Old Town Kitchen & Cocktails — Restaurant in Rock Hill

We can title this "A Cascade of Failures". This place is not bad, especially if you want to spend a few hours dining casually and prefer your server to have little to no contact throughout your stay. First, our host. She seems like a nice girl, so I'm thinking it may be an operational choice that walk-ins be least accommodated. She asked if we had a reservation (we didn't) and seemed stymied how to manage the reservations with this 8 top that walked in at 4pm with an indeterminate impact to their staff plan. With a restaurant GM and a career server among us, we suggested the simple solution of sitting in 2 four tops next to each other. 5 stars = offer to push them together rather than a resigned "sure I guess we can do that". I am extremely sympathetic to staffing challenges in restaurants and one girl was clearly in training. My suggestion is to own it. Apologize when you haven't refilled our drinks, check in to see how things are going AFTER our food comes rather than before, and proactively tell us that our to-go banana pudding is individually prepped and cooked to order so we're not left wondering how it took 25 minutes to scoop this southern standard out of a half pan. A few other tips to exceptional service: notice when someone took two bites of their food and didn't eat the rest, more frequently check in, try not to be seen standing in the pass looking out at the dining room while your trainee is trying to figure out where to go next. Now to the food: the bang bang Brussels sprouts were bang banging, mashed potatoes were delightful, and the coconut chicken soup was incredible. The Mac and cheese they tell me was undersalted, that is subjective. Mornay is acquired taste, just my opinion, it doesn't a "mac and cheese" make. Finally, I had such high hopes for my fig and feta burger. Medium is hard to hit, but it wasn't well done so thank you for that. Fig is expensive so I get using it sparingly, which is likely why I couldn't taste it at all. A brown sugar caramelized onion sounded so much better than the soft sauté I got. Chef, this burger sounds amazing, I don't know if it was executed to your expectations. And huge kudos that my very celiac friend (no, really this time) was able to enjoy her food without getting sick. Although the parmesan crust was missing from the chicken? Finally, and most egregiously, was the automatic gratuity for a "large party". We were not seated or served together, as we would have liked to be. This felt like insult to injury. One of my friends was, vocally, expressing her dissatisfaction, loudly. If there was a General Manager on staff, we never saw them. So the cascade of failures could reasonably be tied to poor scheduling, staffing shortages, and a definitive shift in what is expected of a server in a post-covid world. The world is on fire, I genuinely don't blame anyone for being a little checked out. Maybe you do and want them to try harder. I ain't mad at ya,...

I ordered the bang bang Brussels and received the most disrespectful serving I’ve ever seen. You could look at them and tell that they shouldn’t have been served to anyone. The forks couldn’t even go through them and if they did, they would just break because they were so dried out. They sounded like dry leaves being walked on. That was the appetizer and should’ve been our cue to just leave. But after I asked if they were supposed to be that burnt and taste that burnt the waitress took them back and I received another order, that was a little better. At least some of those were edible. We then receive the rest of our order. While placing our orders, my husband and I weren’t informed of certain things being an upcharge. He was asked what kind of fries he wanted and was told he could get them 3 different ways which were regular, garlic Parmesan, and some bbq style. Never anything about it being extra. So he chose garlic parm. I ordered the chicken linguini, but not big on chicken and asked if I could sub it. I was told yes. I was also not informed that this would be considered an upcharge. These charges weren’t listed on their menu either, so the waitress should have told us these things. On the menu, it said to “add” shrimp to my chicken linguini, it would be $8 and $0.50 for blackened. Well I didn’t add it, I subbed it for the chicken. But I was billed for chicken (I had no chicken) and $4.00 for subbing it for shrimp. My hubby was charged an additional $4.00 for his fries, in addition to the price of his meal, which also wasn’t on the menu. The food was not good. Maybe it was because of the day that we went, but $70+ for what we received, was not a good experience. And to top it off, we asked to-go containers and were offered the paper takeout containers, thinking that was all they had for us to take the leftovers. Only for the table next to us to receive the plastic takeout containers for their orders. But with linguini, I’m offered paper?! The entire experience was wrong. The tea and the shrimp toast were good. Everything else?! Not so much. The service could’ve made it better, but bad service on top of the beyond burnt to ashes Brussels sprouts, the unexpected charges, the unseasoned linguini sauce, and the paper takeout, there was no way to overlook anything or give grace. And I don’t want to feel that it was because of the color of our skin, played a part in the lack of service, so I’m going to only keep it based on what we we experienced. We will not ever go...

First off, the food was good and the atmosphere was different and cozy. All of that is what you would expect from a nicer, individually owned restaurant vs chain. The one thing that was lacking is service that was on par with the rest. IMO, if your going to dress the place up like a pricey restaurant, have good food and charge pretty much high end prices, you should have service to match as that’s just as important as the food and atmosphere if not more so. We arrived early and waitress said we could wait or grab a drink at the bar. She never gave us anything or told us how she would contact us when our table was ready. Once getting to the bar, the first words we are treated with are “I don’t have any seats at the bar right now”. I told her that is fine bc all we want is a drink. A few mins later a spot opens at the bar and we sit down and wait for our table. All is well until we finish those drinks and order seconds. My wife’s drink comes back just fine. I order a double in a tall glass and the second bar tender doesn’t add any ice and just fills it up with mixer. Once I bring it up to the first bartender, rather than saying, let me make you another, she hands me the glass so that I can Pour it into another two glasses of ice. Basically watering down my double. Eventually our reservation time came and went and no one came to find us. So I went to find her and she sat us. It took forever for our waitress to come and it seemed like every time we needed something, it was a challenge to find her. She was nice, but not very knowledgeable on the food and just kept disappearing. She wasn’t horrible, just not on par with the feel of the restaurant. Lastly, if your going to have a place like this that is selling the welcome home bib with food and atmosphere, it would be a great idea to have the owner or manager constantly checking in on patrons to give that down home feel vs chain feel of sparse service and no...