Culpeppers In Kirkwood

I was running lunchtime errands by this location and popped in to place a to-go order.  It was 12:30, but pretty quiet.  There was no host, so I went straight to the bar and waited for several minutes while the girl behind the counter wiped down glassware.  I was just about to say something when she noticed me.  She brought me a menu to get my order placed, and offered me water while I waited, very nice on a hot day.  
The lunch combo options of their most basic soup/salad/sandwich items did not appeal, so I went a la carte and got a small chef salad and 5 wings.  This set me back almost $20, so I was hoping for large enough portions for leftovers and great quality.  Unfortunately, this was not the case.  When I arrived back at the bar 25 minutes later as instructed, my food was sitting out waiting for me with nary an employee in sight. I had to open the containers to verify that it was mine, then left.  It may have been sitting out for several minutes, cold salad on top of hot wings.  
The chef salad was average with many ingredients but hardly any lettuce.  With the richness of a chef- eggs, cheese, meat, etc., greens and veggies are needed to balance that out.  They also used to have high quality chunks of cheese, a highlight of this salad, but now it is shredded from a bag.  
The wings were also lackluster- scrawny and a little dried out.  They did still have that famous Culpepper's flavor, and they were helped quite a bit with some bleu cheese.  
There are now so many places in the area for great wings, salads, and service, even right in that Kirkwood/Sunset Hills area close to my office, that I do not think I will be back to this location anytime soon.  Historically, I have had better luck with the CWE location, so let's hope that one is still the same great spot!

My fiance and I stopped in here after having our engagement pictures done. We hadn't been to a culpeppers in years, so we were looking forward to stopping in again. We should have known something was up when we walked in and there was only two other tables already there... out of the ENTIRE restaurant. But we were hungry and ready to eat!

The food itself was not so great. I'd compare it to Ponderosa food. My fiance got the steak and it might has well have been an unseasoned piece of shoe leather. He had to dump about a cup of A1 on it to make it edible, and even then he only finished it because he was starving. I got the BLT and I might as well have just made it at home. It was that bad. It looked like two slices of stale wonderbread holding two tiny slices of bacon, barely any mayo and decent amounts of tomato and lettuce. When I go to a restaurant for a BLT, I expect a big bag mamma jamma, with loaded crispy fresh bacon and dripping in mayo with cold, crisp lettuce and tomatoes. My lettuce and tomato was room temperature. The mayo was barely there at all. My bacon tasted chewy and microwaved, barely hot, and NOT fresh. I also only finished my food because I was starving. We both got fries that were lukewarm and soggy.

Our service was subpar from the start, and stayed that way throughout. It took an unreasonably long time for our food to come out. We saw more staff in the building than customers, yet our drinks stayed empty for long periods of time and I had to get up and go looking for napkins before someone would bring us some. Our waiter never stopped back to see if our food was done to our liking, and we had to get up and wave him over to finally get our bill. Our table had condiments and sweeteners set out near the salt and pepper, but they were empty. I had to get up and go to another table to get sweetener, ketchup and pepper. We might as well have stayed home. We would have eaten better food and gotten quicker service if we did.

I eat one thing, and one thing only at this restaurant.  Wings.  That's it.  They nail it.  Greer the bartender is AWESOME, she will take care of you.  I only eat at the bar and only during the dinner to late evening hours.

I'm sure there are other things on the menu (I guess they have a menu :-) but it doesn't matter to me, I couldn't go there and NOT have the wings.  Pair them with an icy cold beer and you're about as close to perfection as it gets.