Top Dawg Tavern - Columbia — Restaurant in South Carolina

There are a few reasons why I gave Top Dawg 4 stars, instead 5. I’ll begin with the good things. First, the food was pretty good! The French fries that came with my mushroom and Swiss burger were pretty amazing, very crispy and flavorful! The burger was a little overdone, but not bad. My son LOVED his corn dog nuggets and my wife commented that her food was pretty good.

The high chair they provided was clean and the straps worked great. Sadly, this is not the norm at restaurants. It was a pleasant surprise to be given one that worn, so great job Top Dawg!

Now, to the not so great things. First, when we walked into the restaurant we were greeted by two hosts from behind computer screens who barely made eye contact with us. As we told them how many were in our party, neither of them smiled, grinned, or expressed any kind of happiness that we chose to dine at their restaurant. The same can be said for our server, who, according to my wife, “refused to express any kind of personality.” I noticed this was not unique to our server. Most of the servers did not seem happy to be there.

Additionally, the technical aspects of serving, like being timely, thorough, or accurate, were not demonstrated well here. For example, any time we needed something from our server (condiments, drinks, or our check) it was more than 5 minutes before we saw her again. While our server took our order, nothing was written down, which initially made me skeptical. Sure enough, after our order was taken our serve had to return to the table twice to ask questions about our order. This could have been avoided with good note-taking habits. Lastly, we were sent to our tables with no silver wear, so I had nothing with which to spread my condiments on my burger or and my son had nothing to lift his fruit with. When we asked for silverware, we were given small packages with plasticware. Ultimately, when it came to customer service, Top Dawg was NOT the Top Dawg!

We MAY return here after a long while to see if our experience improves. I hope it does, because the food here is pretty good....

I'd give zero stars, but since I like to show up- for apparently zero reason, here we are. 1 star. Now, I will preface this with I've been here before and it was ok. I'd say good service is about 50/50 here. 100% at the bar- until last night, which was a zero. We got there at 6. We were told for 2 people there would be a 30 minute wait. I asked about the bar- because like I said the service was always good at the bar and I planned on drinking anyway. We were told no wait at the bar and she offered to walk us over- she instead walked us outside- ok, fine, my boyfriend's friends were at the table beside us, so it was nice to catch up. 3 servers were working in the area. All 3 of them saw us. Despite making eye contact they ignored us. They were extremely slow to bringing out food and drinks or even checking on the FOUR- 4, 4, 4,- once more for the management reading this in the back- four tables, totaling 13 people. I've waited tables and if you get in the weeds over 4 tables- do the world a favor and quit this job, it's not for you. Period. My boyfriend finally walked in and asked for a menu and was told "No". The icing on the cake, came when a couple walked themselves outside and sat beside us at 6:40- remember there WAS NOT A WAIT AT THE "BAR" (outside?) And a server almost immediately walked outside made cute little jokes about- there's room at the bar if you want to come inside or you can stand at the bar or do the worm on the bar or whatever (he he sooo funny!), to which they declined because they WANTED to sit outside. When we tried to get her attention, she make eye contact, put her hand up and walked inside. Now I'd say the bar service is 50/50 like the service everywhere else in the restaurant. Also, how unbelievably annoying is it that we had to try to find somewhere else to eat at 7pm on a Friday? This place is trash in my opinion...

Went for lunch in a group of 3 people and had a horrible experience. We placed our order consisting of an appetizer, two orders of wings, and the lunch fish sandwich. The appetizer was brought out at an appropriate time, but we waited over an hour for the entrees to be brought out. A member of our party had to leave before he even got his meal because he was on his hour-long lunch break from work. We had to get his food to go for him to eat later, which was not enjoyable for him. We watched several other tables who arrived and ordered after us get their food before us. After 30 minutes of waiting, we asked the waitress for an update on our food. She said there was something wrong with the printer in the kitchen and it was printing tickets out of order. She said this had been a problem for a month. If this is true, this is a problem that desperately needs to be fixed. We continued to wait another 30 minutes before our food was brought out. It is unacceptable that we had to wait over an hour for subpar food. As we were leaving, we asked a lady at the front entrance if she was the manager. She said no and did not even offer to bring out the actual manager for us. We asked if the printer was actually broken, and the lady responded yes and that the kitchen was backed up. How can the kitchen be backed up if we watched several other tables who arrived after us get their food and eat before we ever got ours? We told her that we had to wait over an hour for food, and all she said was, "I understand," multiple times in a fake, customer-service voice. There was no apology offered. We are extremely disappointed with this service and will not be returning to...