Magnolias

Our last day in Charleston, we decided to end with Magnolias which we had heard great things about.

We had reservations and were seated right away.

The interior of Magnolias is lovely. They have Magnolia branches in many of the windows. Throughout the restaurant is beautiful black ironwork featuring more Magnolias. The restaurant oozes Southern hospitality.

For appetizers we had the pimiento cheese and the down south egg rolls. The pimiento cheese was tasty, and served with tall pieces of crunchy flatbread. The down south egg rolls were excellent, the only problem was the small portion size. These were filled with chicken and collard greens with a great peach chutney. Off to a good start food wise.

Unfortunately, then came my entree I got the crab cakes and poached egg entree. This was a joke. The crab cakes were quite possibly the worst ones I have EVER had. The crab cakes which should really have been called filler cakes with a pinch of crab had hardly any crab and was mostly puffy bread crumbs. The eggs topping them were fine, as were the potatoes and ham served with it. However, the whole point of getting crab and poached eggs is for the crab cake. Thankfully for the others in our party, they had better luck with their meals. The guys both got the shellfish & grits, which were great. My friend got the chicken & biscuits which the chicken was crispy and and the biscuits soft.

As far as the service was concerned, that was pretty spotty as well. Granted, the restaurant got pretty full soon after we arrived, but I consistently felt as if our table was trying to be turned. When ordering the pimiento cheese that came with only flatbread, we asked if it was possible to get crackers or saltines or something of the sort because several in our party could not eat bread. Our waitresses response was that she'd see but she doubted it. She came back informing that no, there was nothing they could give us. Mind you, that one of the menu items were homemade chips that would have sufficed. All of this after our friend had asked for jelly to go with the biscuits and she said they had none. She didn't check, did not offer anything similar. I found this especially interesting after seeing that peach chutney was offered with a few plates. Guess she didn't think to offer that to him. It seemed like she downright either just did not want to take the time to make sure her customers had everything she needed or she was just lazy.

Overall, I was definitely disappointed in the experience.