Fitz's SoCo — Restaurant in Sappington

Where to even begin. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to appear on an episode of Kitchen Nightmares, in the part before Gordon Ramsey shows up? Well, I ate at Fitz's SOCO for the first and last time last night, and now I know.

Words like horrendous and pathetic are being kind for what our party of 8 experienced. There came a point where I was starting to get excited, thinking I was about to meet Ashton Kutcher, because I thought we were surely being punked.

Let's see. We showed up for our 6:30 reservation and were seated on time. That was the last positive thing to happen all evening. The fact that the table was sticky should've been our first clue.

Our waitress was MIA most of the evening, but finally, after about 20 minutes we were able to place an order for drinks, and eventually our food. Over the next hour, while we waited for our meal, we were completely ignored and had to flag someone down to get refills. I ordered a Coke, and when I finally did get a refill, it was in a warm glass with no ice. I might've asked to have this corrected if the waitress had ever bothered to come back by our table.

Anyway, at 7:30, the food started to arrive. For everyone, that is, except for me. The guy that delivered our food, asked me what I had and I told him the Meatloaf Melt. This was the first person that was made aware of my missing food. He left, never to be seen again. Oh, and did I mention we, of course, had no silverware, so even the people that had food had to wait another 5 minutes to be able to eat.

Meanwhile, the waitress decided again to saunter by, and was made aware that I still did not have my food. This was now the second person to be made aware of the issue.

As our group started eating, two of our people had entrees featuring grilled chicken. Both were lukewarm, and the chicken was burnt. One of the people sent their meal back. The other person just decided to go ahead and try and eat her meal, pushing the burnt chicken aside. Then, person number 3 got the lovely surprise of finding a random chunk of meat under his BLT which appeared to be some sort of hamburger. It certainly didn't come from his food. One can only hope that it wasn't some random piece of leftovers that had been in someone's mouth.

About this time, the alleged "manager" stopped by our table. I'm honestly not sure if someone asked for her or if she just stopped by the table. She was made aware of all of the issues we were having, including the fact that I still had no food. (Person number three.) She said she would "look into it" and "take a few things off" and then be back over. Well, this turned out to be straight up untrue as we never saw or heard from her again.

At this point, the waitress then shows up with 4 four packs of their root beer, which was odd since, again, there were 8 people in our party. It was frankly, kind of insulting. She was, yet again, made aware that I had no food, and said she would "check on it." I finally just said to cancel it. By this point it was after 8:00 and I decided I'd rather just go to McDonalds. God knows the food and service are better!

Well, the fun wasn't done yet. Finally, around 8:15 this culinary Poseidon was almost done sinking, but then the checks came, and the itemization was incorrect, because, of course it was. People were charged for other people's food, and then, get this, they actually had the audacity to try and charge me for my Coke. Seriously? I sit here for two hours with no food, and you can't spring for a free beverage? They also tried to charge us for the BLT that had the "mystery meat" under it. We straight up refused to pay for both. To be fair, the waitress did try and apologize, but by then I think we all just wanted to get out of there; me, because I was starving, the others because the evening was such a disaster.

The most egregious thing about this entire, ridiculous debacle, is that the so called manager never did bother to come back over to our table, despite promising to do so. Total fail. ...

After experiencing 20 or 30 trips here over the years, I started asking myself, "Why am I putting my family through this?" I really WANT to love this place, but I just cant fake it anymore. The soda is great, the food is horrible, the service is a coin flip, and the floats, while gargantuan, are way overpriced for what you are actually getting or can reasonably consume.

Starting with the soda, yes it is great. Buy a case of your favorites then leave. That is the best outcome you can dream of, trust me. If you want a float, buy a gallon of ice cream & your favorite toppings at the grocery store on the way home & save yourself at least $30.

