Smoke on the Water BBQ — Restaurant in West Virginia

My name is Roger and this is my wife’s account. After placing our order we sat there for an hour with no contact from our waitress to refill drinks or bring a salad. There were six of us. While patiently waiting for our waitress and our food we watched a group of 11, a family of 4, and a family of 3 and another couple receive their food and drinks before us. Mind you they all came in after us 20 to 30 minutes later. Not to mention the outside had absolutely no one out there when we first arrived. Some of them also received food before us. All of them had a different waitress than us. After an hour passed I went to the front desk and asked to speak with the manager. I explained to Denise the Manager the situation. She apologized and used the excuse she was short staffed which was not true because there was an abundance of employees walking around. Finally Denise came back to our table and said I’m not gonna lie your waitress’s order went to another printer that doesn’t work so we never got your order but we are taking care of it and I will discount your meal. I said ok and thank you. So after our meal we sat and waited to receive our bill which took again forever. Mind you other tables have come and gone with different waitress staff working. Finally I receive my bill and saw it seemed a little high considering I was told it would be discounted so I asked Denise. She said I gave you a 10% discount since it was about service not the food. I said ok and just went with it. So I give her my debit card and she brings my receipt and it was more than the original bill. So I asked a young girl that worked there if they charged a cc fee. Denise whom I wasn’t speaking too said yes we charge a 5% fee and that you know all restaurants do that now. I just grind and shook my head, didn’t say a word. She started raising her voice and said Sir apparently you’ve never worked in the restaurant business before? I said yes ma’am I have I worked 4 years in one. She then continued to get even more irate and said in an even louder voice well apparently your just a poor customer and you haven’t seen me running my butt off around here all night. Not only are we extremely busy but we have a wedding party as well. I said yes ma’am I have watched your waitress running around but I have been here for two hours now and watched numerous customers come and leave. All the mean while customers are standing around looking at me because she is irate at this point and raising her voice because I questioned my bill. Not one time did I ever raise my voice or disrespect one of your employees. I simply questioned why we had waited over an hour to get our food while others had come and gone. And as a paying customer I have EVERY right to question my bill since I’m the one paying. Your manager Denise did not like being questioned. She was very disrespectful and unprofessional. Not to mention she had one excuse and lie after another when questioned. The wedding party came in an hour after us but she used them as an excuse as to why we didn’t get our food instead of just saying we screwed up. Myself, family, and friends have eaten at your restaurant numerous times since you have opens many years ago. I have ALWAYS had good customer service up until tonight and the food has ALWAYS been great including tonight. But I am here to tell you that your manger Denise is a very poor customer service manager. If she can’t handle the stress of being busy you have the wrong person for the job! VERY UNPROFESSIONAL!! I have eaten at the Smokehouse at Blackwater falls several times this year alone and have always had excellent customer service and excellent food! But tonight I chose your place of business to be disrespected by someone who is suppose to de-escalate situations not try to enhance them. Again not one time tonight did I raise my voice or disrespect one of your employees I just simply questioned the service and cost which I am entitled to do as a...

For what it’s worth, this place does look very good. It’s got a lot of great aesthetics and it’s nice and homey.

But the food is not good at all. I’m getting so tired of going to restaurants and spending a bunch of money eating there, but not getting either a good experience or a good meal or both.

I’m getting tired of the service blaming the back of house. I’m getting tired of the back of house being too high to make food properly.

The brisket sucks. It was like a dry eraser. I had to take it home and cook it with bacon and then chop it up so I could use it as part of a topping on a burger to make it any sort of palatable.

Broccoli and cream soup tasted more like a mouthful of Half-and-half with butter and little tiny shavings of maybe broccoli, maybe it could be parsley who knows. It sure doesn’t taste like broccoli, and I barely touched it.

My girlfriend got some kind of barbecue with sweet potato something but it looks like somebody threw up in a bowl. You guys can’t be seriously serving a dish that appears that aesthetically awful? She didn’t even touch it.

The server didn’t even bother to come back to ask me how I was doing. How distracted are you that you can’t even notice that I’ve got food on my plate that I haven’t even touched? This ain’t rocket science. Being busy doesn’t matter. If a person can’t handle waiting tables, I could barely expect I’ll be able to handle driving a car. And that bar is very low ; besides, It’s not like we’re eating at IHOP or anything. This is supposed to be an upscale barbecue place, and it ended up being a really bad experience.

It took us an additional 20 minutes just to get her attention to be able to pay the bill.

There’s so many excuses being made for restaurants now sucking. And hardly anyone has the courage to tell a restaurant that they’re not doing good. This restaurant is not doing good. You’ve all got a lot of work to do before you could consider yourself decent and if I were y’all, I would just take the constructive criticism and do better.

Definitely not interested in coming back...

Smoke on the Water BBQ is excellent!! As a Kansas City Native and BBQ business owner, we are always looking for a good BBQ joint to visit when traveling. In West Virginia, Maryland, and Virginia we have not found a BBQ Restaurant that meets our expectations when it comes to BBQ. I can honestly say that not only did the food meet our expectations BUT, it exceeded them! My husband smokes the best meat I have ever had and Smoke on the Water is right there with his BBQ. We started out with our normal burnt ends and Smoke Trout Dip as appetizers. The burnt ends were some of the best we have EVER had! They were burnt perfectly, and were still tender, they add their house made mild BBQ sauce to it which is excellent! The Smoke Trout Dip came with butter toast and english cucumber, the dip had alot of flavor highly recommended for trout lovers! My husband had the brisket and it was amazing, tender, juicy, and full of flavor! I had the pulled pork, it was seasoned perfectly, and moist. I had french fries as a side and they were seasoned nicely and crispy! Their servings were large and we left with leftovers! They offer a Carolina sauce which my husband said was good, a mild BBQ that was similar in taste to a sweet Kansas City style BBQ sauce, a spicy BBQ sauce that was like a regular Kansas City BBQ sauce. All three are house made and excellent in flavor. We ended our meal with a warm brownie and ice cream. The brownie was so moist and had bits of chocolate chips in it, topped with vanilla bean ice cream, and drizzled with caramel. All the food was excellent! Jennifer was our waitress and she was awesome! The service we received was hands down the best we have had in a very, very long time. They are extremely lucky to have such a great server!! Our experience at Smoke on the Water was excellent and we will return the next time we are in...