The Purple Door — Restaurant in Harlan

Very disappointing.

I've got to say, the first time my wife and I ate at the Purple Door(not long after it first opened), it was fantastic. The ambiance and service was great, the food was well-prepared and delicious. Both the owner and the chef came to our table to check on us.

Based on that experience, we decided to come back for Valentine's day. Sadly, the two experiences could not have been more different.

We started with the Seared Brussels Sprouts. They were charred. Not inedible, but not very good. They were also fairly low quality to begin with, very leafy.

For the main course, I had the 16oz T-bone, my wife had the grilled salmon. The steak was well seasoned and cooked as ordered, but again was low quality. Very gristly around the edges of the entire steak. It came with garlic mashed potatoes which were dry and had an extreme amount of garlic in them. I like a good amount of garlic, but this was over the top. The seasonal vegetables were yellow squash and zucchini sliced with bleu cheese crumbles and a balsamic drizzle. These were fairly good.

My wife's salmon was a bit over-cooked and fairly dry. Her potatoes were a bit dry as well but didn't have the overwhelming amount of garlic that mine had. Her vegetables were the same as mine.

We ordered key lime pie and carrot cake for dessert. Both portions seemed very small, especially compared to what we received on our first visit. The carrot cake was tasty enough, but seemed store-bought. The key lime pie was a sad-looking little slice that my wife described as "grainy". Again, seemingly store-bought.

To make matters worse, the table was extremely wobbly. We had to ask the bus boy to bring coasters to even it out, and it took 3 coasters and a folded paper napkin to stabilize the table.

The reason that we had to flag down the bus boy was that the waitress only checked on us once and was rarely in our vicinity.

In summation, we've had vastly better food and service at Ruby Tuesday's for a better price. This experience was reminiscent of Applebee's--low-quality ingredients prepared hastily. Highly disappointing for the price and barely recognizable from our first experience which again was fantastic. I hope The Purple Door finds what it is they've lost between...

My husband and I live in Harlan and we really really want to like this place but they have some work to do. We’ve eaten here probably 4-5 times since they have opened and overall it has been a middle of the road experience.

The first time we ate here, our food was satisfactory (a little more expensive than preferred, but still tasted good) but the service was very slow and we chalked it up to being a new business and still trying to get their processes and procedures under control.

The next couple of times we dined, again the food was okay but we were all but ignored by our servers and payed pretty high prices.

This most recent time was very frustrating however because we each ordered a salad (with chicken for protein) and an appetizer of Brussels sprouts and it took over an hour. We were also frustrated because there was one couple who walked in after we did and they got their food well before us. I can’t confirm this, but we feel that the cook misplaced our orders or forgot our ticket because after our server finally realized we didn’t have our food, she went back to the kitchen and we saw the cook hurriedly try to grill our chicken for the salads.

I 100% understand that we’re all humans and people make mistakes, but where we were frustrated is that nobody apologized or offered anyway to make it right for essentially forgetting us and we were basically ignored when we did finally get our food.

Like I said - I really want to like these guys because I think they have a good thing going and have potential to be a great asset to our little town, but they really need to work on their service...

we have not been to this restaurant before but our experience was wonderful. The music was perfectly chosen and at the right volume so that you could enjoy the music but not be overwhelmed by it. We ordered the bone-in pork chop with potatoes and zucchini, fried green tomatoes, salad with the house raspberry vinaigrette dressing. For dessert we ordered the New York cheesecake. We topped it off with the house Merlot. We were not disappointed with anything. It was a very enjoyable evening, and we both plan to return again! Thank you so much! It made our first date a...