Memories Charcoal House — Restaurant in Mount Airy

BLUF: I do Not recommend. The couple beside us left after 30mins of not having their waitress come back when she dropped off drinks.....that alone says volumes!

Our experience wasn't that great either. We came based on all the positive reviews. Our children got chicken tenders and penne with tomatoe sauce. According to our child the penne was "ok", but would not be ordered again if we came. My spouse ordered chicken tenders, which according to the menu comes with a "homemade honey mustard dipping sauce", however when the food was brought out, there was no sauce, my husband asked where it was and was told "sauce doesn't come with the chicken tenders, but I can get you a dipping sauce...we have BBQ sauce and Honey mustard" smh, apparently either the menu is wrong or the people in the restaurant don't know what the food is served with or without. Next was my dish, Seafood Mac-N-Cheese. It was terrible, I absolutely do NOT recommend it. It was so basic in flavor, it tasted bad. It is seafood in an Alfredo sauce topped with mozzarella. I did not taste any seasoning such as dill, parsley, rosemary, pepper etc..I returned the dish and ordered the Ruben Sandwich. Waiting for the Ruben Sandwich took about 15mins, now if the restaurant had been packed I could have understood the long wait, but the dining room portion had cleared out and many of the people at the bar side had also left...it was during my wait for the Ruben that the couple beside our table (mentioned at the beginning) left due to the waitress never coming back. The Ruben was okay, I would not order it again from this restaurant.

Overall, I do NOT recommend this restaurant at all for food. If you go for drinks only and to watch a sports game, then it's g2g. However, do yourself a huge favor and do not...

Edit: The owner's response is about what I'd expect from the look of the place and the quality of the food. Hopefully their rude and unprofessional response gives people fair warning about what to expect when they dine here. * (They have since deleted their rude, personally insulting response)

Let me start with the good. Our waitress was very nice, accurate and attentive and is the reason I'm (was) giving 2 stars rather than one. Now the bad. I didn't think it was possible to be sad eating baby back ribs but this place found a way to make that happen. The ribs were horribly dry and salty with a plain ketchupy sauce. I ordered the mac and cheese as a side and it just tasted like it was scooped out of a Sysco food bucket. My girlfriend's burger was ok but had zero detectable seasoning no salt no pepper just tasted really bland. My crab soup tasted like it was out of a can and her chili was ok but not great either. We would have said something but honestly we were traveling and had a long drive and didn't want to wait for different food.

And the ugly. The place did seem reasonably clean but it looked like it couldn't decide if it wanted to be a dive bar or a restaurant and the dive bar was winning. We only got one very worn placemat style menu that we had to share. Where we sat there was a junky looking take out station and employees rolling silverware at two of the tables during dinner time. We really like to support local non-chain restaurants like this but they really need to do better than that to earn and keep...

During a recent visit to the DC area I was told to check out your establishment. Unfortunately we were very disappointed in the service that we received.

Our drinks were extremely weak so much so that the State Ethics Commission should be called for the state. My friend had ordered a mojito but never received her drink. We were charged for drink(s) that we did not order or receive.

At one point during the night our server just stopped checking on us and did not attend to our table for at least an hour. We had to flag down several other servers to help us as our server (Brittany) refused to help us.

After sitting inside for a while we decided to go outside and were told by Courtney that we needed to close our tab out in order to go outside. We asked if our tab could just be transferred to the outside but were told no very emphatically. We ended up going outside but Courtney continued to "stalk" us asking if we were going to pay our tab...when we would pay our tab...if we needed help paying our tab, etc. It was quite embarrassing as we had a large group with us and we kept getting made to feel that we were going to skip out on a tab.

At the end of the night we did settle our tab right after last call but this was probably one of the worst experiences I have ever had. I myself have been a bartender and I know that I would never treat customers the way we were treated. I do not live in the area but I can honestly say that I am not interested in visiting this establishment again with how we...