The Tavern in Old Salem

Both of my kids have worked for the owners of this restaurant. It is a family-​owned restaurant and has fabulous meals. My daughter occasionally runs into the chef at the local fresh vegetable markets on Saturdays. They create their meals from what they find here locally. I’ve never had a bad meal. Please do not waste your time and money and order chicken pie! You can get this anywhere. When you come to The Travern order a real meal and you will be fabulously filled up

Such a historic and cool place to dine! Right in the heart of Old Salem is the Salem Tavern! A cool old building that dates back a couple hundred years that is a nice place to dine! The rooms of the house serve as the dining areas, and reminiscing thoughts flood your mind as you wonder back to the Moravian days! The food here is nice, not outstanding, but solid at least. A bit overpriced, but you don’t seem to mind as you’re paying for the historical experience! I’d recommend the Moravian Chicken Pie, well, because you’re in Old Salem! It’s actually quite good, light, flakey, full of chicken and vegetables, and a nice gravy interior! Lunch is a bit better served as far as prices go, but just to experience this once is quite the treat!

Delicious dinners with the Moravian «twist » followed by the British colonial dessert, Syllabub. It’s a must do.

Went there for lunch by myself. A lady in a shop recommended the Tavern as well as the chicken pie. This is my first time in WS and I have to give this place a great review. The hostesses dress in period clothes and the restaurant itself is charming. The server was very professional and knew his stuff! The chicken pie was soooo good! You won’t regret ordering it. I was tempted to have dessert but I had plans to go down the street to the bakery. This place is a definite go-​to in old Salem.

Ate hear for brunch and food was great. Staff was friendly and service was prompt. Classic Moravian Pie is a go too but brunch quiche is very tempting.
Only thing to be aware of is this a historic house so it does get a little hot some times and the bathrooms are a bit cramped.
Overall very pleasant and a great place to take family and friends from out of town.

Five of us went here for lunch today. Nice place & broad menu. We had bratwurst, two salads, and two corned beef hash & egg sandwiches, plus shared two desserts. Food was very good; service was quick & friendly; overall a good experience at a reasonable price.

Horrible experience, rude inhospitable hostess staff. Not accommodating at all. We drove from Charlotte to meet a group we were late so they wouldn’t allow us to join our group that they had sat 7 minutes before we got there. There were 2 open tables available sitting empty for over 40 minutes right there by our group but they would not seat us. I left and called to speak to the manager and he would not come to the phone. Then he just called my phone, lied about how he got my phone number (he said that I had given it to him when made my reservation, not True. My guess is caller ID from when I called to speak with him). Then he was so incredibly ride on the phone. I am blown away at how he runs that business. 23 years in the restaurant business and I am shocked at how he just handled himself. Don’t bother visiting this place utter disappointment.

Another visit to the Salem Tavern, this time for my birthday dinner. Four of us started with drinks in the tiny and cozy bar, then on to a delicious dinner. My salad included goat cheese and apple, and the filet mignon was perfectly cooked. The meat was tender and tasty, accompanied by vegetables. I shouldn’t have, but I ordered the chocolate pecan pie. Very rich, but good. Service was solid.

Tomato bisque with blue cheese crumbles was amazing! So creamy!
The free pumpkin muffins rocked!
The grilled on a croissant was very flavorful. Tons of cheese and very flaky.

Stopped in for lunch on this overcast and chilly day. Immediately loved the ambience and historic vibe. Tables, chairs and décor, along with the small segmented rooms, make you feel like you’re back in time.
My server, Michelle, was great and told me about the food options in great detail… Even getting into the Moravian culture and explaining some of it to me. I ordered the chicken pie, which was sooo good. It’s just chicken in the pie. The veggies (mashed potatoes and green beans) are on the bottom of the pie slice (yes, slice!). The gravy on it was really yummy, too. The folks next to me raves about the New Brunswick stew, so I would try that on a second trip here.
Michelle was attentive and never let my water get low. I enjoyed the whole experience and would recommend!

