Rise and Dine Family restaurant — Restaurant in Woodstock

I feel as if my reviews have become marginally negative, but here we go.

This place has to be the most overhyped, over-talked about, and weirdest place I’ve ever been.

A lot of the word about this place is hyper exaggerated. I wasn’t pleased in my experience. I’d went in and ordered an A-Typical breakfast meal, potatoes and a chicken fajita omelette. Potatoes seem to vary in quality depending on who makes them, as we’ve had pickup from them at one point and they were insanely crunchy, this morning they happened to be greasy. The food lacks in certain areas, leaving zero room for the food to provide an identity to the place. There isn’t one catch-all meal I could associate with them, in fact, as most say, you bring up Rise and Dine and just “breakfast” is what you think. Seems radically generic, especially given the area they’re located. On top of this, again with identity. There’s nothing that really matches the name “Rise and Dine” when you walk in. A few flashy signs, sold unique overhead lights, hardly any decorations, and so on. I’d at least like to see some scripture about the inspiration of the menu on a wall or two, a catchy slogan, some advertisements that get stuck in my head, and so on. Make this place STICK.

On top of all this, the two times I’ve been up here for food the staff rubs me as extremely snarky, or have their attention in other places as I’m trying to order.

I’m left empty handed for countless reasons. • Location: Pricing is steep for the location, this area’s always been known as a strugglers area that’s slowly growing. As well, the parking lot they’re in is a nightmare to navigate. • Enticement: There’s nothing that sticks out or sticks to the name of the brand. • Boldness: Please, add life into this place. For the price you pay, I’d expect to come into a place with life and decor, showing me what the restaurant is about. • Staff: Hire more, get staff involved, work on customers over in-house priorities.

I don’t know how I feel about this place any longer, and chances are if this place continues how it is, I’ll refuse to seek it out in the future. In this current economy and climate, making friends over enemies is more important especially if you want returning customers.

Hopefully this place can learn to do better....

The food was good, but because this is a small place, don't expect it to be fast.

The service, on the other hand, was not good. Our server never came back to ask if we needed refills on our drinks, even though the friend who was with me tried flagging her down. No one came to ask how our food was. My omelet had city ham even though I asked for country ham to be added to my spinach and mushroom omelet. There was no to-go box offered for leftovers.

The payment process was odd, too. I was given a check with my total for the meal and suggested tip amounts, but there was no place to fill in the tip or even to sign. The server had said that we could either give her our payment and check or take it to the counter. We opted to do the latter. When I told the cashier that I didn't understand why the check had no place to actually add a tip and then sign, she said that she had to run my card first and then a ticket would print that would allow me to add a tip and sign. So my card was going to be run twice?? The totally convoluted way she explained this was that it was done to keep people from coming to the counter to check out. She said that people doing so caused problems for them. So why were we told that we could pay at the counter?

The service aspect was so poor that even though the food was not bad, I doubt that I would dine...

Read a lot of good reviews so we decided to try it out. I was a little disappointed with the mashed potatoes, very dry. It had a tad of gravy on it but didn't help. I also ordered the chicken fried chicken and gravy. It tasted good but was a little hard to cut. The okra was really good and hot!! I asked what the difference between the cornbread and cornbread muffin was (thinking that it might have a different taste) and it did. But the server said "there's no difference, just one is a muffin". The muffin tasted almost as sweet as a regular sweet muffin and my husband's cornbread was like regular cornbread!! So he got the grilled chicken tenders, he said they are ok! He also got okra and mac and cheese, both very good! He liked the banana pudding but the lemon cake barely had a thin smear of icing, you could see the cake through it!! Sorry this is so long, but it was our first time there, so I'm giving a thorough review for all of the first timers. We might try it for lunch a second time, maybe, but we will try the breakfast the next visit. We wanted it to be a better experience because we live about 5 minutes from...