Hickory Tavern

pretty good. jk guys. its the best ever. chicken fingers are lit. do reccomend. stop h8ting. thanks:)

Have been frequenting this location for years. Recently we have noticed the prices have gone way up and the food quality way down. Lunch for two kids and one adult over $ 50 — no alcohol! $ 16.75 for chicken tenders and a salad?!? Very disappointing. Just not what it used to be and definitely not worth the money!

Absolutely awful experience and will not be coming back again. Our family goes to this location once a week and always orders the same thing. Long story short, our server was beyond horrible with the worst attitude and informed our table she was a server not a servant. I could go on and on about the rude remarks she made to our table. Management handled extremely poorly all over a child being over 10 who wasn’t very hungry and wanted the kids chicken fingers. What happened to making your customers happy and since when do servers pick arguments with customers?

Just AWFUL. Absolutely AWFUL. Frozen, reheated trash. Not even worth elaborating further here. Read my other reviews for context.

Three girlfriends and I wanted a close-​by spot for a girls’ night out so we selected Hickory Tavern.
It was a Friday night so we anticipated a wait but quickly found a high-​top table in the bar area. The hostesses were not extremely friendly with their greetings but we found seating on our own. Our waitress was attentive and responsive. Appetizers came pretty quickly and so did our first round of drinks. The waitress seemed confused by some questions posed to her and misinformed one of my friends about wing preparation but overall her service was «ok».
The spinach and artichoke dip was really good but had a high chip-​to-​dip ratio. A little larger portion of dip would have been great. Three of us ordered wings which were rather tasty. My customary small Tavern salad was great as always. And the drink special was wonderful, $ 5 fireball shots (can’t ever go wrong with fireball shots).
Food was better than the overall service and we will definitely go back to our «neighborhood» spot.

This is the «McDonald’s of pub food.»
Mediocre food
Locations everywhere
You regret you came here after eating
Service is OK
The smell is really bad — old beer & grease
Lots of TV’s so good for out of town sports
Try to avoid this place if you can
You’ve been warned

Strike three. Have been here twice before and had to send something back because it was cold or wrong. Same thing happened again. Spoke to the manager and she apologized, but by then it was too late to wait for something else and we had to drive thru fast food on our way. Food is ok when you finally get whatever you want, but just ok. Nothing special.

My husband and I have been to this Hickory Tavern a few times in the past year. We really only go because it is close to our house, for we are not huge fans of the food. It is just mediocre. Every time we have been, there has been an issue. All the issues in the past were minor, for our servers have all been slow or forgotten minor things. Tonight put it over the edge, and I felt it necessary to share.
We arrived and the bartender seated us at a table with only a «food truck» menu. Our server took a couple minutes to come by and then had to find the late night menus. After she greeted us, it took her five minutes to bring our drinks (water and tea). Normally, I am very understanding and give excuses for why a server would be slow or make a mistake because I am a server myself. In this instance, the only table she had was ours.
We ordered a chips and salsa appetizer which came out with very greasy rubbery chips. We asked our server to please take them back. She did and got us new salsa and queso as well. They were better the second time, but still not excellent.
Our food came out just as we were finishing our appetizer and my husband’s food was wrong, for he wanted cheese on his burger. She took it back and brought his burger back with very little cheese on it. My food was correct and tasted okay.
My husband’s tea was almost empty and I had to get her attention to get him more tea, and shortly after that my water was empty. I looked and looked for her and she was over talking with the kitchen staff. I went without water for a good ten minutes. Finally, she came back over and asked if I wanted more water, but at this point, we were ready to go.
Our server was never rude and did fix all of the mistakes, but she never apologized. I felt as if she was ready to go home or wanted to socialize and did not care to make our dining experience a good one.
My husband and I will not be eating here again and will be dining at places that care about their customers, even if we do have to travel farther.

Food has really good gone downhill. Got a Carolina hot dog. The meat was burned and they served it on a child’s hot dog bun. Tater tots were good. Wife got chicken strips and they tasted like they had been fried in fish oil. Eggs in Tavern salad tasted old. Food there not as good as it used to be. Would not go back except we love our waitress. Beer was good.

nice staff some pretty good wings. .burgers are better than their burger restaurant a big plus

Redeemed! I wrote a scathing review of our last visit. What a difference a great server and attentive management makes. Food was super fast and delicious. The burger was hot and juicy. Tavern chips delivered promptly to the table along with our beverages. Even the music track was spot on for an enjoyable meal. Thank you!

There’s only one reason to come here. Alcohol and sports. The rest is marginal to poor. Its too bad. Its a good place to hang. If they could step up the food a bit and especially improve the insincere and unfriendly wait staff.

