Mcdowell Local - Marion

Really slow service on a Wednesday night. We ordered Odell's Pickle Plate fried....it was a mushy pile of fried pickles, okrah, asparagus, onions. I didn't even try it the rest of my party tried it and sent it back. Be aware that it's a very large tray....enough for 4 people.They also ordered the Woodstock pizza, which is pesto based with spinach, Brussels, and asparagus. Pretty much green mush. One party member ate a slice and the other ate 2. Both were not impressed. Again. I took a look and passed.An extra star for friendly service.

I hate to leave a negative review of one of the only places in town that uses local ingredients, but this was one of the worst dining experiences we've had in WNC.We came in right at 6 and were told there was a wait. We went to have ice cream down the street and were sat when we returned, around 6:20. I kid you not when I say that we did not see a server for a good 15 minutes after seating and didn't have all drinks in hand until around 6:50. We were told around that time that the appetizer we ordered wasn't available... when it should have been up by that time. I was served a $12 drink that sat on ice in the shaker for a good 15 minutes. I watched this happen. The server later refused to remove the drink from our ticket, and I'm honestly not even sure that it tequila in it because it was so watered down. Our food finally came up after 8pm. I was served a burger with thousand island on it, even though I had explicitly requested no thousand island and to add mustard. After sending it back, it was brought back to me with the thousand island simply scraped off. I had to send it back once again as I cannot eat mayonnaise based sauces, and was served my food as we were getting up to leave at 8:20.... two hours after we were initially sat.We then waited 10-15 minutes, with small children, so that we could check out and leave, among other complaints. We never actually recieved or saw our check. While my burger was supposedly taken off, rightfully so, this was overall a really negative experience and was handled poorly in my opinion. We unfortunately won't be giving this place a second shot. Our check would have needed to be taken care of entirely and profusely apologized to, to even consider returning. The food wasn't anywhere close to good. We hope you all improve in the future.

The restaurant itself had a great vibe, and it is decorated in a kitschy and homey style. Unfortunately the service was subpar we weren’t given utensils or plates for our appetizer until we asked, and our server never checked in with us after delivering our food. I ordered the chicken tenders which had very little flavor or seasoning, but the sauce and fries were decent. When we were finished, we had to flag down another server to get our check and pay. I would give it another try next time I’m in the area, but for a first visit I was disappointed.

I was excited to eat at this locally sourced restaurant. The food looked really good when I looked on TripAdvisor. Unfortunately service was awful. We made a reservation a few days before since we had a party of 7. Right off the bat our server made sure to tell us she was called in on her night off. Having been a server in the past I get it and understand when things get busy and it gets overwhelming. What I don’t understand is her taking our food and drink order and not bothering to check on us at critical points throughout the night. We had 3 kids with us and everyone was hungry. When we got our food we were missing 2 of the parties food (the pizzas) and a few other important things like a steak knife for the steak. We waited for 10 minutes while our food grew cold before finally getting her attention (we had to flag her down) to get these things. The worst part of the night was that she didn’t even notice that two members of our party’s food wasn’t there. We sat there for at least 20 minutes after the rest of the party got their food thinking surely it would be out soon. Finally after getting our servers attention we said that we never got our food and after she checked we found out she never put their order in. My 6 year old was so hungry; It took an hour to get her small pizza and my husband had to get his to go because it was taking so long. Meanwhile our server is chit chatting and laughing with the other servers at the bar while we waited. Just very tacky and unprofessional given our party was right there. Overall, it was probably one of the worst dining experiences I’ve had in the past decade. I had to ask that she comp a drink from the bar that my husband got just out of courtesy and professionalism since he never got his meal. Manager never came over. Usually, in my experience this is something management does to offer an apology for such a bad experience and long wait. We were at the restaurant for over 2 hours. Like I said, I’ve been a server so am usually very patient with servers and situations. But in this case our server just didn’t seem to care until we addressed it with HER instead of the other way around. To me it was clear she didn’t want to be there. According to our server it was because another large party without a reservation came in. Maybe they got better service without a reservation but we were very dissatisfied! I can NOT recommend this place.

The food and service were great. A very good variety to choose from. Would definitely recommend and will be going back.