Memphis Eats: Trolley Stop Market Review

I went to Trolley Stop Market a second time on March 9, 2013. I’ve update this review to reflect the more current experience (it was BAD):

I’m not one to leave bad reviews about restaurants, but I had the worst restaurant experience I’ve ever had at Trolley Stop Market.

I’ve been to Trolley Stop a couple times and I enjoyed the food. The service wasn’t that great but I gave it a pass because the food was decent. I went back last night because my husband had never been and really wanted to try the pizza.

We arrived a little bit around 7:30. There were several large parties but they were seated where I couldn’t tell if they had food or not. The waitress seated us in the back and then left for a while before returning to get our order. The slow service seemed typical and since they were busyI gave her a pass.

We ordered a medium margherita pizza. We were enjoying ourselves and laughing around so we didn’t really notice that time was passing. However at 30 minutes I noticed we still didn’t have food and we were going to be late to our next engagement. The waitress finally returned and let us know we would have pizza soon. That was a lie because the pizza didn’t come.

At 50 minutes she came back and asked “Have you still not gotten your pizza?” I said no and by this time I asked for a box and the check because we needed to leave. She offered a free dessert but as we had to leave that did us no good at all.

Five minutes later we still had no pizza and I was seriously upset. I asked to speak to a manager who did not seem to concerned with our terrible experience. He told us our pizza had been sent to the wrong table and we could have the next large margherita pizza that was coming out in a minute.

By the time we finally got the pizza I had to drive and couldn’t eat. I ended up wasting $26 on a pizza I didn’t get to eat a slice of until it was cold.

I was once a fan of Trolley Stop Market, but no more. I’m more likely to warn friends to stay away. Such a shame since the food is okay and the idea behind the restaurant is great. Service matters too. Hopefully the servers and especially the manager figure that out.

My previous review from June 8, 2011 is below:

Yesterday I met my friend Ryan for lunch. (Hi, Ryan!!)

He suggested we go eat at the Trolley Stop (Trolley Stop Market is the full name). I was excited because I’d heard about this place a few times and wanted to try out some of their food.

Well, I wanted to try the pizza there. Apparently everyone thinks they have the BEST pizza. All the online reviews said you had to try the pizza.

So we went for lunch and it turned out to be a rather large sized yet completely charming restaurant. We entered via the front door so we could scope out the whole place and the first thing I noticed was the massive pizzas on display. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever seen pizzas that big.

We checked out the menu and I decided on pepperoni pizza slice with a side of squash. I wanted a side of something and squash just called to me.

The cool thing about Trolley Stop is that they source all their ingredients from local farms. They are all about local and sustainable foods which is really cool. On the menu you can see the farms they use for ingredients, including an orchard in the town where I grew up. It was nice to see names of places I recognized and know have quality food instead of some mystery food on my plate like most restuarants.

The food was really good. I loved the squash and the pizza was in fact quite delicious. It was way too big of a slice in my opinion though. It was probably more like two slices but I’m sure most people love that. It’s a really good deal too since my meal was only like $6.75 or something around there and all the sandwiches and burgers are around the same price.

Tasty, affordable, and local? Yep, it’s a good place.

I’ll definitely be going back for lunch again while I’m here. I saw a few people who ordered wraps that looked amazing so I’ll have to try that out next time. There will definitely be a next time!