Tom Brown's Restaurant — Restaurant in Huntsville

In deciding whether to choose this restaurant to celebrate my mother‘s 90th birthday, my husband and I personally went into the restaurant a couple of nights beforehand to check out the seating possibilities as my mother has hearing and mobility issues. It took a while for someone to come to the front desk to help us, but a young lady eventually arrived and I told her what we would be celebrating. She showed us a couple of tables that would work nicely for our party of five and would be easy for my mother to get to. My husband and I arrived about 10 minutes before our reservation on s Saturday night. Again, there was no one at the front desk so my husband had to go ask for assistance. The two employees that came up to the front desk seemed young and inexperienced. The young lady told me that they would have to “go set up our table”. This made no sense to me as we had a reservation at 6 o’clock for only five people. The young lady left and we stood waiting for her to return and show us to our table. Finally, after about five minutes had passed and no one had returned to seat us, I walked into the main area to find the young lady. I asked her if they had set our table up and I showed her the table that we thought we would be seating at for dinner. She told us that we could not have that table, but that we could sit “anywhere in the restaurant that we wanted.” Obviously, her statement that they were going to set up our table was not correct. And since most of the tables are four tops I asked if she intended to pull two of those together in the middle of the restaurant floor. She just continued to repeat that I could “sit wherever I wanted”. I was a bit put out with this attitude, but we were told that a manager would come help us. A man came out of the kitchen and obviously was not the floor manager. And he was no help whatsoever. He repeated that we could “sit anywhere in the restaurant that we wanted”. Seeing that the restaurant staff was not going to do anything to fix the situation, we finally found a table that would seat the five of us. About that time my mother arrived and we got her seated. Right after that, another member of the staff came up to me and said that they had made some adjustments and then we could actually have the table I had initially asked for. By then it was too late. My mother was already in place, as was everyone else at the table. The only saving grace of the night was our server, Kayla. She was wonderful. And she was actually the only person that mentioned my mother’s birthday. We have had celebrations at numerous restaurants for years. And typically, on such an occasion, either a drink is offered to the birthday person, or perhaps a complementary dessert. And members of the staff usually stop by to wish a happy birthday. None of this happened at Tom Brown’s Restaurant. Of course, my family made sure that my mother enjoyed her special evening. They were a few issues with the food, as in some of it being overcooked or not served when requested. But those were issues I could overlook. It’s hard to overlook spending over $500 at a restaurant where the majority of the staff is inexperienced and not helpful. And where no one made any kind of effort to wish my mother a happy birthday or have something special done for her. Prior to writing this review, I did contact the restaurant and eventually spoke to one of the co-owners. Lots of excuses were made And somewhat of an apology was given. But the damage was done. We were invited to come back and give the restaurant second chance, but there was no incentive to do that. There was no offer of “please have drinks on us to help make up for the bad experience”. Or even “please have a dessert on us”. Why would I want to go back and chance having a dinner just as poorly managed at such an expensive restaurant. I do not plan to ever visit this...

We went for a friend's birthday dinner. We had a reservation for a sizeable (15ish) group of people, but we weren't worried either way because the restaurant was fairly empty on this particular evening. We ordered several cocktails - an old fashioned, a vodka collins type drink, and a margarita. The drinks were average at best, but the pricing made them not particularly worthwhile. We also ordered the fried green tomatoes appetizer, the app was just okay. Average flavor, smaller portion size, okay for the price at an upscale place. We then moved on to some soup. The French Onion soup was easily the best part of our meal, it tasted great and was delivered to the table warm and in a timely fashion. Our entrees on the other hand took a significant amount of time to receive. We had a large party of 15 or so people, and at a lot of restaurants that means you will have either a dedicated waiter, or a team of two that swing by to check on you. We were left with a waitress who was doing her absolute best but was clearly overwhelmed by the number of tables she was left to serve. Despite there being many empty tables, she still had to contend with a significant portion of the tables on our side of the restaurant.

