Smokey’s On the Gorge

The service was pretty horrible. The waitress was very standoffish and annoyed with us when we asked her a question about West Virginia alcohol laws. There was also another employee who was very rude when I told her there ZERO lettuce at the salad bar. The food was cold and half of it was not out. For $ 30 it is not worth it. There was no dessert out at one point and I’m pretty sure they just have to put that on a plate. Will not be coming back here.

This place is not the worst place for dinner in Fayetteville, but it was just terribly expensive for what you’re getting (Or lack of).
This place is part of the Adventures on the Gorge camp, so as a stand alone restaurant it’s very difficult to find. Garmin GPS couldn’t find it, but Google did, albeit a different address than what was on their website.
Service– horrible and painfully slow. We got seated to our table and waited for 3 minutes and no one came (It was not busy), so we decided to go to the buffet area to retrieve our food. After we got our food a waitress came and actually seemed annoyed that we went to get our food without her instructions.
Food scant and dirty– I was amused there was a sign that indicated «Clean plates required» when going to food stations, but some of the plates that were stacked were dirty (Not washed well!). First section was Brussels sprouts (Fairly good), penne pasta Alfredo (Ok), green beans (Ok), there was salmon, very dried chicken, pork tenderloin and beef sirloin. None of those proteins were any good. There was a salad bar and dessert station. Selections were horrible and not very appetizing.
Expensive!!! It’s costs $ 29 per person for this stuff. Not coming back.

The view from the restaurant is breathtakingly beautiful. The food is frankly hit and miss. The presentation of the cheese and salad table is nice. The entrees vary. Mostly not so great for me. The desserts are really not as good as Bob Evans.
Top all that with way overpriced and I rarely dine here.

Very casual dining at an adventures based river rafting location variety of food from coffee shop to pub and upscale buffet with an fantastic view of the gorge. Portion are small to afford you the opportunity to taste different foods. The chef was back from vacation so the menu had not been posted but call ahead to find out how and what local foods are being presented. The salad bar is excellent with a lot of variety and the dressings are homemade. We had a choice of wild rice or garlic mashed potatoes with pesto with green beans and or asparagus. The chicken parmesan was overcook and the beef tips were a little tough. I found the shrimp with penned pasta to be tough and the pork tender loin nice tender and flavorful but consumed by the sauce. Be sure to read all of the cards describing the dish to cut down on surprises. Deserts were varied and plentiful. Some fresh fruit would have been nice.

Nice view, no signs posted that it is 30 dollars for the buffet. I didn’t realize it was a buffet until we sat down. Didn’t have anything that my two kids liked to eat other then cookies and cup cakes. The service was nice. I won’t be going back.

What a disaster of a place. I’ve got to drop my original two-​star review (which was already unfavorable, I know) to only one star after attending an event here recently.
The event was booked for 7 p.m., then got pushed back to 8 p.m. because they double booked the area for a wedding. We never did get inside and got relegated to tables and very, VERY dark tent on the deck. So dark you couldn’t see anyone, your plate to eat, etc. Just very small tea light candles. The staff members were rude and unhelpful. One even told us, «If you want dessert, you better hurry because we’re going to close down the buffet soon!» when we asked when dessert was being served immediately after finishing our dinner.
The event (and everything I guess at Smokey’s) was buffet style. But the buffet room is tiny and there’s maybe five or six dishes (including main and sides) available on it, plus a salad bar and a table of desserts in the corner. Smokey’s ran out of food very fast and took forever to put anything else back out. They then started putting out random things that were never on the original menu. There was absolutely no way we had a chance of getting the $ 50/​person value we paid out of this place.
The food itself had highs and lows. The meats were actually pretty good, but the sides were pretty bland and lame. They seemed like mass-​produced cafeteria food dressed up with garnishes. The desserts were even worse — not even made in-​house. The middle of my cheesecake was frozen solid, so I had proof they had bought frozen desserts and then not even bothered to set them out early enough!
Growing up in Fayette County, I have been here several times now, and it’s always been a very mediocre dining experience. It used to be nice because of the country/​cabin-​like atmosphere and the beautiful views from the decks. But now they’ve built up so many redneck bars and such all around it and commercialized it for the river rat crowd so much that it doesn’t even have that going for it now. If you want to see a bunch of wet hippies, meth users, etc., walking around getting drunk and smoking and driving their pickup trucks around the gravel parking lot, well, this is the place for you. Otherwise — I guess Elliott’s or Three Gables are your only decent classy choices in Fayette County that I know of but even those are meh.

