True Food Kitchen — Restaurant in University Park

Honest review. So after trying for a week to book a reservation on open table, I finally found their Instagram and followed them and they tend to post when they have open seating. So they did in fact offer open seating on 2/25/2021 and I went. I was put on the waiting list for about 30 minutes. We were finally seated. It takes about 15 minutes or so for our waiter to even greet us. He takes our orders, doesn’t ask for ID when we order liquor. I ordered two peach frose drinks and the blackened eggs(deviled eggs). About 10-15 minutes go by our waiter Demarcus D. Who we have by now figured out is a bartender. Comes over and says the drinks are a not frozen enough because they have served so many so they need more time did we want to go ahead and order our food. Okay. So we ordered two lamb chop entrees, two sweet potatoes sides, side of Mac, side of collard greens, side of cornbread. I will say he was great with answering questions about the menu because I did let him know it was my first time eating there and trying lamb chops. So after about 15 more minutes he brings us our drinks. I asked my boyfriend to go check on our appetizer which we never received. We sit there for about another 25 minutes. Then I see our food. I watch as the person who delivers the food struggles to find our table, she walked over to another table who was just seated and tried to give it to them they decline it. She finally figured it out it goes to our table. I guess demarcus decided to finally come update us on our appetizer and he exclaims oh you got your food! Like yeah before the appetizer so just go ahead and cancel it. We have to ask for silverware because he did not give us any and tell him we were missing our side of cornbread. He goes to the back and gets some and it’s cold. I asked him was it supposed to be cold he said it’s supposed to be “room temperature.” Okay take that off too. Lamb chops were amazing and very spicy, Mac and cheese is a hit or miss, collard greens okay. But the sweet potatoes was more of a slimy concoction then actual potatoes. I get annoyed because our waiter still hasn’t come over to us to check on us about our food so I ask my boyfriend to request a manager. A lady comes over she listens to our issues and apologizes, offers to take off the sweet potatoes and asked us did we want anything else. I asked for the peach Cobler because we wanted to try dessert. She brings it out. The server finally comes over with someone else’s tab and takes our plates. I asked for my tab. Another 7 minutes he finally brings it. The manager left one of the sweet potatoes on but did not add the peach cobler so I just went ahead and paid. Around $124 dollars. We wait for the server to come back and take our tab. He literally never made eye contact so I have my boyfriend hand it to another server, then Demarcus finally decided he cared about our table and ran over to the other sever to take the tab from him and charge us. Very sad first experience I will say. If you do go and you sit in the bar area but not at the bar, you will not receive the attention you deserve for the money you are paying. I was super excited to go here because of the ambiance. But customer service definitely matters and I’m definitely disappointed I couldn’t give a five...

Went to True Food Kitchen for first time last night. They have a great set-up with plenty of covered outdoor dining area. The service was decent. The food was good, although the sauce on everything was pretty heavy. A healthy restaurant sounded very appealing, but with the saturation of sauce, I imagine we got way more than a day's worth of sodium. I took half my dinner to go simply because I was concerned about all the sodium in the heavy sauce. My daughter loved the sparkling orange sencha tea and my friend's daughter loved her passion fruit limeade. The kale aid was very delicious. I saw that it was $5 which I thought was very reasonable - I buy fresh cold pressed juices at The Gem for about $10 each and since this seemed about half the amount of those with the ice, it seemed reasonable. I missed the part that it was an additional $4 for the kale aid. That said, my daughter and I had the Brussels sprout appetizer (ok, but heavily sauced making it taste pretty salty) 1 kale aid, 1 orange sencha tea - she had shrimp tacos (which looked really delicious) and I had the quinoa dish with salmon added (extra $9 which is reasonable even though it was a very small piece). The salmon was not overcooked and was very good. For 1 adult and 1 child the bill came to $70. I thought that was a bit pricey. When I got home I pulled up the menu and it appeared I had been overcharged (I'm admittedly not great with math), so I called the restaurant. They put the manager on and when he explained the additional $4 for the drink and $9 for the entree, I saw where I'd missed the math. I thanked him for explaining. He asked about my experience and I told him it was a good experience but did say that for a casual dining experience that is a bit pricey for 1 adult and 1 child (and having had zero alcohol). He explained that all of their food is organic (a big plus) and healthy (not so sure without seeing the sodium content). But then... he insulted me. He said that it is a different experience than dining at Chili's or Applebees (I had not one time mentioned Chili's or Applebees), insinuating that Chili's and Applebees are where my bar is set on price point and food quality. I was hesitant to leave this review until I read other reviews where people said the food was "pricey" "a little pricey for casual dining," etc. I'm not the only person in Dallas that finds $35 a person a little high for a quick casual meal with fake candlelight on the table. I doubt all who mentioned True Foods Kitchen being a little overpriced are looking at Chili's and Applebees as our price point gauge. I was genuinely inquiring about my bill, which can be a little uncomfortable in the first place as no one wants to seem "cheap" and he had to be condescending and insulting when I was only giving him my honest opinion. I'm giving two stars. My math skills suck but I can work with the number 5. Here is my equation:

5 stars:

Thick salty sauce - 1 Rude condescending...

• Always check your online banking after eating there.This is not the first time this happened to me at this particular (Dallas) location *

My wife, child and I were there last Wednesday evening for dinner. Our experience was pretty good, I wouldn’t say it was excellent, but it wasn’t bad either.

Checking my online banking a day or two later, I noticed that the charge from TFK was a lot higher than the amount I remembered signing for the other day. I’ve developed this habit of checking my bank account after dinning at this particular location, as this is NOT the first time I find different charges to my card after dinning there. This time I decided I wasn’t just going to let it slide, so I called TFK Dallas. Honestly, depending on how management handled the incident I was just going to report it and leaved at that, but Carl (manager) couldn’t have done a worse job at handling the situation. When I explained to him what had happened, he never had the courtesy to apologize, instead with a very condescending attitude he said he’d have to look for the receipt and give me a call back. After about an hour he calls back. He says that in fact he was able to corroborate the “mistake”. He states that the way I wrote the amount may have conveniently led the server to assume I wrote down a higher amount. I asked Carl to send me a copy for my signed receipt (the one he was looking at), so I could see if in fact it was my mistake. He (still hasn’t apologized) says he can only send me a digital copy that won’t show my signature… He proceeds to say that only this time and due to the incident, they'd refund THE TIP to my bank account. At this point I’m upset, because this guy still hasn’t apologized and instead he’s trying to paint a scenario in which apparently I am the one at fault here. I then let him know that that was the least they could do and that I was going to write a complaint about the whole incident. Then he calmed down his sarcastic tone and offered to refund not the full amount, but the amount for paid the meals. Oh! And he finally apologized… We are regulars at the TFK in Plano. We are never going back to the Dallas location. We will make sure we warn and spread the word about this incident to everyone we know. Do a better job next time Carl! All you needed to do was to own up to your screw up...