The Hummingbird Restaurant

Food was pretty damn good. French onion soup was superb. The service was extremely slow. We arrived at 11:30am and didn’t get out until 1:40… We weren’t eating slow, they just took forever.

This is great little café and everything is reasonably priced. We had the chicken salad sandwich, the hamburger, and the pulled BBQ. The hamburger was a great classic sandwich. The chicken salad was very good and the ciabatta bun was great. The BBQ was okay, but a little bland. The bread pudding was warm and very rich. Also, the employees are very nice. Definitely worth a visit.

this place is a confusing conundrum of mixed signals. while it is a cutesy boutique-​style little café, one gets the feeling of upscale upon entering. the waiters are all white-​shirted and tie-​d. very few tables, again suggesting some air of exclusivity. i’ve visited at various times, lunch, late afternoon, evening. the music is one fairly short loop of show tunes. after one’s initial visit, it becomes a beat-​down. truly annoying.
the owner touts ‘freshness’ as his restaurant’s mantra. «we don’t even have a deep fryer», he said. However, the vegetables I ate were canned. the salad, unremarkable. the hamburger was smallish and overpriced. the vegetable plate was a sampling of three vegetables, in very small servings. but, the entrée i ordered at dinner was the one that pushed me out the door: the salmon croquettes. completely devoid of flavor, it was as if this was the first time the cook was introduced to the concept. no flavor, just fish. to ask me to pay $ 10 for that was a crime.
i haven’t been back.

This is an interesting little place. The original The Hummingbird is a steamliner train that stopped in the depot nearby, once you realize that it makes more sense.
Dickson is a cute little hamlet where I grew up, and hubby and I visited Hummingbird this weekend for dinner while in town visiting the parents. It’s tiny… there are only nine tables in the whole place.
When you walk up the three stairs and open the door, you think it’s trying to be fancy. There’s a richly detailed carpet, and black tablecloths, and it’s quiet. We thought oh, no, here we are in shorts and t-​shirts not knowing. The hostess greeted us and promptly seated us not even caring that I was wearing Crocs, so I guess we’re OK.
After I pondered my surroundings, there are lots of enlarged color photos of train bridges and some historic photos of the train depot nearby. Near our table there was this huge urn style vase with a huge floral, I assume fake, and above that a (faux? I assume) trey ceiling with what appeared to be a vintage tin ceiling painted dark metal. Once I looked at that for awhile, and then noticed the carpet and the line up of the tables, I think we were supposed to feel like we were in a train dining car. OK, I can go with that. There was also playing period music from the 1930’s, 40’s, and 50’s… which I enjoyed.
The food is not fancy, which is why I was pondering the décor and trying to decide what they were going for. They had a large list of sandwiches and burgers, and for evening entrees an added chicken, salmon croquettes, a hamburger steak, and ribs. Nothing was more than $ 9.99, and included two sides.
We ordered an appetizer of mini-BLT’s, delightful little tea biscuits halved and toasted, then slathered with mayo infused with bacon and little halves of grape tomatoes. Yummy, for sure.
The service was fast, and at times a bit too eager. The two servers were both young and almost constantly stopping to check in on you… which is better than the alternative.
They do not offer alcohol, so we had tea which was oddly served in oversized red wine goblets, which was fun, but unusual.
Our particular table had under the glass an open newspaper with 1935 that halfway through dinner, I noticed had an ad from I kid you not my grandfather’s local business. small world.
I enjoyed the Main Street Chicken, but hubby sampled it and relayed it would have been too sweet for him… the apple cider marinade was perfect for me. Green beans were southern and good, and I had started with a salad. The salad was nothing special, and it’s a small thing… but their choice of silverware included those very small forks with only three tines. You know the ones? Imagine trying to eat a salad that had long strips of shredded lettuce with that… not easily done. I wasn’t that hungry anyway, but still.
Hubby reported the salmon croquettes were OK, but not great. He had a baked potato that was good, but nothing especially great.
My real disappointment, and the reason they got three stars instead of four, was dessert. I ordered the Hummingbird Cake because I really enjoy hummingbird cake, and you just don’t see that very often. What I was served was so crumby, and so ridiculous, honestly I can’t believe they served it to me in a restaurant. The slice was cut very, very thin… you could tell by the small silver of cream cheese icing, and in all seriousness was maybe the depth of a pencil. And it had completely fallen apart where it was all crumbs… and remember the tiny forks with only three tines from the salad? That’s what they bring you for dessert as well… think about that.
I would have mentioned to the server or hostess to help advise them (they only opened two months ago), but about that time I got a message where we needed to head back to the parents house, but really… that was a record breaker.
All in all, not bad at all, and very reasonable prices, just a limited menu and slightly quirky.