Sweet Grass

I have been hearing nothing but great things about Sweet Grass, so my dad and I decided to try it. I ordered the Drunken Chicken with BBQ sauce. "Mehh," is the right word to describe it. I am not a picky eater by any means, especially when the food is fried and drenched in BBQ sauce. However, it was luke warm and tasted somewhere between pure salt and and burnt toast. I do have to say the tomato soup was delicious and so was the corn bread, but it's hard to go wrong with those signature items. Maybe next time I will order the fried green tomato BLT.

I have visited Sweet Grass twice and each time I had a very pleasant experience. The most recent time I visited I went with my mother for lunch. We had the Fried Green Tomatoes for an appetizer, which were much better than expected. I am not the greatest fan of tomatoes, but the blend of spices in the breading made them hard to resist. The corn relish gave a sweet indulgent accent to the peppered breading of the tomatoes. For my entree I ordered the Grilled Vegetable Melt. The sauteed vegetables were perfectly cooked and seasoned, with juicy mushrooms and delicious caramelized onions. The sandwich bread is usually brioche, but I asked for a substitution of wheat at which they were happy to do. The bread was toasted to perfection. The side of homemade chips are, to me, Sweet Grass' signature. The chips were cooked to a perfect level of crunchy goodness and seasoned just right.

The price range of Sweet Grass is very reasonable at lunchtime, as most dishes are around $8-10, a great price for a sit down restaurant in this area. My dish was $8.95 which is pretty standard for a sandwich at Sweet Grass. However, Sweet Grass does become a bit more expensive after lunch hours are over, with prices ranging from $12.95-21.95. The service at Sweet Grass was nothing out of the ordinary. It was not too slow, but it was not extremely fast either for the amount of people that were in the restaurant at the time I visited, which was not very many. The waitress we had was very nice and polite and did not give us any issues. She returned often to check on our progress and refill our drinks if they needed it.

The ambiance of the restaurant was very clean cut and modern, yet casual. It is a place that you can visit in jeans so you do not have to dress up, but I would not visit Sweet Grass in a t-shirt and running shorts either. The furniture has a modern theme and most of the light in the restaurant is natural light due to floor to ceiling windows in parts of the restaurant. Because I visited during lunch time, the restaurant was pretty quiet since there was not an exponential amount of traffic. It was nice to have a great conversation with my mother over great American food. We may just have to make this outing a tradition!

The one star is food, which is delicious. I had been to Sweet Grass several times before, during slower hours, and enjoyed a delicious meal, albeit very slowly due to the terrible service.

Everything else about this place is terrible. They seem to have only one waiter, a bespectacled, bearded dumbass that has no idea how to refill water, bring your food or pick up on the oh-so-subtle stare down that indicates you need something. Seriously dude, if there are two couples in the restaurant, you should be able to handle refilling their drinks. I've had this guy every time I've been to Sweet Grass, he's their only one...

Until tonight, I would say the food outweighed the terrible service, but no more. We went to Sweet Grass at 7 and told we could potentially wait 30-40 minutes. That would be completely understandable on a Friday night, had there not been SEVERAL tables empty. The waiting area was packed with people, but no one was clearing tables or making any attempt to seat anyone. The hostess disappeared shortly after we put our name in; several couples walked up to the hostess stand only to immediately walk away because there was no one that could help them. Where did you go, hostess? To stare at your vapid face in the mirror?

So no bus staff, no hostess, what about the kitchen staff? Easily seen from the lobby, no one in the kitchen was wearing gloves except the guy making the salads and he also used his gloved hands to sweep the floor. Excellent, I enjoy my salad with a side of broom dirt. No one was wearing hairnets either, even though several people had long hair and beards. None of the women in the kitchen wore their hair up when they dealt with the food, so I'm surprised that I haven't found my a hair in my food yet.

So screw you, Sweet Grass! Your po-boy is so insanely delicious but nothing is worth all of that hassle...

p.s. your parking lot is too fucking small for all the douchebag hipsters that show up