Southern Food Company — Restaurant in Fayetteville

Where to start? 3 of the 9 in our party arrived at 06:30pm and ordered a margarita (w/no salt) & it wasn't received until about 06:45pm when 4 more of the party showed up. (With salt) Who knew this would be an indication on how chaotic our (long) dinner experience would be. A bloody Mary was also ordered and it didn't have ANY of the several garnishes advertised on the menu. There were only 3 or 4 other tables at a time there the whole (almost 3 hours some were there) so it's not like it was busy. However, it only seemed like 1 frazzled/overwhelmed server was working (as the others were behind the bar or in the back of the house). While advestising on facebook and their menu that they have two daily specials in addition to their set menu, they didn't have any this night. They also didnt have any soup which is on the menu. So anyways, after the marg incident, (really not that big of a deal, until things just start rolling) someone orders cheese fries, no scallions. Fries show up with scallions. Again not that big of deal since our poor waitress left the fries at the table for the rest of us to eat while they remade the fries correctly. By this time the remaining 2 of our party arrive and we are still trying to order our actual meals after 7pm. Our order was taken and we didn't start receiving our meals (1 at a time) almost a hour later. Oh, did I forget to mention that there was another appetizer ordered (before our dinner order was taken) and the cheese bites were not received until AFTER everyone got their food. Well, not everyone, apparently they forgot to cook one of our meals! So everyone ended up giving some of their dinner to her so she could eat while we did. When it came to the actual food, it was ok, definitely not consistant. 2 ordered the steak salad, 1 came out w/warm meat while the others was refridgerated/cold. 1 was pile high, 1 sparse and they both didn't have the same components. 1 was missing avacado and tomatoes. 2 ordered the chicken fried steak open faced, 1 was not cooked until everyone else was halfway through and didn't get the bread that was supposed to be "open faced". Instead they threw a piece of garlic bread in the box on top as an after thought. (After I asked for it) The other one didn't receive her salad until right before dinner was served and her chicken fried steak, along with someone who ordered the actual fried steak sandwhich, was chewy and burnt, like it was in the fryer for too long or the oil was dirty. The other girl who ordered the sandwich requested french fries and got a whole bunch of small/broken potato chips. Myself and a friend got the southern smothered chicken. She got one huge piece of chicken and I got two very thin small pieces. I also ordered fries instead of mashed potatoes and Mac n cheese. My plate had a big ol pile of potatoes with the small chicken breasts and a piece of burnt, dry cornbread. It's supposed to come with garlic toast. My fries and Mac were brought but I sent the mac right back. It was cold and not good at all. Anyways, after all the food incidents, (2 hours later) they were having problems separating the tickets. Things were on the wrong tickets, a shot was charged which no one had, they rung up pork chops instead of chicken fried steak bc that's just how the steak rings in bc it's the same price. After it was all finally situated (some of our party just decided they'd give others cash for the items on their ticket) the credit card system went down! Therefore, it took what felt like just as long to pay as it did to get all our food. In the end, they took off the 3 apps and I believe the poor waitress bought the one chicken fried steak. We felt so bad for the waitress, she was visably upset. And of course, no manager available for us to speak to. We finally got out of there after 9pm and were able to continue with our nights plans. One of our friends checked her bank statement today and was charged $10 more than what the card was swiped for. Unfortunately it's safe to say, none of us will...

Unfortunately we won't be back. We have really been looking forward to eating here. Our experience started out really wonderful. The decor was really cool featuring local art and our service was exceptional. Our waitress was Morgan. I must say she is probably one of the best servers we have ever had. We started off with the Fried Green Tomatoes and the Southern Trilogy (also a two baskets of fries. The fries had a seasoning salt which I thought was really good but it was a little spicy for my 4 year old. So we had to order another basket.) The Fried Green Tomatoes were amazing. The dips with the Trilogy were good but the chips were stale. It was good start and got us all excited for a not so amazing main course. I ordered the Chicken Fried Chicken with lima beans (which was the only reason I chose SFC, because I had read amazing reviews on Facebook) and my husband ordered the Southern Smotherd Chicken with broccoli. So the food arrived and it looked great. But the looks were deceiving. The gravy which was all over my chicken and mashed potatoes was awful. It was sweet which I was not expecting with white gravy. However the lima beans and dinner roll were good. My husband's chicken he said was ok but his mashed potatoes had the same gravy and the broccoli was burnt and still raw all at the same time. Still very crunchy but had an acrid taste. When Morgan came to check on us she asked how we liked everything and we told her our thoughts. She was so nice and apologetic and mentioned that their gravy is hit and miss with customers because it is sweet. Morgan asked if she could get me anything else. I declined because I really wanted Chicken Fried Chicken with gravy. So between my husband and I we ate one piece of chicken, a serving of lima beans, and a dinner roll. Morgan did take my meal off of the check and brought out a cinnamon roll because she felt so bad which was very nice. After we paid our bill I opened that bad boy up because I just had lima beans for dinner it smelt so good and I could eat that cream cheese frosting by the buckets. But unfortunately again that was the only thing good about it, the roll was stale and obviously from...

I had the chicken and waffles with potatoes, and my wife had a chicken and egg on a biscuit with a parfait.

I struggled between a two and three star, but landed on 3. The service and atmosphere were great, so I went with three.

The chicken and waffles was literally just a waffle with fried chicken strips on it. Generally some sort of flavored butter or something other than just syrup is included with chicken and waffles. I was surprised that not even butter was offered with it. The chicken was seasoned well, but very dry and chewy, definitely caused by being way over cooked. The waffle was a good consistency, but the taste was very plain. It would benefit from some powdered sugar, green onions, and some sort of flavored butter like cinnamon. The potato's were fine, but they were a lot like Denny's, with minimal seasoning, crunchy skim, and slightly undercooked insides. They felt to be cooked at too high if temp, as the internal texture was a little under cooked.

My wife had the same opinion of the chicken, dry and chewy, but well seasoned. Her biscuit was very dry. Her parfait was good with fresh fruit, but has yolk from her eggs in it.

We had a slice of the butterfinger pie to go. It was a great consistency and tastes good, but had I not known the intended flavor, I wouldn't have assumed it was butterfinger. I got more of a peanut butter pie vibe than a butterfinger vibe. Still good regardless, though.

Service was great and the place was clean. The bathroom was very cute and fit the style of the restaurant well. The staff was friendly and welcoming.

Considering the price of the food and overall lackluster experience, I wouldn't recommend it, but the pie was good enough that I don't regret it; had I not tried the pie, I'm not sure I could've...