Taste Of Smithfield

Excellent menu variety. All of our food was delightful, cooked well and tasted homemade. The sweet potato biscuit will haunt my dreams because of how good it was. Mac and cheese comes with bacon! Don’t order anything without ham or bacon on it! Great place. The whole town is just wonderful.

A nice surprise, upscale and a pleasant staff. Very tasty goat cheese veggie flat bread, and of course one of my favorites, sweet potato fries

On our trip to Smithfield I was determined this go-​round to get some fresh ham. We stopped in to Taste of Smithfield and discovered while it does have seating and a large kitchen, it’s more of a store than a restaurant. It reminded me of the Cracker Barrel gift shop in a way, but with more food items than objects and things. They’ve got an array of nuts to choose from, fresh jams and preserves, bacon EVERYTHING and if you ask politely you can order ham to-​go. We opted for the salt-​cured ham. It was sliced seriously thin and I couldn’t help myself — I had some right away. It was really good! Fresh and salty, a little bit of a smokey flavor too. We had so much ham left over from our trip I mad omelettes with it, sandwiches, you name it. I wasn’t going to let Miss. Piggy go to waste. Can’t wait to pick some up next time we visit.

And don’t forget that Smithfield Farms, the largest pork producing farm in the USA was sold in September, 2013 to China with the unanimous support of its stockholders! The hogs will still be raised here, but slaughtered and packaged for sale there before being sent back here. This includes labels: of Morrell, Eckrich, Krakus, Cudahy, Premium Hams, Cook’s, Gwaltney. The same with many chickens. They can now be shipped there, but when they come back all that needs to be labeled is that they… WERE RAISED IN THE USA. Not that they were processed in China!!! So stressful for the animals, stress causes disease. And I’m sure the facility is not to USA standards. Our great FDA at work again. NO THANKS!!!
I’ll buy Farmer Johns.

Very nice staff
Impeccably clean well organized café store and seating area.
Large selection of items to choose from in the store as well as a very nice selections of items to choose from the menu you can call ahead for orders to be picked up.
The sweet potato biscuit ham absolutely absolutely delicious!!!

There’s plenty of reason to frequent. The most obvious I feel is the sweet potato country ham biscuits. I’m on a carb restricted diet, but every time I’m anywhere near this place, I cannot help myself. I’m sure the rest of the menu follows suit, but I really only get the one thing.
The gift shop is great, and the samples are fun during the wait for the aforementioned biscuit.

This ust be one of our favorite places for breakfast but over the last few months we’ve experienced less than par service. Breakfast is served until 11:00 on Saturdays however, if you arrive at 10:30 you are either told breakfast is no longer being served, or you are seated and then given dirty looks from the cooking staff in the kitchen because you have ordered a breakfast item. Everyone in the kitchen always looks mad and put out. I can’t imagine this place being that miserable to work at. You are also left to stand in the front entry way for several minutes until someone will acknowledge and seat you.
The food has also been less than par with eggs that are runny and undercooked. The eggs Benedict was our all time fav, but its also taken a turn for the worse over the months.
Its sad and dissapointing because the town of Smithfield is a really great place to spend a Saturday morning. Luckily, there are some other great places across the street to get good food and service.

Cute place and great location, right next to Vintage Potential (my favorite store) a great place to stop for lunch EXCEPT for the service… It’s chaos… no one knows what the other is doing, I have been three times, twice on special event days in Smithfield you would think management would add extra staff on such days… get it together.

My family and I have been eating at a taste of Smithfield almost 2 years now and loved it and never had a problem. We have some family that also like to eat there in town so we stopped in for a late lunch at 2pm. It took 30 minutes to get our drinks and an hour to get our food and then everyone had something wrong with their meal. It took another 20 minutes to get the items we were missing and all of our food was cold. I had the warf hill club and it is usually so tall I have trouble biteing it and today it was so small and my soup was so cold it had a film over the top. I’m extremely disappointed in the service and quality of food we received today. The waitress said the management had recently changed, it shows and it is nothing like it was a few months ago.

We have been going in for about a year. We really can’t complain about anything we have had to eat. My boyfriend LOVES the Cuban. I however love the Church Street Pita. We both agree on the made to order soft and juicy hamburgers. Amazing! There also two soups that sounds a little diffrent for soup but they are oh so good. One is a sausage with a great broth and then a red and yellow pepper goat cheese with a creamy consistency. Wonderful!

Ate at Taste of Smithfield today very good service and great food.

Great service. I love all the samples inside of the different nuts. Such fun stuff inside. For lunch, my husband got The Barlow — by far the most amazing sandwich! So so good! I got The Club on Rosemary bread which was pretty good, but no Barlow. lol. The mac n cheese with bacon was a disappointment; however, the broccoli slaw was AMAZING! The tomato bisque was extremely tasty as well! We’ll definitely be back!