The service was pretty slow. We had to wave down a waitress for drink refills after waiting 5 – 10 minutes. Food was decent, although the Alfredo sauce was a bit bland. However, we liked the fresh food, and would eat here again.

The atmosphere is wonderful but it stops there. It’s all buffet and the salad was limp, all the meats were over cooked and deserts supermarket quality. This place is great and food is not. They need a chef because it tastes like a river guide started before hitting the river and served up the dry (everything’s dry) food when they returned. We’ll be back at the cabins and the rock & river just not at these restaurants. Hint hire a chef!

0_​_​o is the face I made when we saw the bill. –_​_​– was the other face I made when I realized we could have avoided the bill cost.
I’m just gonna jump on in and tell it like it was:
Location was awesome. The view from the restaurant was beautiful. The main dining room area was open all the way around to the outside area which was awesome. Watching the sun set (while waiting for a fork to eat my food which was cold) was a nice distraction to the fact that I had no eating utensils. –_​_​–
The food was blah. It’s buffet style and all you can eat. I chose the boiled salmon (which should have been hot or at least warmer than cold), green beans (cold) and mashed cheese potatoes (omg…these were good and hot! yeah!) I walked back to my table and still… no eating utensils. I asked the waitress yet again, and she failed to remember. Three people out of 8 had utensils. So 5 of us sat there… waiting. Finally after 15 min or so, we were handed utensils. –_​_​–
The finale is the bill. As the waitress handed the checks out to each couple, we all sat in silence as we stared at the amount that was our check. The buffet was $ 26.99 a PERSON. Wait what? *closing the leather check holder and opening it again* Yep. that check said «$ 26.99 @ 2. Holy inappropriateness… what the?!? My wine was $ 6.50 and Hubs’ beer was $ 4. The couple next to me… she had one glass of house wine… and it cost her $ 14. o₀ omg… highway mountain robbery.
We should have asked how much the buffet was before we ate. To me it wasn’t worth it. I don’t know if it’s like that all the time, but I don’t want to find out. I wasn’t impressed at all with the food. Only with the overlook of the Gorge and the sunset.

Smokey’s is a tasty buffet of high quality cuisine. The atmosphere at Class VI is awesome with an overlook of the Gorge only footsteps from your dinner table. If rafting or climbing don’t get you there, the view should. There dining is open air, but the buffets (yes plural) are sequestered off in a separate indoor room. One buffet is salad with all the fixins and also includes broccoli salad (yum), pasta salad (not so yum), and seared tuna with wasabi and all (unexpected and definitely yum yum yum).
Now, to the entrée buffet– the entrees differ nightly so i will describe my experience: duck, lamb shank, tilapia, shrimp with andouille and grits, and mixed veggies. Duck was delish but I would have ordered it slightly more rare. Lamb shank was melt in your mouth. Tilapia was just okay. Shrimp with andouille and grits… WOW… never expected this level of scrumptious.
The only reason I give 4 instead of 5 stars is because the entrée buffet was often emptied of one or two of the selections (which were only put out in small amounts) and multiple trips were necessary to taste everything. It was definitely dwarfed by the gargantuan salad bar which accosts you as soon as you walk in the door. Also, desserts were 2 stars– lemon bars and cheesecake with strange textures.