Some of the worst food I’ve had at a restaurant. Gordon Ramsey please visit this place!
Ordered a variety of food because we were fearful of the quality once we sat down and took a look at the place. The chicken tacos make Taco Bell seem like authentic Mexican. They are pretty much what they served in high school cafeterias. The smothered chicken was a disaster. It was supposed to be a chicken breast with onions, mushroom, etc with melted cheese, but what we got was an undercooked piece of chicken with veggies around it were ridiculously overcooked creating a pile of mush with cheese on top. We also ordered the blackened tilapia. Tilapia is a dirty fish already. Now imagine it frozen and thawed, overcooked, and then someone dumps some McKormick blackening spice all over it. One bite and I thought I was eating something that was received from the coals in the grill. Awful.
Bottom line… go here for a beer and to watch a game, but do yourself a favor and don’t order ANY of the food. It’s all frozen and thawed tasteless crap.

Really 12 dollars for a burger — this place raises its prices every week. Now they have removed Tuesday and Saturday pint night. What a monopoly — when competition comes they will loose a ton of business. Bad service and over priced bar food — don’t waste your time.

I totally understand that its Saturday night and there is a lot of people coming to the restaurant, but with good management and staff, you should be able to manage crowds better. Lets start with the hostess, I absolutely think that young girls should not be hired for this position. We got to the restaurant with a party of 13 (6 adults, 7 kids, one of the adults is pregnant) and it already went down hill that they tell the pregnant woman that we can give you a wait time because of the large party. Are you serious??? Do you not understand that pregnant woman and kids should be taken with more considerations? So we ended up waiting for 40 minutes for our seats and at one point they told us to split the party up in to 3 different tables! WTF, we got kids ranging from 2 – 8 how can we split the party up in to 3??? Who is going to take care of the kids? At another point they let another party of 2 to sit in a big U shape booth. WTF!!! If you let us sit there and then wait for the next booth to finish, then you would have resolve the problem, we explain the situation to them and not only did they not apologize, they just said they have a plan and said that we had only waited 15 minutes. Are you like F#$%#$ing serious? You tell your customers that you haven’t waited long enough for the seat yet??? Seriously, miss, what if one day you were pregnant and the hostess asks you to wait 40 minutes for a seat. These hostess so horrible, they don t smile, they have no manners and they always put up their piss off face and smirk at people like us. So we finally got seated and now we have to wait 40 minutes for the food. The food was good so that’s how they got the 2 stars. Waitress forgot to ask if our food was ok, left off an appetizer order and was always gone, but thats not her fault, she had to wait many other tables, but that is a management problem with the short staff. So all in all, this was not a good experience for us. Really want to let all restaurant owners to read and start training the hostess if you decide to hire young highschool girls, because they are not experience and not friendly at all. I come here as a customer so I do not want to be faced with pissed off young girls who are inconsiderate and rude!

Way over priced for the quality. The wait staff would rather chat amongst themselves than serve customers and when they do they are pretty rude about it. The food took a while and was luke warm. The taste of the food wasn’t great. I will never come back for sure. Usually I give places multiple chances but not this time. The manager did gear our concerns but really didn’t have a fix for the problems. There are much better places around

I’m a fan of the Hickory Tavern BYO salad. Nothing else really stands out at this particular location.

We have been here 4 times and I believe that I am a gluten for punishment. Absolutely the worst Hickory Tavern that We have been to.
Food is terrible no matter what you order and they can’t even get you beer order correct. Which in my opinion is sacrilege for a place with Tavern in their name.
Finally, the service is also terrible. Be prepared for you sever to be rude and disappear for long periods of time.
Do yourself a favor and avoid this place. Lucky a new one is open in Indian Trail. I have been there three times. The service and food are great.

The waitress did an outstanding job. She was very attentive and helpful. Our oysters were nicely chilled and had a good saltiness. They tasted very fresh however, the shells could have been scrubbed a little better. I liked that they had a local beer selection. The jerk wings were flavorful but, they could have had a bit more kick. All of us enjoyed the food and we even took home some cheesecake which was awesome

Had dinner here last night with the family. All in all things clicked along well but started off a bit rough.
Walking in at 7:00ish on a Friday night I knew we would have a wait so I was prepared. They had run out of the little table indicator/​beeper things so I was a little cautious and kept my eye on the host desk to make sure we weren’t skipped over, etc. About 20 minutes in I notice a four top that could easily be a five top just sitting there and it kind of got under my skin that we weren’t being ushered over to that table but again, the place was slammed and I put my patience gene to work.
Once seating (about 40 min) everything wen’t very well. The wait staff was quick, and even knew to bring out our youngest one’s food first! That’s a bonus! I had the black and blue chicken sandwich and it was great. A side of sweet potatoe fries with drizzled honey mustard really set it off.
They have a pretty decent bottled beer selection and the drafts are decent too so I’ll be back for sure.