Restaurants near James River Float Company

Our food and service was excellent. The restaurant decor is nothing special and the tables are too small. The noise level is way too much. It was impossible to have conversation.

Fresh made Paparadelle, nice texture! Rich and meaty Bolognese. Server was knowledgeable, and attentive, but gave us all the time that we wanted for dining and conversation.

Wonderful steakhouse. Great decor, impeccable service, and the food was delicious.

We went June 19th which was during Lynchburg Restaurant Week and Shoemaker’s was participating (or so we thought). Once we arrived we asked our server about Restaurant Week and he thought it was the following week. I then told him that their website said it was happening currently and was pretty positive I was correct. He went and asked and sure enough it was the night we were there. So, we placed our order off of the Restaurant Week menu. A few minutes later our server came back and said he was sorry, but they didn’t have the necessary inventory in stock to fulfill our order. That was very disappointing as my wife had based our visit to this particular restaurant on that particular menu. Thankfully they were generous enough to honor the pricing and select off their normal menu. My thought process on it all is why even participate in Restaurant Week if you’re not going to inform your staff about it, or be able to honor the menu that you’ve provided. The other issues that I have were that I understand they were going for a retro Jazz type of atmosphere. Which is fine, but maybe a different mix of songs would be better rather than the same trumpet it felt like we listened to the entire time we were there, which brings me to my last point. Our reservation was at 6pm and we arrived a little early at 5:45. Thankfully they were able to seat us early. We didn’t leave the restaurant until around 7:45 and they didn’t seek to really get very busy until about ~7pm. Two hours seems like a long time for two people dine. Overall, the food was fantastic. We enjoyed the restaurant itself and the ambiance for the most part (other than the same sounding Jazz music, which is just personal preference). We didn’t see any necessary reason it should’ve taken two hours to eat and were pretty disappointed about the Restaurant Week menu issue. Overall our experience was about a 3.5/5 and could’ve been higher if not for a few manageable issues.

Reservation for 10, bye restaurant didn’t open until 10:30. Had a Mother’s Day buffet, but the actual buffet didn’t open until close to 11. One staff member was not pleasant, but our server was nice just hard to find as he rarely came to our outdoor table when they got busier. Food was great