Stella's Southern Bistro — Restaurant in Simpsonville

09/21/2024 Lunch. "The Trifecta," The Holy Grail," or "The Grandslam" of restaurants. Call it what you will, but when you find a place that is "5 star" excellent for food, service and atmosphere, you're going to have a unique experience. The irony for me is that we tend to have these experiences at places where we don't expect to. Our lunch today was one of these experiences.

I had the American Butcher Co. Beef Burger (American cheese, bacon jam, lettuce, pickles, house chips). I subbed out the chips for fries. Totally recommend this meal. The burger was CHARRED on the outside (think of your favorite back yard summer afternoon grill event, as a kid) and the inside was a juicy pink medium (exactly how I like it). Did I say juicy? I mean "drip on your plate and down your hand juicy." The jam was sticky sweet and robustly flavorful. I had to wash my hands afterwards. Why beat around the bush - this burger was amazing!

The fries were thinner than you're used to, seasoned with herbs and spices and had a sprinkle of cheese, just enough to make you want to eat the whole serving before returning to the burger. Oh, BTW, they were so hot! What's better than hot french fries?

The atmosphere was clean (very clean) and rewarding to experience. Check out the pics. Super nice. Plus, the bathroom was just as clean and nice!

Lastly, they're offering a 16% discount on their brunch menu to celebrate 16 years of success in Simpsonville. How can you beat that?

My wife had mushroom soup and biscuits. Why I don't know, but that's what she wanted. I tasted her soup and it was good, but not very hot. Closer to "warm."

The biscuits were outstanding! Crispy on the outside and flaky on the inside. I gobbled up the biscuit she couldn't finish.

Definitely a uniquely satisfying experience for us today. We'll be coming back to try their dinner menu!

My first impressions: Excellent: Uniquely satisfying. V Good: Better than expected. Avg: An everyday, good meal. Fair: Below par....

When you leave a “fine” restaurant so hungry that you are contemplating a run through a fast-food drive-thru before you make it home, then things really must have been bad. That’s how bad things went Friday night at Stella’s Southern Bistro in Simpsonville.

We were there 3.5 hours. Now I know what you are thinking – it was Friday night and we must have had to wait awhile. No… we had reservations and were pretty well seated immediately.

Appetizers came out quickly, but ours was so salty we didn’t want to eat it so it just sat there and grew cold.

As far as our meals go; it took 90 minutes for the waiter to first acknowledge that we had been waiting too long for our order. At this point I began eating the overly salty and now very cold appetizer. It was quite disgusting but it was an appetizer so there wasn’t much to consume and I was getting quite hungry.

After nearly two hours total our food finally arrives.

Once it arrived, my meal was not eatable as it tasted like someone had dumped half a salt shaker across my plate. I barely ate any of it. After the salty appetizer, I just couldn’t eat any more salt. I did consume about 20 glasses of water for some reason.

The company I was with shared some of theirs which was also so salty that it was nauseating.

The manger came by the table, apologized again for it taking so long and removed the cost of the appetizer from our bill and offered a free dessert. We then waited more than 30 minutes for the desserts to come out. I didn’t have one as the last thing I want is to eat a plateful of sugar when I’m hungry.

We took this opportunity to explain how bad the food was and then she gave us gift cards for a free lunch with I promptly gave to someone else at our table – you can tell me you will give me all the free stuff you want, but making me pay for a meal that I waited two hours for and wasn’t even fit to eat is entirely...

We've eaten here several times and it's always been very good. We made reservations for Valentines Day and shouldn't have been surprised to see a full parking lot. The hostess said they had 100 reservations so I knew it was going to be busy. We were seated as soon as we walked in, the waitress was there quickly, got our drinks and gave us a few minutes to decide. My wife ordered the pumpkin apple bisque and I ordered the Fritto Misto for an app. She said she would bring them out together and I thought, "sure, why not?" The bisque came out and I got to watch my wife eat it, I sampled it and it was delicious, a hint of sage reminded me of Thanksgiving flavors. My app on the other hand, never showed up. Wife ordered the short ribs and I ordered the pastrami duck breast. The ribs were tender and fell off the bone but totally flavorless, no salt, no braised in red wine, nothing. The waitress asked me how I wanted the duck cooked which I thought was an odd question since it is poultry. I told her to tell the person cooking it to prepare it as if they were eating it. It came out cooked around the edges, raw and cold in the center. I gamely tried it, but raw poultry? No thanks. For dessert my wife ordered the apple crisp with gelato. It was cloyingly sweet and she couldn't finish it. We didn't finish our meals and got a couple of to go boxes but on the ride home we discussed how the meal was. When we realized we just spend $145 on something neither of us really enjoyed and didn't want to relive it the next day, we pulled our vehicle into the garage and dropped the bag into the trash. We both have our certificate in culinary arts and know how to cook and run commercial kitchens. This just reinforced why we never go out to eat in restaurants. Although this may have been due to being very busy or someone just having an off night, we...