The Fainting Goat

Not Recommended as a Place to Eat

The Fainting Goat
118 10th St SW
Waverly, IA 50677

Normally I don't write bad reviews about restaurants, but after dining at this family friendly pub three times now I can't find a good thing to say about it except for the attempt by the servers to keep things from getting out of hand.

Waverly is a small town in Iowa, only twenty minutes north of Cedar Falls, the town itself is beautiful and I've enjoyed living here so far, but one of the down sides is the lack of places to go to eat, or even sit for a cup of coffee. However, I'd heard good things about the Fainting Goat and, only a few weeks after we moved in, we gave the place a try thanks to a free meal voucher that was in the welcome kit. It wasn't going to pay for all of us, but meant we only had to pay for the children's meals.

The interior is nice enough, though they could do with not cramping quite so many tables into the small family dining area. All it takes is one stroller, or a high chair or two and you're looking at constant near misses with the food.

All three times we've been there the same problems have been evident.

1- not enough staff for the main dining times. The servers who are there do their best, but are obviously run off their feet and the kitchen is under staffed. It's the only reason why simple starters take between thirty minutes and an hour to arrive. And then in two cases they were over cooked.

2- Pre cooked foods. Now I've worked in the trade, many restaurants use pre-cooked, prepared meals to some extent, but you don't then over cook them to the point of them being rubber.

3- Kitchen staff who don't look at the check. Twice out of the three times we dined there the wrong items came to the table, or items were missing from the meal.

4- No attempt by the management to make good on obvious problems. When the issues were brought to the management not once in those three visits was anything, and I mean anything, done about the situation. Not so much as a free drink or even an apology. Just a half hearted smile as they refused to even look me in the eyes.