Honeysuckle Rose

If you have food allergies, come to Honeysuckle Rose! I have Celiacs Disease and 8 major protein allergies. Honeysuckle Rose was more than accommodating to my dietary restrictions. The food was amazing, the staff was phenomenal, and the atmosphere was unique, intimate, and comfortable. Our tasting experience was the highlight of our weekend in Charleston. We will definitely be back!

As a passionate foodie from LA who eagerly travels for meals, and with a couple dozen Michelin-starred meals under my belt, I had great expectations of Honeysuckle Rose based on the price point, the requirement of a prepaid booking on Tock, and the reviews waxing poetic about the experience. I had misgivings when we entered a restaurant built to accommodate maybe 20 but with 30+ seats packed in, worsened when the chefs described their foods as containing far too many elements and seriously mismatched ingredient lists, anticipating I’d be facing a horrendously confused palate. This is a strong warning to passionate foodies: the food is unbelievably bad, demonstrating the gross ineptitude of the too-young and terribly inexperienced “chefs”. One particular dish stole my appetite: it was supposed to be pasta with escargot and a popover with bacon jam. (“Skye”, one of the chefs, introduced the dish by saying she hates bacon, but her fellow chef “River” insists people like it, so…?) I had requested a gluten-free option for this dish; my popover tasted like moist cardboard, and my “pasta” was missing escargot…and was made of nearly-raw and crunchy potato ribbons. When I asked the server to remove my dish because the potato “pasta” was uncooked, she returned two minutes later with a message from the chefs: they HAD to be prepared that way, because if they had been cooked, they’d have become mashed potatoes. OBVIOUSLY; I was simply bewildered by their choice to substitute raw potato for pasta instead of using literally anything else that could actually be cooked. Moving on, we were then served scallop-crusted halibut. You read that right: they thinly sliced scallops and laid them atop hunks of halibut, searing the whole thing scallop-down, placed in a puddle of “bread sauce” with (wasted) caviar stirred in. It was served with red wine. Why? Because the sommelier is the former spirits director at another establishment…not a sommelier. Add to that when I commented on the color of one particular wine, he confessed he’s colorblind. At one point I excused myself to the restroom to discover its decor consisted of dozens of framed topless playboy pinups…one of which was just the staring eyes of a centerfold framed and set on the back of the toilet tank, ostensibly to watch the patrons use the facilities. Beside the toilet was a nightstand featuring an open jewelry box displaying available Tampax tampons for those in need. I returned to the table and told my husband I was on the verge of walking out, just as our lamb course (that, yes, followed a beef course) arrived at our table. I took a bite of the lamb; it was fine, but utterly unspecial. It was accompanied by a chunk of lamb sausage, which I also sampled. The casing was so tough that I had to pry out a piece of sausage, which left the casing lying on my plate partially attached to the sausage and resembling a used condom. (Fitting with the bathroom display.) The sausage itself was so heavily spiced it was inedible. I stood up, told a server we urgently needed to leave, and we made our escape. The meal was a depressing and painful disaster for anyone who truly loves exceptional food and real fine dining. If, like me, you’re willing to spend a small fortune for a great meal with your sweetheart and prefer peaceful places with elegant ambiance and deeply experienced, professional staff…AVOID THIS PLACE LIKE THE PLAGUE. Two stars for their effort. But this was amateur hour with inexperienced chefs mimicking fine dining and failing miserably. You’ve been warned.