Jersey Lily's Roadhouse Grill

Not my favorite place for a steak but the filet is tasty and this is the go to place for events at my work. The bloomin onion at my last visit was good.

Try the warm bacon dressing!

Jersey Lilly's has been around for a number of years.  In general, my husband and I have experienced hits and misses eating here throughout its tenure in Roanoke.   Lately, it seems everything is going downhill.   My mother and father-in-law eat here almost every week, if not every other week because the prices are reasonable and it is close to their home, and they agree - it is a slowly sliding downhill scale.  Yesterday, we ate there for a birthday.   There was virtually no one in the restaurant; however, our waitress who was maybe responsible for 1-2 tables in addition to ours had to be asked to refill our drinks.   We were never offered any of their bread they are supposed to be famous for and had to ask for this - then when she did bring it, she brought 3 rolls even though there were 4 people at the table.   Hello?  Common sense?!?!?  Then, when dinner was served she brought my father-in-law's salad out with his meal and said she liked to eat her salad with her meal, so assumed he would too.   I think really, she was just so busy doing whatever else she was doing aside from waiting tables that she forgot to bring the salad out earlier when people normally receive salads as a course.   We also had to ask her to remove dirty dishes from our table which were clearly empty.   Anyway, I was supposed to get a certain grouping of sides with my entree and those were wrong.  Fried apples that came with the meal were flavorless and rubbery.   My father-in-law ordered a filet mignon, as he always does when he goes there.   Clearly, it did not look like a filet from the time it was delivered.   If I were a waitress, I would question if I was picking up the right cut of meat before delivering it to a customer's table; after all, filets have a pretty distinct appearance.   The outside was burned to a strange charred crisp when the steak was supposed to be of medium doneness.   The inside was slightly pink, but the texture of the meat was all wrong.   The inside of the meat (the way the muscle fibers and fat looked) appeared to be much closer to the texture of a sirloin steak....a much cheaper cut of meat.  My father-in-law had to spit out several chunks of gristle.   It was very sinewy.  He was not pleased.  He knew from ordering the same thing religiously what this cut of meat should be like - tender, juicy and hardly any fat.   It was anything but.  When we brought this to the attention of the waitress (in a very nice way) she immediately jumped on the defensive.  She kept saying "I pressed filet" - "I pressed filet".   What she could not understand is we did not care what she pressed, whatever came out from the kitchen and cook staff might not have equaled what she pressed.   Once we brought this to her attention, she then said well let me go ask the cook what cut of meat he served you.  She later came back and said the cook said that it was a filet, but because they butcher their own meat there, it is possible that he got a cut of meat that was not the standard quality of a filet, but it was still a filet; after all, they cannot control the meat that comes from the cow.  She offered this explanation in an argumentative tone and basically acted as though we should be happy with that, end of story.  Unfortunately, the filet is pretty much the most expensive thing  on the menu and is supposed to be a better cut of steak.   We had to suggest to the waitress to remove this from our ticket because she did not seem to get the nature of our complaint and did not willingly offer to do so.  She only said I can have the cook make you a new one - and what, risk getting the same horrible piece of steak again?  And at this point, the rest of us were pretty much done eating because the whole thing took an unacceptable amount of time to get resolved properly.  I think we had all lost our appetites anyway at that point from being argued with repeatedly by the waitress.  The customer should be right - especially if they are a loyal customer with experience repeatedly eating this same menu item like my father-in-law, and at the least ,the customer definitely should not be argued with.   I felt this whole experience yesterday was not only disappointing, but ridiculous.   Finally, the manager came out with a sly grin and said he took the steak off our ticket.   We should not have needed to go through all the waitress-driven arguments, explanation, substantiation and reiteration for this to occur though.  It was clearly a sub-par piece of steak regardless of who chopped it up and cooked it, then served it.   We will not be going back.   It is doubtful my in-laws will either.

Love everything I have tried there so far. Lunch specials are cheaper and more filling than a drive thru