Venable Rotisserie Bistro

Excellent in every respect - outstanding food produced by a chef and kitchen that attend to all the details and appear to really care about what they're doing. Have had one wonderful meal after another at this low-key, warm and welcoming restaurant. One of the best places in the Chapel Hill / Carrboro area, hands down.

Do a search on "restaurant noise" and you'll find multiple reports of restaurants getting louder. This place is an example.

Going to a restaurant, we're paying for more than just the food, it should be a pleasant, relaxing experience. If I cannot have a pleasant conversation with my companion across the table without shouting and straining to hear, I don't care about the food selection, its quality or the service, a social occasion becomes a tiring, irritating experience. We were both pleased to escape it, we ate quickly, asked our (very good) server for to-go boxes and departed. We won't return.

It isn't hard to reduce ambient noise levels, no new inventions are required. Some places do, some don't. I prefer the former.

My partner and I sat at the bar for a Thursday night dinner. The bar seats were crammed together like sardines. A bar that could maybe seat 10 but had 15 seats crammed around it. New customers sitting down had to squeeze in to even sit on these terrible trash chairs. Dirty sticky menus. Staff was all over the place. Food is lack luster. Owner gives off just rude rude rude.

Made reservations for dinner , since we know it can be super busy . We were seated promptly, given menus and water. The restaurant was partially full at 6:30. Our server read us the specials and offered other drinks besides water. The scallop special sounded divine ; blackened scallops over coconut curry butternut squash with brussels sprouts, finished with a balsamic drizzle topped with frisée greens. The orecchiette pasta with broccoli rabe pesto, fennel sausage, chili flake with shrimp on top. Were the two dinners that we ordered. While we waited we ordered bread and butter. It can be a loud restaurant, no acoustic panels to help the noise level. There are some neat pictures on the walls to look at while you wait for dinner. The bread was hot and crusty- delicious. Our dinners came out . The scallops looked amazing so did the pasta dish. The scallops were cooked perfectly, a nice sear on them , wonderful flavor and no gritty sand to be found. The coconut curry butternut squash had plenty of spice , but not overpowering . The brussels sprouts were tender but needed a touch of flavor , they were a little bland by themselves. The frisée was an interesting component to the dish . The orecchiette pasta was cooked nicely , the shrimp added a nice taste . It was not overly garlicky at all. It was two delicious dinners. The restaurant started to fill up and the servers were very busy. It took a while for the server to check back with us . A second glass of wine took a long time to get but it eventually arrived. It would have gotten 5 stars if the attentiveness was present by the waitstaff. All in all I would go back again.

My friend brought me to this place for lunch. The ambiance was super cute and appealing. The server was extremely kind and helpful and attended to us a few times. The food and wine both were delicious. I wanted to eat light so I had the Chevre salad and she had the Venable Fried Chicken. I would have gotten what she had since it looked delicious, but I'll save it for next time.

SO, I ordered the fried chicken. INEDIBLE flattened piece of dry white meat chicken covered with tasteless batter..ONE tiny teeny bone on the whole thing. I took two bites and the rest was ingested by my dog, Awful and perhaps the menu could have specified what to expect..see photo.

Venable is consistently perfection! The atmosphere is wonderful, every dish is phenomenal, and the service is top level. You can't miss! Elle, Jake, and Michael are especially great servers! Jake remembered us (and our order!) from a couple of months prior, and makes every visit special! Just awesome!

Once again, an uneven performance by Venable. Our server was fine, but our order was not delivered correctly. Two plates of fish tacos were proffered, when we had ordered only one. When it became obvious that our second meal had not even been started, my dinner companion ate his very good tacos while I waited (and snacked on his fries).
When my long-delayed bibimbap arrived, I know it wouldn't be very good. It was in a china bowl, not a stoneware bowl, so there was no chance that the rice would be toasted. The beef was average at best. The shredded carrots were supposed to be pickles, I guess, but all that came across was vinegar.
They should take this off the menu. It was a complete disappointment. I should have eaten the tacos that I didn't order.

Went to Venable this weekend for brunch with friends; hadn't been in a really long time so was curious to see if things had changed here. It was just as I'd remembered! Super cute, rustic vibe with an interesting menu ranging from a chaat to a lox plate, waffles to Benedict of the week. I got a grapefruit mimosa cocktail and the Gravlax Plate which I was expecting it to be a deconstructed Lox plate per usual, but it was plated beautifully (like the picture below). My only complaint was that maybe the potato pancake was a tiny bit too oily in the middle, but the outsides were perfect and crunchy and delicious. Our waitress was sweet, and let me know that this plate wasn't with smoked salmon but lemon cured salmon, which I loved even more, and it was well balanced with the salad and dressing. Definitely will be going back for future brunches!

My daughter and I came in for a bite before a show - it's located walking distance from everything and parking was easy.

I knocked 2-stars for two food related reasons. The server seemed unknowledgeable of gluten related questions (even though the menu seemed to go out of the way to label items as available as GF) or at least did not give me confidence in the meal that I ordered being gluten free. I ordered the tamales and they were nearly empty on the inside (it's a vegetable tamale but almost zero vegetables inside), I ordered it with chicken (an up charge of $6) and while it was hot they were served plain on the side of the tamale. I expected them inside the tamale or at a minimum drizzled with green chili sauce. So, it was an unexpected and underwhelming meal.

Some minor things: the service was friendly but several different servers kept coming to the table to see if they could clear my plate; the attentiveness was disruptive. Seems like something that can be fixed, though.

Honestly I'd probably go back if someone could tell me what the best meal is that is gluten free. Maybe I ordered the wrong thing which is an unfortunate thing to do when visiting a restaurant for the first time.

I'd encourage servers to learn more about allergy restrictions (ie, what would change in the recipe if someone is made GF, is the sauce GF, is there mole in the tamale that is not GF, etc.)