I’ve been here twice and had the Barlow and the main street burger. My wife has had the Cuban and another sandwich further down on the menu with ham… I can’t remember what it was called but she got it on the sun ripened focaccia which was very good. As far as I have experienced they use very good breads and rolls to accompany their meats and sandwiches. My only complaint is that the service can be slow and forgetful, but they will fix things if you let them know. They may need some extra help on the floor during the weekday lunch rush and Saturday afternoons. I’ll return even though the service is a little slow… It may be more a management and organizational issue because the waiters are very kind and eager to please.

I can’t say enough about Taste of Smithfield, I haven’t tried everything but service is fast and every lunch item had been delish. Most friendly staff and why not do a little shopping. Don’t forget to your Virginia peanuts.

This place is nice and quaint. The food is ok for breakfast. Nothing tremendously good. We bought some bacon in the store section and brought it home for breakfast the next day. Now that was awful! It tasted like a salt lick. Maybe we aren’t used to cured bacon but yuck! Do not buy that. Not sure if I’d go back here. It’s really nicely decorated though.

My parent’s found this spot & recommended we go there for lunch this past Saturday. We weren’t aware of Smithfield’s farmer’s market going on & when we arrived the place was packed. With the entrances on both sides of the building getting to the hostess was a bit of a cluster. We had about a 35 minute wait, but browsed their goodies and sampled peanuts while we waited. You name a peanut flavor & this place has it!
I love that the menu items are named after local places in the area. Everything looked delicious, but I knew I had to get something with Smithfield ham. I usually only have it on Christmas Eve, so this was a treat! I ordered the Cuban sandwich with a side of mac & cheese. All of their side choices looked delish, but I always have to try the mac & cheese and this one was topped with bacon! My sandwich was stacked high with meat & delicious! I could only eat ½ & took the rest home. My Dad ordered the Captain John Smith wrap that was loaded with pulled pork, cheddar, & a corn salsa. He said it was messy to eat, but very tasty. My mom ordered their club sandwich for the second time since she liked it so much.
I’ll stop in again next time I’m in that area!

I actually started this review in 2013, so please refer to a more recent review when deciding where to go in Smithfield.
I have a soft spot for Smithfield, mainly because I enjoy main street sort of towns. This Taste is located right on the main drag through town and I needed a place to take the kids to eat that wasn’t a McDonalds. I popped my head in to look at the menu and saw some good vegan alternatives. The waitress was very nice and great with my kids. The coffee was good and the prices was right for the salads that we had.
My kids had a good time walking around the store. I made the mistake of letting my son carry his drink and of course he dropped the glass. It shattered in one of the aisles. I was mortified but these things happen. The staff there was fantastic and were very nice to a Dad who was trying to keep it altogether. If I remember correctly I liked the selection of local honey, wine, and they gave us samples. I would go back there if in a pinch if we needed to eat out.
Bathrooms and ambience was nice café feel to it. Thumbs up.

I enjoy the atmosphere and accommodating wait staff. We came here after the Farmers Market one afternoon for lunch. I asked if they had seating in a quiet secluded area because my child was under the age of 1 and I did not want to disrupt any other patrons if he became moody.
I had a soup and seasoned fries which were both good but nothing to write home about. My little one had mac and cheese which he loved. The server was especially kind and sweet with my child so that is always appreciated. The prices were fair for the food. It seemed to take a while for the food to come out, they were not very busy at the time so that is a slight negative.
The gift shop area was interesting in a positive manner. I would return one day if I were hungry after the market.

Lots of free peanut and chocolate samples!
I just stopped in during my shopping adventure downtown. It looks like a really great place to eat and I would love to try their food sometime. There is a little shop area where one can buy Virginia Peanuts and peanuts of every flavor.

After a day of hiking at Windsor Castle park, we decided to stick around Main street and find a place for lunch with our 2 year old. We’re glad we did, because Taste of Smithfield turned out being a really cute café with a children’s menu. It’s kind of a shop/​café in one; lots of opportunities to buy Virginia wine, peanuts, sweets, sauces, hams, you name it! Everything was from local vendors. My husband wanted to investigate their cured hams, so we ordered the Taste of Smithfield platter as an app that came with Smithfield’s famous cured hams, blue cheese crumbles, local peanuts, dried fruit, and toasted pita bread along with a spicy, honey mustard that I was obsessing over. This was really yummy and offered a sample of what they really do here.
Their children’s menu was decent too, we went with the pork slider with a side of sweet potato chips and lemonade. My daughter was happy with it so I was too. I ordered the veggie goat cheese flat bread and my husband got the pulled pork sandwich, carolina style. I will say, for a big meats and bbq place, they really need to have a bunch of different sauces at the table to put on the sandwiches. They have a peach «hot sauce», but that wasnt really cutting it. Overall, everything was so fresh and tasty. I’m glad local Unilocalers steered us to this spot!