Hickory Tavern — Restaurant in South Carolina

Worse experience yet.

On my visit last night my family had our worse experience to date in your restaurant. To be upfront, we have never been WOWED by Hickory. It has simply been a place to go for safe, mediocre "pub" food when we didn't have time to go elsewhere. Last night made all of our previous experiences All Stars.

Issues - There was a significant delay from the time that we sat down until our server even came to our table. The beer menu was out of date. Drinks (one Margarita, one tap beer, one soda) took an extended period of time before they arrived at the table. Meal #1 - Maine Lobster Roll 4a. This was one of the saddest Lobster Rolls that I have ever seen. It was served on what looked like squished wonder bread. 4b. The lobster was so chewy and over cooked that I was picking it out of my teeth for the next hour until I could get home and floss. 4c. The sweet potato fries were burnt. Not crispy, burnt. 4d. This 'meal' was served by the manager. If this passed her QC checks, she needs retraining. 4e. Serving this sandwich anywhere in the North East and calling it a "Maine Lobster Roll" would get you arrested for Fraud and kicked out of town. Meal #2 - French Dip 5a. The "Toasted Hoagie" was more of a room temperature, dried out, two day old piece of bread like substance. 5b. The "shaved prime rib" was neither shaved, nor was it prime rib. It was thickly sliced, over-cooked roast beef that had the consistency of 20 year old shoe leather. 5c. The French Dip served at Arby's next door for half the price is twice the sandwich. It is fresher, has more meat, more flavor, and is simply better. Meal #3 - Build Your Own Salad 6a. We were charged $3.40 for 6 chucks of dried chicken. 6b. If that is your idea of a $14 salad, you really shouldn't sell Salads. Simply underwhelming. Time - for a restaurant that wasn't packed, it took at least 30 minutes from the time that we ordered until the time that food was placed in front of us. And as documented above, it wasn't good food worth the wait.

Was the restaurant busy? Didn't look like it. A third of the tables were empty when we sat down.

What went right, The hostess was very friendly. She sat us right away at a clean table in the area of our choosing. Our bill was accurate for our order.

Your marketing uses all the right buzz words like "Fresh", "Great Food", "Standards are Timeless". Sadly, I don't think that message has been received by your restaurant staff. We have never been wowed. We don’t ‘crave’ Hickory. It isn’t a go to destination. Last night’s experience only made it so that we never want to experience it again. I have gotten better food at the fast food restaurants and the Publix buffet in the strip mall that this...

Tonight I experienced the absolute worst dining experience I’ve ever had. I was taking my parents out to dinner as a late Christmas gift. We were immediately seated. It was busy so we didn’t have a waitress right away but the hostess/manager took our drink order. We got water. Our new waitress then came over shortly after and got our order: 1 bottle or wine, 1 salad, 2 burgers, and the special of the night - some shrimp and oysters. We got 6 shrimp and 4 oysters. She was very nice while we ordered and made good conversation with my parents which I appreciated. The wine came out quick but it took a while to get a wine bucket. Then we waited. There were 4 of us, myself, my husband and my parents. Maybe 15 minutes passed and someone came back to tell us they were out of shrimp, so my husband replaced his order with all oysters. Then, an hour passed and still no food and little to no updates. We chose not to leave or complain because we were trying to enjoy the holidays and were catching up. But then we were starving and finally our waitress came over and said our order was paid for because it was taking so long. At this point we didn’t want to leave because we were so hungry. The oysters came out shortly after but not the salad or 2 burgers. They said maybe 10 more minutes. It was literary a salad with chicken and no dressing and simple burgers and fries. 10 minutes passed and we asked another server to please grab our waitress. Another waitress went to grab her in the kitchen and I saw her talk to her but our waitress shook her head “no” and the other waitress came out and avoided eye contact. At this point I was livid. It was a salad and 2 simple burgers. My dinner for my parents was ruined. The food came about 1.5 hours later and it was wrong - my mom had asked for no pickles or onions on her burger and of course it had both. My dad’s burger was supposed to have onion straws, it had one. It looked pathetic. His chips were cold and stale. We showed the manager, everyone said “sorry” but at this point, we were just starving and upset. We watched as the rest of the restaurant got their food and they couldn’t even ever offer a free app or some small update? We will never return to this horrible establishment. Please work on your customer service. We know it’s not the waitress or managers fault but your people skills could definitely improve - don’t avoid a table. We will be taking our business elsewhere and informing our friends in the TreeTops community of this horrible experience. Do not go...

It was our first time here. We just happened to be in the area and popped in because the parking lot was pretty empty. Good location, private corner lot of a retail area, and ample parking. Upon entering, my wife and I were greeted by 2 young girls. We were told we couldn't be seated because the kitchen staff was backed up. We looked in and at least a 3rd of the tables were open and the bar was mostly unoccupied. We asked if we could still be seated in one of the vacant booths and just order bar drinks until we could order food. Both girls stood there, looking seriously confused, but did seat us, with a snippy attitude. This location looks new. TVs everywhere and a private conference space in the back. It's a really nice space actually and has potential to be great. A lot of the staff was just standing around doing nothing. I even saw one guy get up from his table to track down his server so he could get his bill and leave. He didn't look too happy. Anyway, our server immediately came over. We asked for a draft list and she brought it. We ordered 2 pints of LRB World Court (our go-to whenever we see it available) and they were delivered quickly by another person. I have probably had gallons of this beer this year alone, and I know the taste very well. But these pints tasted like they were mixed with some other Belgian beer. There was definitely something sketchy going on with the drinks, but we just drank them anyway because we couldn't prove the issue and didn't want to come off as "high maintenance" customers. Surprisingly, our server came back a couple minutes later and took our order. We thought the kitchen was backed up?? We had only been there for maybe 5 minutes. We ordered a Kraut Dog w/ fries and a Southern Chicken BLT w/ tots. The food came out quickly. Again, we thought the kitchen was backed up??? Well, wifey's hot dog was cold, the bun was hard and dry, but she liked the kraut and fries. My BLT was dry, even though I asked for ranch dressing on it, and quite bland; but my tots were good. Again, we didn't complain to the server or manager and just ate what we had. In fact, our server never came back during the meal to check how things were until we were done. There are just too many other good restaurants to deal with such low quality control and staff mismanagement. It was our last...