The Hickory — Restaurant in Rexburg

Took my wife out to dinner here this past weekend. We got fried pickles appetizer, she got a BBQ Burger with sweet potato waffle fries and their rattlesnake bites and a their toes in the sand lemonade. I got their ribeye steak with fried mac and battered fries and their huckleberry Finn lemonade.

We had a great server, he was very nice and kept checking on us as well as set good expectations up front that there was a lot of people that arrived the same time as us and so the food may be delayed a bit. I believe his name was Derek? Great guy.

The pickles were great, they came out hot which we appreciate. The lemonades were very mild in flavor which I guess is a preference thing. I could barely taste any flavor added to my huckleberry lemonade, my wife’s basically tasted like a lemonade with a little bit of peach in it.

After some wait, our food came out and we were excited to dive in. However when I cut into my steak it was completely raw. When I say raw I mean it looked like they seared it on the sides and threw it on the plate. While I respect that some people like this, I had ordered mine medium. I was expecting some pink in the middle but not a completely red, uncooked steak. Our wonderful server noticed this immediately and said he would take it back for them to refire it. He took it back and I started eating my sides. My wife’s sweet potato fries were basically rocks, they had been fried too long, but her burger was perfect and she really enjoyed the rattlesnake bites. My fried mac was alright, it was definitely not best mac but I’ve had worse and the fries were good too.

When my steak came back I cut into it again and found the meat to still be quite red all the way through. I took a picture to include in this review. The server had left and said he would return to check on the steak, but he was quite busy so it took him a little bit. At this point I was full from the appetizers, sides, and sharing some of my wife’s burger so when he returned I explained that the steak was still not cooked and that at this point I’d like to just leave and they can charge me for the two sides since they couldn’t provide me with the steak I ordered.

Upon leaving and looking at the receipt I noticed that they still charged me for the steak! We had to get home to relieve our babysitter or I would have gone back in to address this.

Overall: most of their sides were good, their burger was great, the server was doing the best he could, but having your name be “The Hickory” and you can’t cook a steak is pretty unacceptable. We will not...

Update: It's like I stepped into a parallel world. The food was far better than before, but the service was terrible. Cora did a horrible job.

Throughout the whole experience, she seemed entirely disinterested in being there. From rushing us to order and moving on to the next person, to then getting frustrated when we had to interrupt to get our full order down. She didn't even bother to try to pass out the drinks to who ordered them. Instead, just putting them on the table and walking away without providing any straws.

She then avoided the table only returning to the table to drop off our food and then to see if we were ready for our checks and boxes getting upset. we asked for refills. She then failed to even ask how many and instead just grabbed an arbitrary number of boxes and returned seemingly annoyed as it dawned on her she may have to grab another. Finally, she advised us at the end of the meal that despite us not having a party at the limit needed to have the automatic gratuity added, it would be done anyway. When we asked, it was because we accidentally gave a number higher when asking for a table.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure automatic gratuity is to help ensure a fair tip for servers when dealing with large groups of people, not people, literal babies (at one point she claimed our little one who's far younger than two years old counted), and empty chairs.

Original: While I've only eaten here , twice one of the best appetizers they have is the pulled pork nachos, which are sublime. However, both times, the main entree has been poor. The first time I got their Trout which was severely overcooked and overseasoned, the second was their Prime rib, for a barbecue place you would think that they would know the difference between rare, medium and well done. However, I ordered my prime rib ad medium and got rare, and then when I sent it back in, they returned it as well done. My wife ordered her ribeye as medium well and got rare, then hers was returned as medium rare. They get three stars for customer service, though one pointer is to have servers be a bit more observant. I would just stick to...

This restaurant is very clean and well organized. The seating is somewhat uncomfortable some chairs are little metal barn chairs while others are park benches with no back There are some cushioned booths, but overall fairly uncomfortable. One thing thats really cool about this place is you can get a $10 hamburger with fries which seems very reasonable for a barbecue pit. The menu offers a variety of steaks, ribs, pulled pork sandwiches, sausages, brisket and just about everything else you could expect from a barbecue pit. We ordered the family platter which included all kinds of meats like turkey, sausage, brisket, pulled pork, ribs et cetera . With this plate came 6 sides that you could choose from; we chose the baked green beans with bacon, loaded baked potato, little baked potatoes with seasoning , sweet potato fries, steak fries and coleslaw. The food came out within five minutes and it only took a few bites to understand why. All of the potato products were hard and leathery. The turkey and the ribs (smallest ribs Ive ever seen) were dry and the ribs were dried to a crisp. The pulled pork was decent. It had a nice flavor and was moist and tender. The brisket was fairly good, it was on the dry side but had a nice flavor, but brisket should be the star of the barbque and it was just average. Finally, the Spicy barbque sauce is excellent and did make some of the food better, but my god what a below average establishment. Whomever the pit master is better get down there and figure out how to stop serving such leathery fries and dried out meat. Amy fast food restaurant csn make fries 10x better. It was a significant disappointment overall. Next time I will order the hamburger and save 50 bucks. (Btw I never send food back, not in this...