Valley River Brewery — Restaurant in Murphy

Only giving one star because you can not select zero stars!!! Used to love this place, would come to eat everytime we were in town. After our last experience we will never patron this establishment again. It took 15 minutes to receive our drink order. It took another 20 to receive our appetizers. Then we were informed by our waiter that he lost our order, including his ordering book. Had to ask another waitress to get the manger as our waiter was NEVER around. Advised the manager that it took forever to get our drinks and that we were still wating on our appetizers and our order had been lost. She quickly snapped at us advising our party of 6 that the server had advised her that he lost his order book. Never once did she apologize but she did offer to refill our drinks. Next she brought 2 of the 3 appetizers we ordered. Amazing how they came out so fast. After our waiter dropped off our last appetizer advising that people make mistakes. The manager came back over asking if we once again needed refills after she had just asked us 6 minutes prior. We advised we needed our check, the only time she said sorry was when she failed to correctly split our bills. All we were seeking was an apology, sad to say we will never recommend this place to anyone else again. Higher management or the owners may want to rethink the staff and manager. Facebook has made it clear that we are not the only ones who have received the same...

We wound up at Valley River Brewery, if not by accident, then not entirely on purpose. During our "beat the heat" get away in the North Georgia mountains we headed up to Hayesville, NC to check out the two craft breweries there but I neglected to check on their hours. One wasn't open at all that day and the other didn't open until 4 PM. As there isn't that much to do right in Hayesville and it was lunchtime, we headed west along US Highway 64 to Murphy where I had already checked that Valley River Brewery was open and, better yet, they also served food. Murphy is actually quite a bit bigger than Hayesville and has a beautiful, quaint, old southern town look and feel to the downtown area and Valley River sits right at one end of it. Per usual, we sat at the bar and had a delightful running conversation with the bartender regarding both the beers and the food. While they specialize in wood fired pizza, we were not in a pizza mood and we both wound up ordering a cup of (different) soup and sharing the soft pretzel and beer cheese. I will observe the beer cheese was as tasty as I've had most anywhere, and we order this a lot. I also particularly liked their Amber Light Red Ale, and the Hiawassee Golden Pale Ale was also a worthy beer, especially on a warm summer day. If you're in Murphy looking to grab a bit and a craft beer, don't...

I wish I could give this place 10 stars. Dawn and the family here made me quickly feel like part of the family. I can't remember the last time I had an experience like I did here. Speaking with Dawn you can tell the passion she has put into this business and how much she cares about it. The only thing I hate is that she's looking to sell the business and retire :(. I really hope whoever buys the business keeps things exactly as it is.

For the food, I typically hate eating out these days because I cook well... The food here is worth it. While they don't have a huge selection, everything we tried we could taste the freshness and good flavor of the food.

And of course the beer, they really take pride in making beer. They care about not just what all the mainstream places try to push but making good beer that tastes great. I wish they had their hefe when I was there, but they had plenty of other good options. They do growler fills also. We came up with a mix of two of the beers that was really good and they did the growler fill mix perfectly as asked.

I plan to go back here anytime I am in town and could not recommend...