This is one of the best experiences I’ve had in Winston!
I’ve spent time at the bar, had brunch, and had dinner.
I loved brunch. We dined outside in the late summer and it was a really nice experience. The bread basket has cornbread muffins and rolls. I usually skip the bread so I have room for me meal, but theses were such a treat. I had the pork tenderloin benedict. It was perfect! The breaded pork tenderloin was crisp and the eggs were poached nicely. The hollondaise was rich and flavorful.
We also had tomato soup with bacon and smoked blue cheese. Excellent.
For dinner, I had the Moravian chicken pie and it was the best I’ve ever had. The crust was buttery and flaky and the chicken was tender.
The bar is a quiet place to have drinks with friends and catch up. My friend and I shared a meat and cheese plate and there was a nice variety of different things to try. I recommend The Tavern. It’s a true Winston experience.

I really really liked this place! My boyfriend had the chicken pot pie while I had the pot roast. Both were phenomenal! I can’t wait to get back to this place. Not only was the restaurant amazing but so was the surroundings. It was my first time in Old Salem and it’s completely different than Winston, you just drive into a completely new setting. It’s a great restaurant to go to if you like great food and great scenery. We both walked around the town, they have a ton of good shops!

I’ve ate here several times. The staff is always so sweet. The food freshly prepared.

It’s unique and historic and they serve pretty good food. A nice experience.
Too bad our lone server was a dodo. More on her later.
The Food:
6 different entrees. No stinkers. The highlights were the New York Strip, the pork shank, and the fish special — grilled redfish. The beet salad was very good as well.
Duck was so-​so, and the chicken pie portion was on the small side.
It’s a smallish menu, so choices are limited but varied.
The Experience:
Prices are commensurate with fine dining around town.
The different dining rooms are intimate and awkward, but part of the 200 year old charm.
The chairs — all wood and period-​design, though charming, are not the most comfortable.
As I said, our server was lousy. She needed to ask how the special was prepared. She brought kids meals 10 minutes AFTER the adult meals. She added nothing to the meal.
Luckily, the rest of the staff was friendly and attentive.
4 stars for serving good food in a historic setting and pulling it off (mostly).
A place you should go at least once if you live in the area.

A little bit of a rocky start. First off the host gave me the wrong daily menu. Spent 10 minutes deciding on what I wanted for my meal just to find out it was not offered today.
The server next told me she couldn’t serve alcohol until noon so I ordered an ice tea. I was really looking to try a nice Malbec with my lunch. In few seconds she comes back and said that it was a «blue law» thing and only on Sunday (today was Friday) so I did get a nice argentine wine.
The daily soup of the day was French onion which I ordered. There were two pieces of either onion peal or plastic (I couldn’t tell) in it.
For my main I ordered the Tavern Chicken Pie which surprised me when it arrived. I was thinking I would get something like a chicken pot pie but instead got a pie wedge of white chicken meat about 2 ½ inch high. It was well cooked but not what I expected.
All in all it was a good meal but better attention to detail would have warranted a high score. The colonial charm was nice with some of the servers in period garb and some in modern «chef-​like» outfits. I was confused.
To top it off — no pen to sign the tab.

This was my second time having lunch at The Tavern. Both times were very good. I had their sausage with homemade kraut which was tasty. On this visit I had the club with a side of Brunswick stew. The club was delicious and the stew was awesome. The stew was a special as well as the NC wine that I tried. The wine was delicious and a generous pour. At 5 dollars it was great deal. They give you yummy warm bread and muffins with your drinks. The only thing I was not a big fan of was the Linzer tart. It was more rustic then what I was used to and it was too tart. I would just get something else in the future. It can be busy so you may have to wait but visit the bar while waiting. The bartender was friendly and informative. He also set me sample the wine before ordering a glass.

I enjoyed a wonderful Sunday brunch at the Tavern with some friends recently. I would highly recommend making a reservation, at least for Sunday brunch. The food was amazingly good and service was excellent as well. Highlights of our meal were the French Toast and the Corned Beef Hash. We were seated by the side window in a small room right off the main foyer. It was a perfect sunlit spot to eat and people watch.
Although we didn’t pay to tour Old Salem that day, we were still able to walk around and enjoy the architecture as well as wander in various gift shops. What a special place this is! A real historic gem situated in the heart of the Triad!

