The Rudder — Restaurant in Hendersonville

Tl;dr at bottom if you want to skip the reading.

exasperated sigh I've been traveling through the country on a move up north. I've visited A LOT of local restaurants wherever I stayed, and they have all met or exceeded my expectations.

Well where do I stand with this place? I guess with the service!

I was seated by the bartender at the outdoor bar who was more than happy to help get me and my dog seated, so ok good start! Then I got my waitress, Brittany.. I sat there for way too long in every aspect of my visit here. My first drink order didn't happen for a solid 10 minutes. Ok a little long, but whatever. I made a phone call, looked at the menu, made up my mind and ended the call.

Commence a good amount of time putting the menu down, looking around for Brittany, and picking up my menu again because I got bored of waiting and I was contemplating just asking to pay out my beer and leave for wendy's or something. She finally took time away from standing in front of the computer and possibly complaining to the bartender about how much her job sucks to take my food order.

Scenery was great. Right by the water, good breeze perfect weather for sitting outside. And there was even seating for me inside or outside with the dog. Fantastic!

Food was great. Bombass porkchop and didn't take long. But of course while I'm in the middle of eating and writing this review she uses that time to actually come and ask if I need anything until she promptly disappeared when I actually needed something. Maybe the stars just aren't lining up for us and this place or something.

Tl:dr If I never see my server and when I do she's sitting at someone else's table chitchatting, eating left over birthday cake and tapping away at a computer pretending to do something I'm going to be irked. I've worked with that enough of those kind of people and doing the bare minimum in even the small aspects of life like your waitressing job shows you are getting away with more than you should. Keep being pretty Brittany. The 2 stars is for the food and being grateful it didn't die under...

First time here.....great day to sit inside or out....we chose inside. Service by Christopher S was wonderful! I am VERY picky about my fish tacos and have yet to find anyplace in Middle TN that I would order from again. Todays tacos, 5 out of a 10 for me. First, $13 for 2 tacos is reasonable IF there is a decent amount of fish in the taco, which there wasn't. A tiny slab of grouper in each. Second, I do not believe that fish tacos should have shredded lettuce in them, but cabbage and there was more lettuce than fish! They menu says served with mango pineapple salsa. The tiny cup they give you is barely enough for 1 taco, let alone 2. They did give you a tiny cup of cole slaw, which I put on my second taco (decent slaw). Did not care for the sauce they serve with tacos - hubby said it was basically mayo mixed with some cajun seasoning. Not what goes on a traditional fish taco! Hush puppies were tasty. Sweet potato fries were delicious! Oysters on the half shell, VERY tiny....like quarter size after you pry them out of the shell. TOO SMALL but, cold and hardly could taste when you popped into your mouth! Oysters should be a mouthful of flavor!!! The crab dip....decent, but would not order again. Needed much more crab since there was more "sauce" than crab (since they do consider themselves a seafood restaurant). Sadly, they ran out of lobster rolls. LOCATION....was great! Right on a small marina. Bar menu looked great, if you drink. BUT they have NO beer on tap! Great outdoor bar area and live music. Would I return? Most likely not....other places near water that I hope will be better but hats off to the great...

Revised Review 08/2014: So we went back and this time our experience was horrible! It was not very busy but our service was lacking. Very slow and most of the servers were goofing around so much that customers were being ignored. The food that was so good the first time was a complete miss this time. We again had the grouper and mac n cheese but it was flavorless and cold. The cheese had started to separate and curdle??? The texture was just awful. The portions on our first visit were huge but half the size on this visit. I asked if our server accidently gave us the lunch portion but he said "No". Not sure why there was such a considerable difference? On a positive note, the kids still had fun feeding the water animals and the fried pickles were amazing...this time! I might give this place one more try since our first visit was stellar.

(First visit) We were a little apprehensive about eating here after reading some poor reviews but am so glad we did! Beautiful atmosphere, awesome and attentive wait staff, and the food was great. It may have been the time of day we chose to go (around 5pm on a Thursday) but we could not have been more pleased. We had chips and queso, blackened grouper, mac n cheese, giant baked potato, hush puppies, and coleslaw. Everything was absolutely delicious! Very family friendly with corn hole games and bags of food to feed the fish, turtles, and ducks. My 3 year old was very entertained the whole time. We will without a doubt...