after tapping my shoulder and asking were we good as I shrugged my shoulders and said no. It took that long to come and check on us as all of our drinks had not been checked and all of the ice had melted away. She offered us free hush puppies and a drink to one of our friends which she charged him for anyways at the end after another 30 minutes of waiting. We finally got our food around 7:00 and it was fresh at least and we finally got some ice, although they did not check our drinks at this time. Now we are at two hours and one of our companions has a piece of hair fried into her shrimp as she takes a bite and nearly vomits as it sticks on her tongue and in her throat she leaves the table and stays gone a while as we have her plate removed with just a couple of bites taken from her plate. At the end of this ordeal they offered to remove her dish and offered her a piece of cake, which she turned down. My daughter ended up getting the cake. After paying our tabs which were way too expensive for the service, food, and treatment we received. You can see my reviews and also see that I have only left one review as bad as this one over the years. Please read other post as they are similar, although most are high praises. This is a precautionary warning that when they mess up they really do nothing to ensure the customer is happy another than an apology. I really try to enjoy the local restaurants, but this was uncalled for. If you're hungry and want to wait an hour or two to eat and pay their prices head to the last stop light before the Carteret bridge and...

My husband and i along with our 3 children came there for a beach vacation. We decided to go here for breakfast Saturday morning 7-23. They were very busy and there was a wait, Once we were seated I ordered the eggs Benedict, I was looking forward to having it but when I got it my eggs where undercooked, they were slimy. The waitress who was very nice and tried got them to redo it but instead of having eggs benedict I got 2 fried eggs instead. Not the biggest deal but not what I wanted, food was good but not once did the manager come to our table to apologize or just to see what he could do for the mess up. The next morning 7-24 we went there again hoping it would be better it wasn't. We had to wait to be seated again which seemed to be normal, by the beach a lot of people trying to get in to eat there's gonna be a wait. We got in after 20 minutes of waiting but then had to wait 30 minutes if not longer to get our breakfast. Then when our food came out we had to send back our kids blueberry pancakes because there were maybe 5 little blueberries in the center of the pancake. Now when we ordered blueberry pancakes the morning before there was no doubt that it was a blueberry pancake but for some reason that morning I don't know what happened in the kitchen with the food. So the waitress went back to get 2 more and it was still the same there was no blueberries throughout the pancakes just a couple of them in the center I gave up and just dealt with it. Our babies were starving and needed to eat and that mattered more than getting pancakes fixed for the 2nd time. Again our waitress was nice and tried the best that she could but yet again the manager did nothing. And we noticed we were not the only ones throughout the restaurant, there was others that were having a few problems and you could see it all over there faces. Will not be returning back to...

READ BEFORE DINING: Last meal of a family vacation. Got seated ahead of estimated time and the kids had fun playing cornhole(bags) in the courtyard in the outside dining section.

Placed orders then everything ground to a halt. Appetizers came out staggered with the last of 3 apps ordered arriving 15 minutes after the previous 2.

Then another 15 minutes passed before our server shared with us that there was only 1 special (fish) left for the day. 3 in our party had ordered the special so we agreed on who would take it and then I ordered another entree. Roughly 10 minutes later we were told the that another entree we ordered was unavailable so we made another quick audible on the fly.

After another 15 minutes when we were on the brink of searching for our server and asking for the manager 3 of the 5 meals we ordered arrived. By this point it had been at LEAST 25 MINUTES since we had seen our server. Another 10 minutes roled by and we are still waiting on a pork chop and a children's cheeseburger!?

We then pull the plug and box up the food we have. They took off the meals we did not receive but no apologies or even a thought of compensation for the Roughly 3 HOURS we spent waiting on a meal (with 4 KIDS AGES 14-8) that was never completed. Every kitchen gets overwhelmed at times and waiting tables is not easy but the communication between the front and back of the restaurant was terrible. The server was equally atrocious for his complete cowardice by hiding and ignoring the issue rather than just being forthright and apologetic.

Management is equally at fault for just letting this slide without ever making an appearance.

Run the card and on to the next tourist!!

Would not eat at again unless there was complete overhaul from the top down, so until you see, UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT, on the sign outfront AVOID...