We had lunch here yesterday, first time in a number of years. As a matter of fact it was the Old Salem Tavern then. The ownership, the name, and much of the menu changed in April, 2012, with a goal of creating a restaurant experience that was attractive to locals as well as tourists, while staying true to its Moravian heritage.
This is an interesting restaurant to dine in because it is true to the entire Old Salem atmosphere with the furnishings simple and functional, the hard, straight back chairs not at all built for comfort, the lighting rather dim, a touch gloomy even. Much of the staff is costumed in period clothing, though this was not universal, which seemed a bit odd.
We ordered the Chicken Pie and the Tomato Pie, and while we were waiting for our meals, we enjoyed the complimentary bread basket of Pumpkin Muffins and Yeast Rolls. The muffins were excellent and are made in house daily. The rolls were nice as well, though they are not made in house, and actually are Sister Schubert’s frozen rolls.
The «Tavern Chicken Pie» served here is authentically Moravian in that it includes no vegetables, and has a thin gravy. The pie I ate here was a little too dry, the meat was all white meat, and the crust was not especially tasty. This is a popular dish here, but it is not one I’d consider ordering again, more of a «pot pie» man, I guess, and I prefer the meat to be a mixture of white and dark. The mashed potatoes were very nice, but the green beans (which were layered under the slice of chicken pie, for some reason lost on me) were barely cooked and lacked flavor.
The Heirloom Tomato Pie with Griddle Peach Salad was a bit off, as well. The pie was mostly composed of green and yellow tomatoes with almost no traditional red tomatoes to soften the taste, thus making it very sharp tasting. The Griddled Peach Salad was excellent, with the diced peaches being nicely warmed.
The service was very good, once it got underway. They weren’t ready for business when we walked in shortly after 11, seemed very surprised to see us at that time. All in all, probably not a meal we’d repeat, especially at lunch.

Being near the top of the review chain in Winston-​Salem, I was excited to try this place on our first visit to Old Salem. I’ve been told that reservations are highly recommended if you want a table at this small establishment, so we had early reservations and got right in. So let’s get into it:
Food: Easily a 5. The selection is wide, with touches of the style of the old days. Most of the dishes are hearty, homestyle meals like boar shank and chicken pie. Soups were delicious, and the biscuits and corn muffins they brought out were moist and very flavorful.
Service: More easily a 5. Our particular server (Erika) was super friendly and highly knowledgeable about everything on the menu. She knew the menu from top to bottom and wasn’t afraid to offer real suggestions. The food came out as quickly as I would expect from a place of this caliber.
Atmosphere: Just delightful. The Tavern has been there since, well, Old Salem, and it very much feels like you’ve stepped back into the 18^th or 19^th century (I’m not very good at history). Meals are served in what clearly used to be a bedroom.
Price: On par for the quantity and quality. Two courses each and a dessert got us out for $ 63 before tip.
The overall experience is great, and from the way I hear it, this place is a staple of Old Salem. You won’t be disappointed.

What a delectable meal I was served at The Tavern in Old Salem. My family and I went to lunch on Sunday and we all enjoyed what we ordered. I find it customary to taste everyone’s dish; they were all great! We had the Pot Roast, the Farmer’s Plate (Sunday brunch breakfast), the Chicken Pie, the Crayfish and Grits, and the Bratwurst and Sauerkraut. They have scaled down there original menu and added a few new items. The new portion sizes are perfect. They allow you to eat to contentment, but not over-​indulge to the point of misery.
The service was prompt, and our waitress was friendly.
I love the cute bread basket filled with fresh baked yeast rolls and mini pumpkin muffins. They are both great!
We had the Apple Crisp and the Gingerbread with lemon ice cream for dessert. Lemon ice cream might sound a bit strange, especially paired with the gingerbread, but it’s actually a perfect pairing! The subtle tartness of the ice cream, paired with the spiciness of the gingerbread rocked my socks.
I would definitely give The Tavern in Old Salem a try. Just make sure to make reservations. This place fills up rather quickly!