Smoky Mountain Brewery

We try to find new places to try out and find out about their handicap accessibility. Since we had never eaten here, we scanned the menu outside the door and found they have a small vegetarian section. Oh yay! Let's try it out.

From their website: "We have an informal area on the ground floor which seats up to 35 guests. This area is open to the lobby and kitchen service window. The main dining room, bar and lounge are located upstairs on the second floor."  Translation: If you are handicap, you will be sitting on the bottom floor where you enter the restaurant which looks into the kitchen. You will literally be sitting next to pallets of "barley & hops" for their beer-making which they do. I expected to see that where they make the beer in the back, but not sitting next to the dining tables. We would have loved to have seen the main dining area and the decor, but it is upstairs. Well, ok, atleast we have seating in the restaurant.

We ordered our drinks and looked over the menu. As we waited, and it did take quite awhile for the waitress to come back with our drinks even though this was right after lunch and they weren't that busy, we could see into the kitchen. Now you know what they say...if you could see into any restaurant kitchen you would never eat there again! I would love to say that this was the exception to the rule. But no. The cook coughing over the food was bad enough, but not the worst. I don't know what the health code laws are in TN, but I'm thinking VA must be stricter. For example, people with long hair have to have it pinned up and/or in a hair net. Not the case in TN I'm guessing from what I saw. I don't know about others, but hair in food grosses me out just as bad as anything. You're not going to believe what we witnessed. Our waitress brought a pizza back to the kitchen from upstairs and told the cook he put some topping on it that wasn't supposed to be there. She then proceeded to pick it off with her bare hands, told the cook to throw some cheese on it to cover it up, and she'd serve it back to them. Ok, we were grossed out by her hands all over the pizza, but I'm thinking about the poor person who ordered it. What if they're allergic to whatever she just picked off? The residue is still on there, even if it is now covered in more cheese to hide it.

Yeah, we zipped out of there before you could say "holy smoky mountains!" We left our drinks and ran!  Yikes. I hope this was some freak isolated event, but it doesn't matter to us. We will never eat here after what we saw. Oh, and I didn't even get to find out if there were any restrooms on the bottom floor for the patrons there. I don't think there was.

Really? I think not.