Our entrees were a ribeye and a fish special. Of the four ribeyes ordered at our table, all four were significantly overcooked, requiring them to be re-fired. After waiting over an hour for our food to arrive at the table this was a significantly disappointing experience. I respect that they were able to bring together all of the entrees and deliver them to the table at the same time, but it seems to have lead to some mismanagement of certain dishes. After another 10-15 minute wait, the delivered ribeye looked and tasted excellent, but at this point we'd been waiting for nearly an hour and a half for entrees and were ready to go home. The fish special was remarkably bland, I'm not sure if this was just an off night or if this is typical of the experience at Tom Brown's, but several people at our table commented on the lack of flavor and consistent underseasoning of their dishes.

Overall, I was excited to try one of the newer high-end options in town, but on the backs of a relatively mediocre experience, I can confidently say that we won't be returning.

Food: 2/5 Edible, no health or safety concerns, but largely lacking in flavor and not prepared in a timely fashion. Service 3/5 Average service from a clearly overburdened waitress, maybe slightly inattentive, but I'm willing to forgive that due to the size of our party. Atmosphere 2/5 Clean, comfortable chairs. The art/decor isn't to my taste, but that is purely subjective and has no real bearing on whether or not a place is good. I would say for the prices the place isn't particularly intimate or refined. It seems to me they lean quite heavily on the "casual" aspect of their branding. This is just personal preference on my part, but the clash of vibe and price isn't for me.

I'm happy to see that so many other people like this place and report good experiences. I have no ill-will towards the team at Tom Brown's and I'm willing to accept that it is likely my experience was an outlier despite a similar experience from friends at the Madison location. The main reason for my plans to not return are mostly due to the wide array of fine/upscale dining options we have available to us in the area now. If I'm spending $100/person on a meal, I'm just not willing to accept the risk that the experience may be subpar.

Best of luck to the team at...

Save your money or go to Char or Purveyor. The service at those restaurants is 100 times better than what we received here for my sister's wedding anniversary. To start the drinks are not correctly priced on the menu and the manager tried to argue over correcting even that on our bills. I ordered a double spiced rum and diet, which isn't on the menu, and was charged $32 for that ONE drink. Sis got a cocktail off the menu and added a second shot of Woodford and that was only $24. Make that make sense. Brother in law ordered an espresso martini and this thing came out looking like a slightly tan colored milk in a 3 oz martini glass. He said it didn't look right and an espresso martini should be dark brown and transparent. It never touched the table. Server said he'd take care of it. It was not removed from the tab and the manager refused to do so as well, even after the server said he'd "take care of it". If he'd known he'd be charged anyway, he'd have drank it rather than just sending it back. We ordered the bottle of wine on the specials menu and it was marked as $35/bottle and was $44 on the check. There is also an alcohol "tax" that we've never seen at Char or Purveyor. The server had to be asked for things multiple times before he'd provide info or bring things to the table. He was nice but he very obviously didn't have the experience to be employed at a fine dining establishment. Most of the food was good but some of the dishes did not match the descriptions on the menu. Sister ordered steak tips with an add-on of sauteed onions. The steak tips were served on a skewer and the onions were served on a separate plate and were mostly raw with hardly a grill mark, let alone sauteed. She sent the onions back but enjoyed the steak tips and asked for the onions to be removed from her bill, as they were not indeed sauteed onions. I mean they were basically RAW onions. These were also not removed from the bill. The lamb shank was tasty but over cooked by a good bit. We did not complain about that but it's worth noting. The elk that the guys ordered was excellent actually. The food wasn't bad and if the food issues were the only ones we'd had, we'd give it another go. The server was nice but not knowledgeable or informative, even when asked leading questions. The manager, when the server informed him that we had issues with the alcohol that was either not supposed to be on the bill or priced incorrectly, as well as the raw/not sauteed onions was very unprofessional and outright RUDE. Apparently, they don't remove anything from the tab, even if they messed it up, as policy. I've been told by sister and brother law that the location in Madison is indeed a fine dining establishment and the service and quality of food and drinks holds more to the standards we have for a restaurant at this price point. Save your money, or spend...