The Riverstone Restaurant — Restaurant in Gatlinburg

went into this restaurant for the third time tonight. The food has always been good and the service has always been decent. Tonight it was extremely busy when we went in, and it was a Sunday evening. We sat down at the table after waiting quite a bit, which was no big deal. When we sat down at the table a very flustered server, long, red hair, came over to the table and started pulling out silverware and laying it on napkins. She asked what we wanted to drink, my husband said, sweet tea, and I said unsweet tea with lemon. Very sarcastically she responds: I don’t even know if we have sweet tea back there much less lemons” we both just kinda awkwardly laughed because we didn’t know if she was serious. within minutes, she whipped out her order pad and asked us if we knew what we wanted to eat. We went ahead and started to place our order. After giving her our order very quickly, I politely said “and if you don’t mind when you’re back there, please see if there’s some lemon” to which she very rudely and sarcastically answered “lady, like I said, I may have a lemon back there, but I don’t have time to deal with this right now. We are busy. “ it was literally like being on candid camera. I could not even believe my ears. Who says something like that to Customer? I mean, even if your flustered there’s 1 million ways to handle it.

We immediately got up and walked out. My husband stuck his head in the kitchen door and said cancel our order . We are not staying somewhere where we are treated so rudely and she said good get out of here!

We were both in shock. After a few minutes riding up the road, looking for another restaurant, which is not easy in Townsend on a Sunday evening at 7 PM. I called back at the restaurant and asked to speak with a manager.

A very pleasant sounding person on the phone answered, I began to explain what happened and asked for a manager. The voice on the other end of the phone, then said “the manager is and gave a name” and “I was who waited on you” and hung up.

Completely unacceptable!!!!! We will never go back! I have a call into the real owner and cannot wait to talk to him about this unacceptable experience. Lady, go into a different business service is not your specialty. it takes a lot to get this lady mad and you...

I’ve been coming to Townsend twice a year for 15 years. First time coming here was last weekend, we went twice. Breakfast the first morning was great, our waitress was really kind and food was wonderful. On the menu, it says breakfast plates come with hash browns and a biscuit or toast and we were both charged additional but honestly- food was good enough we didn’t mind much and didn’t say anything. The next day the rest of our friends joined us and we did a quick hike and were super hungry, but wanted to have dinner at the cabin so we came in to grab burgers to go. We had talked the place up to our friends so they we’d excited! Super simple orders- 4 burgers (one of us wasn’t eating). Want to preface by saying I worked in restaurants for 4 years so I absolutely understand difficult customers but this just wasn’t the case. The wait staff was EXCEPTIONALLY rude. We had to ask 3 different people to have our orders taken and they acted like they didn’t see 5 girls standing in a 20-table restaurant. Acted exasperated by our orders and just overall frustrated. I asked a question about BBQ sauce and you would’ve thought I asked for something insane. They were super nice to everyone around us- guess it’s because they were locals? We all tipped over 20% anyway. One girl all but threw my friends meal down, after announcing what it was my friend said “oh that’s mine” and she replied “I don’t know whose it is.” And then loudly said to her friend she needed to walk outside bc she “needed a break”.... the manager (I’m assuming) stood in a circle with the three girls talking in hushed tones and motioning our way while we waited for our food. I genuinely don’t know what we did to upset them so badly. Our burgers tasted good, though! Fries were yummy. Food was fine for both visits. None of the orders were actually right as far as no onions or add Mayo, but that was fine too. Just don’t think we deserved to be treated w such disdain for being patrons and ordering food in a... restaurant. But we won’t go again on our future trips. The next morning we went to the snoring bear diner down the road and they were so so kind, would definitely recommend them over this place unless...

I'll start off with the good, or at least the better part. When we got our food it was ok. Nothing to write home about but ok. The salad bar was fresh enough but not much variety. Pretty basic and cost $10 for lettuce, green peppers, tomatoes, cheese & a pack of dressing. My wife got everything offered except onions. And she ordered a side salad but was charged for a large. I got the open faced roast beef. It was ok tasting, but was rather tough. The fried okra was great. Now for the not so great: Arrived at 6:47 pm. A couple behind us arrived at 6:53. A couple after them arrived at 7:08 that seemed to know the waitress, Brianne & were sat at 7:15 ahead of us and couple #2. Couple #3 even pointed out that we all were ahead of them and were told, "It's ok, she's going to set them in the back." (Which didn't happen). We were finally seated at 7:30. Couple #2 were seated about 5-10 minutes after us. This place had the most inefficient dining area I've ever seen, with mostly larger tables so a lot of ones and two's were sitting at larger tables which didn't allow space for other couples or singles. It seems it would be much better to have smaller tables that could be combined when needed for 4's or more. At one time while we waited for 45 minutes, there were three tables open and at least one small booth in a back room that never got used while we were there. Two guys were together at their large table and were through eating but kept sitting there sharing pics and leers at Brianne. I guess if you're the only place open after 6 in a small town choices are limited and you can treat people how you want. Had we known all this ahead of time, we would have just gone up the road and had a sandwich at Subway. We won't give Riverstone another chance just on...