Cherokee Grill and Steakhouse — Restaurant in Gatlinburg

I really don’t like having to post these negative reviews. But I have to share what a horrible service we had tonite. I know mistakes can happen when you have a kitchen pushing out this volume of food. The mistake is not mute problem. The damage control is afterwards is.

Four of us at the table, 3 steaks ordered, and one chicken plate. My wife’s filet came out rare. I mean rare. She asked for medium and she will live with medium rare. She alerts our waiter, reluctantly because she hates complaining, and he asks what’s wrong. My wife says the steak is wayyy under. He says, do you want me to have them cook it longer. My wife says yes please and he grabs the steak and walks off. Not a…”absolutely sorry for the issue” or “my apologies I’ll get this fixed asap”. Nothing! So steak comes back about 7-8 min later and it’s still mooing! Doesn’t even look like they threw it back on. She asks to have it cooked longer, again the waiter grabs it and leaves. Not sure how this guy got a waiter job. Anyway, this time the manager brings it back and guess what… it’s dead. It’s dry, overcooked now and looks horrible. My wife looks at me and I look at the manager and I say that thing is dead. To the managers defense she does apologize and asks what we would like to do now and we ask for a fresh steak. Mind you the 3 other parties at this table are now almost done eating.

20 min later!!! And still no new steak. And I’m not exaggerating. I timed it because I wanted to see how long it would take. Waiter never came by once to make sure we were good. Manager never checked back in to make sure we’re good. Nothing. My wife just sitting there watching us finish eating (and we shared some of each of our dishes with her of course) waiting on her food.

I was starting to lose my cool. I have to get up and find our waiter and ask him to send over the manager. He comes over to the table with the manager in tow and says “they want to take the steak off the bill” and he walks off! Between the poor people skills of the waiter and the horrible manager skills of the manager this was one of our worst experiences at a restaurant. All of which should have been handled as a priority as my wife is sitting there without food while the rest of her party eats.

For comparison: ate at Howard’s Restaurant the previous nite and all 4 of our steaks came out rare. We asked to have them all thrown back on the grill and about 5 min later the head chef came out with the steaks apologizing and waited for us to cut into them to make sure they were good, which they were now perfect! THATS now you handle a problem. The leaders of Cherokee Grill could learn something from the restaurant next door.

Warning to you all, if your food comes out wrong, you better be on top of that staff to...

TURN AROUND AND GO SOMEWHERE ELSE! The convenience of this place being on the strip isn’t worth your trouble! You’re absolutely not getting what you pay for and DO NOT GET A STEAK HERE. We were traveling for our anniversary and decided to try this place out since it appears very classy and was close by being right on the strip. The atmosphere was nice, we ordered our food (a ribeye and a filet), and only waited about 20 minutes before food arrived to the table. The filet was overcooked, to the point it was extremely tough and nothing like what you would expect for a filet (or any $36 steak for that matter). I kindly asked the server if I could get a different steak, but was told I’d need to speak to the manager. The manager came over and asked what was wrong, I showed her the steak and asked if it was possible to get a new one. She said yes. Mind you, it is about 8pm on a Sunday and we are probably one out of 10-12 small tables. They were NOT busy. We waited over 30 minutes after she left our table before I had to flag down the server to get to her to approach our table and inform her that at this point I do not want the steak and I just want a refill and our check without the filet being charged. We had plans to be elsewhere, considering we were celebrating our anniversary. She agreed and left, but before she returned the manager appeared with a new steak. At this point we had been at the restaurant well over an hour, I just wanted to eat after having waited this long while watching my partner finish his entire meal (the ribeye was also subpar- not tender and definitely not worth what we paid). The new steak was undercooked for my liking, but my thoughts were I’m hungry and at least it would be tender in comparison to the first, right? Not at all. The steak was stringy and tough, nothing like a filet cut should be. It was hastily cooked over high heat leaving the outside of the meat charred and tasting burnt. I cut away about half of the 7oz steak to even be able to eat it. I have eaten better steaks at chain restaurants numerous times for half the price of what they served me. When the check came we were shocked to be paying full price for a steak that wasn’t right the first time and then took over half an hour to replace. The server checked with the manager, of whom informed her that yes the bill was correct, but she could “throw in a free dessert”. We left very frustrated and feeling ripped off. Save yourself the time and money, drive down to the ALAMO Steakhouse where you’ll get what you pay for and absolutely not regret it. One bad review almost stopped us from eating here-...

I had a reservation at 8:15. We didn’t get seated until after 8:30 which is fine.

What isn’t fine is being ignored for a majority of my meal, having issues with your meal and waiting. So much waiting!

I get to my table we quickly picked our drinks and food. Our server didn’t greet us until 10 minutes after we were seated. We ordered our drinks and water. Shortly after we ordered our meals. Bread was brought out to us it looked tasty if it had been warm. But it wasn’t because we had to wait 15 minutes to get a knife to cut it. We also didn’t know if we could eat it because our server who we made aware that my sister had a tree nut allergy just put it on it table. Not letting us know if they could eat it. Spoiler alert they couldn’t.

We eat our cold bread and it’s kinda rough but I was a host I know servers don’t get paid enough for all they do. But I get my $32 filet. I am not in a good enough position to have a $32 steak but maybe once in a blue moon so I was excited. I cut into it and it is raw. Gordon Ramsay raw steak up in here. I like streak medium rare to medium. So this is new for me. My expensive vacation steak is raw and my serve is nowhere to be seen.

My sister ordered the sliced tomatoes as a side and the basil was wilted. It was $5 for 2 slices of steak tomato. And it was disgusting. My boyfriends steak was also raw like BLOODY raw. We’re upset, we just wanted our food to be cooked properly.

Mark our buddy who isn’t our server came over and had our steaks he put back on the grill. He got my sister a side dish that was actually made with fresh ingredients. Our server came back once and apologized. She then didn’t come back until we had to ask Mark to get her so we could pay after waiting 30 minutes for a manger who didn’t show up.

She didn’t hand us our checks till almost 10pm when our reservation was at 8:15. I wanted to walk out on this check. But I didn’t because I have a moral compass unlike this place. I understand we are in a busy rural area. But the lack of caring and hospitality this place provided and with how expensive the food was… never again. Me, my wallet and my pride cried because of this. I didn’t even want money off my check I just wanted a...