Whiskey Rose Raleigh — Restaurant in Raleigh

Lots to love about Whiskey Rose, and lots to not love.

I was so stoked that another country bar was opening in Raleigh, so I've been coming to WR pretty regularly since Aug 2022. I knew they were recently opened, so wanted to give it some time to leave a review, so that I could really get a feel for it first.

The GREAT -

*The bartenders. They are great. Make great drinks, and always make me and my friends feel welcome here (shoutout to my Thursday night girl!). I've never ever had a bad experience with any of the bartenders here, and sometimes stop in for a quick drink just to get one from them.

*Lexi - Thurs night line dancing teacher. Lexi is so freaking nice. You will love her. She always makes the rounds, says hello to everyone, and generally just makes you feel welcome and wanting to come back. When PBR bar (in Cary) opened, some of us stopped coming to WR for a few weeks to check it out, but we typically end up coming back for Lexi and her line dancing classes on Thursday nights (7-10pm). Make sure to leave a tip in her tip bucket if you go, she deserves it!

The GOOD -

*The drinks. They taste good. They are reasonably priced for downtown Raleigh. Not cheap, but not absurdly priced.

*WR brings in some local live talent to play on the weekends, so if you're looking for live music, WR could be a decent option for the country genre.

*security/door people - never had any negative experiences with them. They are always nice in my experience.

The NEEDS IMPROVING -

*The dance floor - It's concrete and a weird shape for dancing. It gets the job done, but a real, open dance floor would bring this place up a notch. Especially since they advertise country dancing and host line dancing on Thurs nights. There is talk about them opening up a dance floor on the other side, so all of the dancers are definitely looking forward to seeing how that might develop.

The BAD -

*The DJ's have made us feel very unwelcome at WR on more than one occasion. Over the course of several months, Thursday nights have slowly built up into a solid group with anywhere from 10-20 "regulars" who specifically go to country dance and get drinks. There are always a decent number of people coming to the classes who sometimes only come a few times, but the solid "regular" group that keeps coming back is steadily growing. We go on Fri/Sat nights sometimes, but have given up on weekends primarily because it's never a good bet that we'll have much space, or good music choices to dance to, which is totally fine. We typically stick to Thurs nights for that reason, since it's "line dancing night".

Over the course of several months, the DJ's have been uncooperative, outright rude, condescending, and rumors about them talking badly about "line dancers" in the break room inevitably get back to us too. It makes us feel like we are not welcome. That we are just "tolerated" at WR, and if it weren't for the lack of other options, Lexi, and the great bartenders, we wouldn't keep going back on Thurs nights, or at all.

We WANT to stay later than we do at WR, we WANT to keep buying drinks. We WANT to go to a country bar to line dance, and we WANT to bring more of our friends out to join us. But we have been made to feel like our presence at WR is a nuisance. Line dancing lessons are from 7-10, and while we love the lessons, we want to KEEP DANCING the songs and dances we already know, that are played at almost every other great line dancing/country bar across the country. We've been told that since the lesson is over, they can't/won't play a lot of the songs we request (even if we request them hours before the lesson is over).

I get that the DJ's have a lot of different tastes to play to, and that this is a country bar (some popular line dances are to non-country songs). But when 10-20 line dancers struggle to get any of the music we want to line dance to played, we end up just leaving, even though we'd rather stay and keep drinking/dancing after 10pm.

A great dance floor and better, more friendly DJ's would take WR from "decent" to...

This place is so unprofessional, my two friends got kicked out after an altercation with one of the bartenders. My friends ordered 2 drinks, one a piece and the bartender brought them 3, after telling the bartender they did not want the third drink, bartender took the can back, started tossing it around, getting rude and rolling her eyes at my friends all because they simply said they did not order it. My friend had asked her why she had an attitude and the bartender got defensive and called security over, they did not give my friend a chance to explain her side of the story and simply said “it doesn’t matter, you two gotta go” after the fact they just paid $20 for two drinks and didn’t even get a sip of anything and did not get their money back. The security snatched the drinks out of their hands after escorting them outside and told them to leave once again. My friends were not in the wrong in this situation as I witnessed the entire thing, just a very unprofessional place, they do not care about their customers. They are simply just there to get a check, spend your money elsewhere these people suck. PSA if you do not like your job or do not like dealing with customers, then get a different...

Alle is the most personable bartender. She’s beautiful inside and out and truly loves bonding with her customers. We normally don’t stay long at most Raleigh bars because the majority of the staff prefers to play with their phones. It wasn’t the case here!

The drinks are delicious, service was great on a Sunday afternoon. They open at 4 pm on Sundays. Since they don’t serve food, they feed you (on the house), and there’s live music at 7 pm. They have great drink specials, and I’ve learned more about Raleigh from this bar than any place we visited. Everyone is very nice and this is a great neighborhood bar to meet new people. We had a blast and can’t wait to see Alle again! The live music...