The Honeysuckle — Restaurant in Franklin

Good food, terrible service.

My wife and I ate there last night for the first time. We made 7:30 reservations, and got there about 10 minutes early. Had to wait just a moment to be seated which is fine since we were early.

We get to our table and first of all, we were blinded by a spotlight above us that was really bright. Not every table was like that, but it was not good.

Our waitress introduces herself to us and asks us something along the lines of is water enough for you? We laughed and said no, we wanted some cocktails. We both ordered traditional (with grey goose) cosmo's as they one's on there menu had rosemary in them. Drinks get there in a few minutes and I can't really drink mine. It was so bitter. All I could taste was lime juice and vodka. This is a drink we order often and I can say I have never tasted one with that much lime juice. My wife seemed okay with them so when she comes back to take our order I order a madras instead.

We both ordered a filet. She a 6 oz and myself a 10 oz with a side of the mac & cheese & smashed potatoes.

Fast forward about 15 minutes our food comes to our table by some other people other than our waitress. First think we notice is that my steak was extremely small, even smaller than my wife's steak. We sit there for about 5 minutes waiting for our waitress to check in on us. She had other tables around us and she kept walking back and forth being attentive to them and not even looking our way. Eventually my wife yells at her as she is walking back to the kitchen to get here attention. She walks over and we ask her is this is the right steak for me. She says there is no way this is a 10 oz steak and she was going to check on it.

A few minutes later she brings out another steak. Which was much bigger and they delivered the wrong steak to me. The one my wife received was the wrong temp, but it wasn't bad enough to send back. We got to keep the other small steak.

The good: The steaks were super tender and had a great flavor! We both really enjoyed the food.

The bad: Bad bad service. Never got a refill of a drink, not even water. Very inattentive waitress. Got the wrong food, ran out of both water and alcohol while we were eating dinner. Had to wait 10 minutes until after we were done before she asked us how we were doing. We asked for the check and left.

I gave a 10$ tip on a 123$ bill, and honestly she didn't deserve that. I am a very good tipper and we expect to have good service in a higher end restaurant.

Overall, it was a poor first experience. Not sure if we can give it...

We found The Honeysuckle shortly after moving to Nashville a few years back. It had quickly become one of our ‘go to’ restaurants for a nice meal with a enjoyable atmosphere.

We had decided to make reservations for an early dinner for Easter. I should have suspected something when I had received a call 15 minutes before we were due to arrive at the restaurant, asking if we were still coming since they had experienced a number of cancellations and wanted to verify our arrival. When we got there we found out that they were serving a buffet brunch only with no menu (not something we were aware of when we made our reservations). They had last call on the buffet after we had been there all of 15 minutes so you can clearly imagine the state of the buffet. The brunch was $42 per person. The coffee was served in paper cups, the dessert was a brownie drizzled with chocolate syrup served on a disposable plastic plate.

The main meal consisted of dry, cold, and tasteless breakfast items. The grits were the consistency of mortar. The salmon was tasteless and overcooked. I am not sure what they were trying to do with the Eggs Benedict but it tasted like Hollandaise sauce on a dried out biscuit. Compared to what we normally expect from The Honeysuckle this should have been an embarrassment to management.

The one bright spot was our waiter was gracious and friendly. I suspect he realized that the meal was sub par when two of our party had hardly touched the plates. Our bill only reflected 4 orders rather than 5. I did speak with the manager and he offered to adjust the bill. I declined any further adjustment. In the current state of our world these problems seem irrelevant and petty. While we still had the opportunity to enjoy the fellowship of our meal, I suspect we could have had a much better experience at another restaurant.

The manager did indicate that they wanted to run a buffet so they could service more people, and that this was a dry run for Mother’s Day. Maybe they should rethink this. In a town with lots of great options for meals, I think we will avoid this one for...

We are from out of town and were looking for a nice restaurant for dinner. We got to Honeysuckle at 5:50 pm and were seated immediately in a back room by ourselves. Three more tables were seated in the front room and three parties departed within 5 minutes. Nobody came to our table for a good 10 minutes. I had to ask the hostess if she could find a server for us. It was another 10 minutes before our server came. He was very pleasant but took another 5 minutes to bring our drinks. We ordered the deviled eggs (which were yummy) and they came out about 15 minutes later. We ordered the wagyu burger (medium) with fries and a filet mignon (medium) with smashed potatoes and Brussels sprouts (delicious). Our meal came in 20-25 minutes. The burger was well done and not seasoned and the filet was rare and not seasoned. My daughter decided to eat hers the way it was and I sent mine back. The fries were limp and greasy and the potatoes had no seasoning. It took at least 10 minutes to get mayonnaise and salt and pepper and another 15 to cook the filet to medium. The same filet came back and was on the rare side of medium rare. I had one bite and was done. The manager offered a free dessert (which was nice but didn’t help the poor service and mediocre (at best). About 10 minutes later the waiter came back and said the manager was going to take the filet off our check. He then asked if we still wanted the free dessert. We declined and asked for the check. After 15 minutes I went to the hostess and asked if she could find our check. The waiter finally brought it out and we left (2 hours after arriving) very disappointed and hungry. Honeysuckle is very overpriced for the quality of food...