Hickory Tavern — Restaurant in Hickory

Several years ago the Bride and I attended a Lenoir-Rhyne homecoming a crew of us went here after the game. It was terrific. We have moved now to Hickory and had lunch outside a few weeks back. It was okay, we sat outside with our dogs. I ordered the grouper sandwich. The grouper was more like calamari. The fish fillets were so small, they literally curled up in the fryer. Okay, no problem.

Last night we went there with four others for a birthday. This place sucks. The menu is ridiculous. Hire a menu consultant. There are 6 entrees listed which are more like lunch dishes. Our waiter (No offense and I know wait staff is hard to find these days) was slower than molasses. He was quite polite and did check back but 20 minutes for a glass of wine?

The food is edible but not great. The highlight of my meal was the side salad. I wanted the fired grouper fish and chips and I asked if they were in fact fillets this time. The waiter said he'd check and brought back a piece of raw fish on a plate. It was 4" long by maybe an inch wide. How on earth is this a grouper fillet? I wasn't impressed with bringing out raw uncooked food into the dining room. I wonder if they put it back in the refrigerator or tossed it?

I switched at this point. I had the "Piled High Reuben." I guess the idea here is making it a triple-decker sandwich rather than piling it high with corned beef (three thick slices of rye bread - the center was toast and not grilled.)

The Bride had a grilled chicken Caesar salad. It was average. Hard to screw one of those up. Out other companions ordered the BBQ Chicken Nachos. Well, if you call grilled and dried out chicken cut into chunks and then drizzled with BBQ sauce, then this is for you. If not, run!

The Nachos were said to lack flavor. I tasted and agreed. I had heard this place had a raw bar (it's gone) and had been looking forward to that. I did indeed check the menu ahead of time on-line. I didn't believe it was a dinner menu. My bad.

If you're looking for a place with minimal selection, fairly flavorless food, and slow service - then I'd highly recommend coming here. The restaurant was maybe a third of capacity. It seemed well staffed for the amount of people there.

I understand this is Chain restaurant now. To the corporate management - rethink what this place has become. It's not what it apparently used to be. Friday nights in Hickory are usually very busy and the two other restaurants this place shares a parking lot with were very busy. I should have read the tea...

Came back after awhile and were bitterly disappointed. We both wish we'd just seen the changes and gone across the parking lot to Da Vinci's instead, honestly.

Cost cutting: The Tavern is clearly doing some serious cost cutting that's affecting pretty much everything. It was $4.95 for five "croissants"—the basket is pictured to show what these croissants looked like. They were each about four inches tall. We were given two bar napkins upon sitting and our silverware was unwrapped, so we were expected to use the paper towel roll that every prior customer at the table had handled, adding our own germs for the next folks.

Food: The spinach artichoke dip tasted good but also had a lot of water and oil, as if it had been frozen and they'd topped it with a lot of breadcrumbs to hide the fact. The veggie burger option has been replaced with the "crispy bella," which is...a slice of mushroom breaded and fried and used as a patty. I opted for a salad instead. My fiance's taco was so bland he said he couldn't tell if all the ingredients were present or not, but the sweet potato fries were good. My salad was fine, it was a salad, though the avocado slices I asked for ended up being about 1/6th of a very small avocado, if that. The roasted corn was cold. The "croissants" tasted fine and had a good texture and tavern chips were good (but, let's be real, it's hard to mess up tavern chips).

Service: Our server was pretty on top of things at first but it got a little weird as it went on. She was sweet and answered questions, I definitely think she was doing her best and I don't know what was going on that was causing some kind of tension. Another lady who I think was a manager or supervisor (?) came over twice to ask us how it was and began patrolling up and down the aisles like she was waiting for something, and our server checked on us once, which made three rapid fire check ins over 20 minutes. But at the point of the questions we had just decided we wanted to scarf down our food and go so we nodded and let them move on. Our drinks were never refilled despite the three "checking in" passes and when we were given our check it took a weird amount of time for the payment to be picked up. When we left there were four employees behind the host stand stood in a circle, laughing over the sound of the TV's and ignoring anyone around. I'm all for employees palling around and am very much a believer that happy food service workers means food without spit, but it did explain why we had no refills and a...

Last night was the worst experience I've ever had at a restaurant. We had a group of 6, we put our name in and went to the bar. At the bar we ordered drinks and appetizers as we waited on our table. Our table was ready really quickly and the bartender said he would transfer our food to our table. We told our waitress and the bartender even came over and told her what we ordered. After ordering more drinks and our dinner, each appetizer slowly came out about 15 minutes apart. We finally had to ask someone where the last appetizer was. When we got it we were told it was sitting back there because nobody knew where it went.

After about 40 minutes of waiting on our dinner, our food started to come out. The waitress brought all meals except for mine and my husbands. When mine came out I told her it was wrong. I ordered the buffalo chicken tacos but instead of chicken, I wanted breaded shrimp. When it came out, it was just the regular shrimp tacos. I told her it wasn't what I ordered and she said she would let them know. Meanwhile we told all our friends to go ahead and start to eat because we knew mine would take a few minutes. It's a good thing we did, because after 15 minutes my husbands dinner was still not out (he ordered a French Dip). Finally after our friends had finished their food my husbands order came out. 10 minutes later mine came out and it was STILL wrong! At this point it was blackened shrimp with the toppings on the buffalo chicken tacos. I told her again, this was still not what I ordered. She said, "ok, I'll tell them" to which I told her I don't want anything!! At this point I'm starving and so mad because of the whole fiasco of a dinner, everyone is finished with their meals- in not going to wait another 30 minutes for food. So, I sat there with no dinner while everyone was finished and my husband tried to awkwardly eat his meal.

Then when the bill came, the waitress still charged me for the food I ordered which I did not eat because it came out wrong...twice! I made her take it off the bill and my husbands because it came out so late!

We were so excited to go to Hickory Tavern, I was even telling my friends what I was going to order while we were in the car driving there. Needless to say I had Cook Out for dinner on the way home. We will NEVER go back to a Hickory Tavern, especially not the...