Cody's Original Roadhouse - Brownwood — Restaurant in Wildwood

My wife ate here with her work group a few weeks ago, and thought it seemed like a place we would like. It's in one of The Villages squares, so the area surrounding Cody's is clean, well-kept, and fun.

Entering the restaurant, one is greeted with a carefully curated shabby decor and en eclectic selection of license plates and classic memorabilia adorning the walls.

It was 7:30 on a Saturday night in The Villages, so energy was high, and people were everywhere. We could hear live music coming from the outdoor seating area. We were greeted promptly, and asked if we wanted to be seated outside, inside, or first available. We asked for inside.

Maybe fifteen minutes later, our little party square notification device lit up light a Christmas tree to let us know they were ready for us. Somehow our seating preference had been misconstrued, and they were going to seat us outside, but my my wife promptly corrected them. A couple minutes later we were seated at our indoor table.

We were greeted almost immediately by our server, Jess. In the short time it took for her to bring our drinks, we had our order ready. She pleasantly coached us on their interpretation of "medium" and "medium well" for our porterhouse t-bone (we ordered medium). While we waited for our meal, we munched on the included salad, basket of warm white-bread rolls with cinnamon butter, and salted-in-the-shell peanuts. We were entertained watching all the families around us, and gazing at the afore mentioned wall decor.

Our meal was ready quickly, and it looked and smelled delicious! I took the less well done section of the steak (20 ounce T-bone at $25 and deliciously prepared is a great bargain), and we tucked in to our food. The garlic mashed potatoes were a little more intense than my wife anticipated, but my fries were well seasoned, crispy on the outside and flaky on the inside, and HOT! The steak was liberally seasoned with a salty blend of spices that we found flavorful, but left our lips with a decidedly dehydrated puckering on our way home.

Jess was prompt with refilling my water, though a touch slower to refill my wife's. She more than made up for it, however, by offering additional salad in take-home styrofoam packaging (filled to the brim) when my wife asked if the salad was "bottomless."

Overall, we found Cody's to be a place to which we will happily return. The casual atmosphere, quick and friendly service, and flavorful (if a bit salty) food at a reasonable price is a recipe for a return visit, in our estimation.

Would I recommend? By all means. It's definitely not a place for a romantic steak dinner, but as a family night out or a casual meal, Cody's fits the bill. Check it out! And ask for Jess....

This place is always such a hit or miss with the food and or service. Last time I was here I noticed the blue cheese tasted very watered down so in passing I began chatting with Devon, the manager. When I asked what was up w/the blue cheese she mentioned it was done in house etc. and she didn’t understand what I was talking about.

I said maybe she should mention it to a general manager-and she replied, oh no, “ that’s above my pay grade” I mean, I would never as a manager ever say that to anyone that just tells you she’s just there doing the bare minimum. Then she kept talking nonstop- about how she likes drinking early in the morning to go play golf with her family, about her bf etc. just topics that I don’t think a manager should be sharing with someone they just met.

I didn’t go back for a few months until last week. And as I typically do, I asked for all flats, my husband & I both got wings and what they did was they gave me all of his flats and he got all of my drumsticks, which was absolutely ridiculous and so unfair to him because he likes flats too. I mean, I would have paid extra. Or the waitress could have just said, no we can’t do it. So the waitress offered to call the manager and I said yes I would like to tell them that this is not fair & to let the employees in the kitchen know and what came next I was not expecting; whenever you think of management you think of someone who’s coming to make things better and be kind and understanding, but that is not what happened.

As Devon (once again) comes over and of course at this point she seems annoyed that I have yet something else to say about the food or whatever, she was so incredibly rude and combative. I think this woman should not be a manager. She kept telling me well, these come in a bag and who are we gonna give the remaining chicken to??? tell me!!!! who are we gonna give it to??? Like I’m supposed to know all this which I shouldn’t know and I don’t care, you figure it out. I’m the patron I’m paying for this if you can’t do it then say so, but you don’t come to your patron who is paying money in your establishment to be treated this way. Needless to say, I will never again come to this place.

What they need to do is do an up charge for people who want all flats and just get rid of the drums. I can only imagine how much food they throw away to begin with. Unfortunately, this is one of those places that is so ridiculously busy most of the time they couldn’t care less what anybody has to say. But in due time it’ll happen slowly, but people will begin to realize this place...

Been here 3 times, the only good experience is the time we visited for drinks.

I went here for a ladies 12 pm luncheon, and they provided 1 waiter to take lunch and drink orders from over 50 ladies for the first half hour. Our table of ladies was served lunch around 1 pm - all 13 people at my table got their food but me. So I sat and watched everyone eat while they told me my food was "on it's way". By 1:30 pm, the staff was clearing the empty plates from my table and my chicken finger plate never came - despite ordering with the rest of the ladies I never got any lunch. I left at 1:30 pm after waiting over an hour for a chicken finger plate that wasn't served with the rest of our lunch table - in fact it never came. It seemed like the restaurant ran out of plates and that might be why they were hurriedly clearing plates to serve more meals?

They also did things such as serve us rolls, although not enough to go around for our table. We were not provided any regular butter for the rolls which we had to split in half to have any - and the small plates for the rolls were provided to us after we finished the sparingly rolls that were served. Lots of little issues like this that just made for a really bad experience.

The manager Liz was not helpful. I only got lip service and no meal. Apparently there were a LOT of problems with our ladies lunch to the point that someone was told they would do something for our group - but to my knowledge - nothing was ever done - and I didn't even get lunch despite waiting 1 1/2 hours for one, which really upset some of the ladies who were eating while I was not - it was really uncomfortable for everyone at our table to experience eating their meals while one person remained unserved..

I also ordered the prime rib for take out here - and it was horrible. Absolutely tasteless. I also asked for it to be cooked medium well and it was cooked somewhere between medium rare to medium (almost red in some places). The only good thing with that meal was the baked potato which was delicious - but how hard it is to bake a potato?

The only thing I would do here is drink - and that's if I have an extra half hour to wait at the bar for it! Thankfully they have free peanuts! That's a bonus when they are lacking in almost every other service capacity possible. It's usually a good idea to serve meals that are...