The Tennessee Grill — Restaurant in Phoenix

Unfortunately, The Tennessee Grill has taken a serious dive in both quality of food and service!! We went last night for their Wednesday wing special, which 3 in our party of 4 ordered. The fourth person ordered 2 sides only, baked beans and baked potato. We waited 55 minutes for dinner to arrive and when it did the baked beans were cold and tasted like they had been poured directly from a can?! The baked potato was ordered as a loaded baked potato, however it appeared to be a leftover from several days ago with cheese and very few bacon bits on it. No butter or sour cream. The waitress left and didn’t return for quite some time. Finally the manager stopped by and I requested sour cream knowing at that point that I had no chance of having butter melt! I explained that the baked beans were cold and she took them away. No one ever brought back any hot baked beans! (A year ago their baked beans were so good that I bought some to serve at our thanksgiving meal), now what you can buy in a can has more flavor!! We had to request that they remove them from our bill. The evening was frustrating because it appeared that although the dining room seemed to fill up one table at a time the entire wait staff and the manager were only interested in what was happening in the bar?! Although while the wait staff was in the dining room they kept moving from table to table telling everyone that they had a new cook?! And just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse I made the mistake of using the bathroom. The ceiling leaks on you!! I told the waitress and she said that she couldn’t do anything about it?! So I asked to speak to the manager. I actually took her in the bathroom to show her. She just smiled and took a picture of the ceiling for the owner. Said she would close off that bathroom, but we were there for another 20 minutes and she hadn’t closed it off by the time we left!! No apologies, no sorry you had to experience that ..... she said that someone had complained because it was too cold in the dining room. To which I replied that I had because it was around 60 degrees in the dining room and the A/C was blowing nonstop!! Obviously, they’re experiencing some kind of cooling problem on the roof, but as a customer I didn’t appreciate the experience.

It’s truly unfortunate because this used to be an excellent...

We visited the first time for dinner this evening. I ordered the brisket, bacon, and blue cheese salad. My husband ordered the brisket sandwich with potato salad. I had a glass of an odd-tasting Pinot Grigio which tasted more like a Chardonnay and my husband had a tall glass of Stella beer which he said tasted flat. Although our waitress was pleasant, the wait for our meals we felt was a little on the long side. We arrived the same time as another couple. They were served before us. In fact, they were served before a table of three who was already seated when we and the other party entered. We expected to be served within 15-20 minutes but instead, the wait was more like 30-35 minutes.

On a pleasant note, the brisket was excellent. It was tender, flavorful, and contained little fat, just the way I like it. It was served generously on a sparse bed of romaine lettuce, with an equally generous sprinkling of blue cheese. Disappointing was the blue cheese dressing, as it wasn’t homemade which for some inexplicable reason, I thought it would be and probably not from a jar of Marzetti’s. My husband’s brisket sandwich and side of potato salad was presented on a large plate with no embellishment. The plate was begging for some adornment, but the taste was fine. However, its lack of visual appeal is in keeping with the stark ambience of the restaurant containing Spartan brown tables, chairs, and booths and having several large televisions serving as the entertainment along with piped-in country music.

All in all, I think what we ate was fine, although the service was a bit sluggish. I’d love to mention how good the pecan pie was, but our waitress neglected to ask us if we wanted dessert. She efficiently presented us with the bill while we were finishing up; and said she wasn’t rushing us, but here it is. And indeed, we paid it, left the restaurant with no intention of...

So disappointed!! An hour and a half to get our food!! 90 minutes!!! With two h-angry little boys who could have cared less why it took 90 minutes for them to get some Mac and cheese!!

We’ve been here once before, it was significantly faster than tonight..we didn’t get an explanation of what was taking so long...although that would have required a waiter if some type and we never had one; if we wanted napkins we got up and got them ourselves..refills- we flagged down the next poor employee who happened to walk by, but we never got any sort of explanation or even a sob story to explain to us what the hell was taking so long...

We were extremely disappointed because the food is good, but all the added BS just isn’t..I appreciate the guy who gave us our bill at the end giving us 10% off. He explained that he just did that on his own because our dinner was so ‘inconvenient’...then we saw that it was the 10% off military/first responder discount and had three of those people sitting at our table so thanks for trying, but...

I’d really like to think that tonight was a bad night but I’ve seen Yelp reviews complaining about the same thing so I don’t think I can blame it on a hot August night...like I said in the ‘tip’ that we left at the restaurant...read some of the reviews previous customers have left..you could go from mediocre to phenomenal with a little more work. The food is good, albeit exceedingly slow, but the service sucks!!! please try harder!! We support local business and want you...