Concerning the food... After trying nearly everything on the menu, the vast majority of it is just bad. I have had a few meals that were okay, but I've also gotten food poisoning once or twice, so it is what it is. After repeated attempts, we finally got to the point that we would eat elsewhere & just come for the floats. My kids would say they loved the food just to get us here, then refuse to eat half of it because they "didn't like it." And they are not typically that picky.

That brings me to the only thing that kept us coming back: the floats. They are enormous, but they are also now $9.50, which is 1.50 more than they used to be. In addition, they now charge $3 to split a float, a service that used to be free. There are no size options. If you want a float, you are locked in at that size & price, even kids. And when you have depleted the meager amount of soda in the bottom of your glass, there are no refills, unless you have also bought the bottomless soda for $5 and that flavor happens to be on tap.

Now I realize price increases are bound to happen, but the floats, while impressive to look at, are just not worth it. Neither of my kids can finish half of a float. Most unbussed tables (I'll get to that) are littered with unfinished floats. The ice cream that is used is not fancy or special in any way, they just use a metric ton of it for each glass. The toppings are then heaped on top, creating an unmitigated mess, especially for little ones.

Oftentimes that mess is left on tables for all the world to admire long after the consuming family has left. More than once, my family has been seated near an unbussed table, eaten a meal, had desert, and paid while a table near us has remained unbussed from before we arrived. I worked in the restaurant business for over 10 years & can't imagine keeping the front of the house in that sort of disarray and getting away with it.

If this business seriously took a step back & focused on investing the kind of energy they put into creating their soda flavors into their menu and the execution of their service & floats, this place would be a home run. Offering reasonably sized floats for kids & familys would be a great start. Including refills of soda with the overpriced float monstrosities should be a no-brainer. Taking the time to create better food offerings than what can be found at most dive bars is sorely needed.

When this place first opened, I was stoked, but the allure has worn off. I have to call it what it is. Instead of enhancing an iconic local brand they have chosen to ride their top notch soda product into the realm of mediocrity.

Good luck, I might be in for a case every once & a while, but no more meals or...

My husband and I were really looking forward to visiting this place during on family trip to St. Louis. After spending the day at the children's museum, upon arrival to the restaurant we noticed both of our phones were quite low on charge and thought we'd ask the wait staff if there was a charger we could use while we ate. I walked up to the bar area and asked two servers if we anyone had a charger. The male server was polite and friendly asking what type of phone I had but didn't have an iphone and then I was told by the female server firmly that no one in the restaurant had an iphone. Ok no worries, went and sat down to get service for our meal and figured we could use some charge in the Uber on the way back to the hotel. My husband didn't know I had asked our server and attempted to ask when she got to the table but I explained to him that I had already asked her and she said no iphones in the restaurant. Ok no worries.

We were excited to try the root beer and opted for the refillable mug order. Rootbeer was good and were planning to order a float for dessert. Our food came out and as we were eating, I ran out of beverage to drink. I waited a bit to resume eating as I got the Chili Mac and wanted something to wash it down with. We noticed our server (Hannah B) was washing glasses behind the bar and so my husband went up to bar, handing her the empty glasses and asked if we could get a refill to save time as she had been refilling the drinks there. For some reason, this upset our server and she made upset faces at us as if we had inconvenienced her by asking for a refill. To further continue, she opted NOT to bring the drinks out after several minutes and resumed washing the glasses after making her point clear to us with the "death" stares at our table. Minutes later she came to the table and dropped off a drink. At this point, let me clear, I would rather choke on my Chili Mac than drink the root beer from that rude server. So we let that drink sit on the table UNTOUCHED and finished our food. We ate our mediocre meal, remained polite, opted not to get dessert, paid for our meal and tipped our server 20 percent (because despite her attitude problem we still pay for service properly). For this review, I wanted to share a protip with the service and management : If you are upset by your customers and work in the front of the house, please don't make faces, roll your eyes and then approach the table. The damage has already been done and the customers are already offended no matter how many times you attempt to smile at the table. If serving or asking questions is too inconvenient, there are other types of occupation as...