Macado's — Restaurant in Galax

We had an absolutely horrible experience at this Macado’s a few days ago. We were told when we walked in that there was a 20-minute wait for a table (despite the restaurant being mostly empty), they recorded my name and entry time down on the wait station with a dry erase marker and we told them we would wait in the bar. We were a group of four that arrived at 5:21 pm on a weeknight, not exactly restaurant rush hour. While sitting in the bar area for around 20 minutes we noticed that other people were being seated immediately when they walked in. So, I went up to the wait station and was told that they had lifted the wait about 10 minutes earlier. I directed them to our name and arrival time written on the wait station and there was no response, apology, nothing but a blank stare from an obviously disgruntled staff member. The hostess then begrudgingly assigned us to a server who was also at the wait station. His response (while standing immediately in front of us) was “oh, great”.

We were then given menus and shown to a table and waited another 15-20 minutes and no one came to greet us, or even to take our drink order. At that point we basically decided that this restaurant was broken. We politely handed the menus to the hostess at the wait station and left without saying anything, as it seemed that no one really would have cared if we did.

Overall, we were in this Macado’s for about 45 minutes and never even got to order drinks. This restaurant is very obviously under poor management. I’m not in this industry... but maybe a good place to start would be asking the manager (if there is one) to sit for an intro course likely called something like – “So You Want to Manage a Restaurant”, which one would image begins with some kind of focus on Customer Service.

Do yourself a favor, if you don’t want to have an experience like ours, or feel compelled to write a review like this - walk two blocks down the street and have your meal at the Galax Smokehouse. We were immediately greeted by a super friendly and competent staff, ordered drinks within minutes, and had an amazing meal. It really turned our evening around after what was a very frustrating experience at Macado’s.

PS - We can’t really review the food as after about 45 minutes of waiting, we never got to the point where we could order anything,...

I have a lot to say. I will start with the fact that the food was good. The service was sub par and that is being nice. There were 2 servers, a hostess, a bartender, and maybe someone else who could have been a kitchen guy. The staff was doing their best but it was busy and the customers suffered. I never saw a manager. Someone should have been floating around to do quality control.

The bang bang shrimp were cooked perfectly. 10 shrimp and they were plump. My only grievance is they needed more of the sauce. 10 out of 10 recommend.

My husband got the chips and dip app. He got the chips, no dips. The sauces came about 10 minutes after the chips.The small tiny 2 oz sauce cup isn't enough for the tortilla chips. The beer cheese dip came in another 10 minutes. Needless to say, the hot pretzel was cold. It was very disappointing.

I ordered chili and onion rings. Both were delicious. But at $9.95 for a tease of chili as a meal, it was a rip off. Even the staff agrees. The tortilla chips didn't come as advertised. I would suggest to add the size of this chili to the menu. I was very disappointed.

I am well versed in food costs and the way restaurants work. Whoever is responsible for running this should be ashamed. If you are short staffed, at least put the servers in sections so they can care for their customers more efficiently.

I am posting a picture of the $10 chili meal sans tortilla chips along side the onion rings that were delicious and plentiful at a fair price point of 6 bucks. I am pretty upset that my meal was maybe 7oz of chili. It's unacceptable.

It took about 10 minutes or longer to get a beer, too.

We got filled on our apps and when our food came we could not eat anymore. That's a good problem to have. My husband decided to eat the burger he ordered (medium well) for breakfast. It was medium on the very first bite so he had to disassemble and cook it more. It was definitely on the rare side of medium in the middle. If we had even attempted to get thus fixed in the restaurant, it would have taken another hour. Pur poor server could barely get around to see about everyone as it was.

Why is their not a supervisor backing these people up???

All in all, we will probably go back. I feel like the service is better when they aren't short staffed.

For the sake of your employees,...

We ate at macados in Galax last night and definitely were NOT impressed. When we entered the restaurant there was a table of three ahead of us and no hostess in sight. Okay, short staffed is normal right now so we let it slide. Thirty minutes later after having two more parties come in behind us (and two men who seemed to seat themselves even though there were several people waiting at the door? Later found out one was our waitresses boyfriend 🤔 ) we were seated. Drinks and appetizers were placed right away and then our food. Restaurant was moderately busy, but there were empty booths and seemed to have enough staff running around. We were sat around 7:30ish and did not receive ANY food until around 8:15 which is when we got our simple appetizers the black bean con queso with tortilla chips and two pretzels with beer cheese. They were COLD. Beer cheese was cold, pretzels were cold and dip for the chips that is served in a hot dish on a hot plate were all cold. We are not from Galax, we were visiting and would have left then if we had known of another place open nearby with it being as late as it was we decided to stay. We were also super hungry. After finishing our apps and clearing the table we were never once given an update from our waitress on food wait time UNTIL it was about 10 minutes to NINE O CLOCK and she said the cook told her five more minutes. Ten minutes later she brought our food which was decent but definitely nothing to brag about. At least it was hot 😒. Will not go back and definitely will not recommend. Waitress was constantly two booths back with her boyfriend (one of the two guys who came in and sat down while we were waiting on a table) which we got to witness him feeling her up 🤢 several times. Get it...