The Stables Downtown Grill — Restaurant in Tupelo

We will NEVER return. The vibe is it's the local drunks hangout and they don't like outsiders.

When we first moved to Tupelo we tried this place a couple of times, we liked the alley location and the food was fair. We excused the spotty service, and the stinky, dirty alley area eating space. But after a couple "not so good" experiences we stopped going.

During Pandemic we returned to try it again. They only had take out, limited menu and one server. Not a great experience, but Pandemic.

So this past weekend during Art & Wine Festival 2022 we noticed it was fully open and thought we'd give it another try.

We expected it to be busy and expected a wait, but we could browse the Festival and return if we could just get on a list. All tables were full, but maybe there is a table that will be leaving soon?

We stood in the doorway for about 7 to 10 minutes while the bartender didn't bother to look up or speak, and the short, dark haired waitress went back and forth. CLEARLY you can see someone is waiting! You are supposed to be in the "Service" industry. But no one greeted us or stopped to tell us how long a wait might be. My husband went outside a couple times to see if he could catch a server, to no avail. As the short, dark haired unfriendly waitress with the "mad-at-the-world-for-her-station-in-life" grimace on her face passed again, I raised my hand to ask her if there were a list we could be added to...to which she turned and shot me a nasty glare and shook her head NO and kept walking! I hadn't even spoke a word yet. She didn't know who we were, what we wanted, she just showed her ugliest face and shook her head NO. WE WILL NEVER RETURN. WE WILL NEVER BRING OUR OUT OF TOWN GUESTS HERE. WE WILL NEVER RECOMMEND THIS PLACE. I regret I didn't take pictures of the filthy alley, dirty un-bussed tables stacked high with dirty dishes, the trash in the alleyway, the swarming of the flies. And you can't photograph THAT SMELL! There is no business too busy or too big to fail. There are plenty of options for spending our money and more restaurants coming to town! They may retain there "we drink here every day, all day and proud of it" crowd, but we'll be spending our money elsewhere. I DO NOT RECOMMEND this business. One star because it does not have a MINUS 5...

Did a Google search on restaurants and this one had a TON of 5 star reviews and just a few bad ones. Checked out the online menu and my husband and I decided to check it out. Once we finally found it we walked in and were greeted by 3 different people. Went to the nearest table and found that it was filthy. We wiped as best we could and the waitress came over and used a towel to clean it thankfully. She took our drink order and handed each of us a laminated 8" long menu. My husband and I looked at each other and were like " you mean this is it?" I felt like we were in the movie My Cousin Vinny, the menu had maybe 15 items on it. We opted for the pastrami and swiss sandwiches. The menu didn't mention sides or anything. Once the food arrived we saw that it came with fries. The seasoning was odd.....the sandwiches were hot, BUT had more mayo, mustard and GIANT pieces of onion than it did pastrami. We took that first bite and almost pulled the entire slice of meat out. It was ok. That's about it. I don't know what happened, but those sandwiches were definitely NOT 5 stars. Maybe the chef was off that day or was having an off day? I don't know. Probably...

For 5:00 in the afternoon the atmosphere was kind of blah here. The waitress was friendly, but not real attentive. She spent a lot of time with the customers that were drinking alcohol. We were not. We ordered a Philly cheesesteak with no onions. We specifically asked for the bell peppers. They left them off too. The waitress never even noticed. I had the shrimp poboy. We both had fries. The fries and the sandwiches were very salty. Too salty. We also ordered the blackened catfish nachos, a half order. They were the best thing we had. The poboy would have been much better if they would taken it easy on the salt. The shrimp were big and crispy. The sauce on the poboy was good. The fries were good if you ate them while they were still very hot. By the time we finished eating they were very rubbery. This is typical of frozen fries. They were okay when they were very hot, just all that dang salt 🧂🧂. I would like to go back and maybe see if we could catch a different cook...