Charleston has really become a food destination and lots of new restaurants have popped up in the last few years.  Tuesday night Erin, Brittney and I decided to try out Scratch Taco Boutique, which opened less than a week ago in the upcoming area off Coleman in Mt. Pleasant.  We heard it was good, saw pictures and studied the menu — so we were all pretty hungry when we got there at 7pm.

We got a beer at the bar while we waited on a table and I noticed that they had a lot of craft beers on tap, especially local ones.  It took about 20 minutes to be seated, which seemed legit since it just opened and was pretty busy.  We were seated on the patio which is made up of four community, pinic-ish tables.  The tables even have a tray to fill with ice for beer bottles.

We each ordered some tacos (steak skirt, cuban, fish and vegetarian), Erin also got the beet salad and I placed a to-go taco order for Hunter.  While we were waiting, we received the beer cheese and toast on the house.  It was pretty good — a cheesy spread with a hummus consistency on sliced baguette.  We all know I can’t say no to cheese, so I was pumped to have a free, cheesy appetizer.

The food came out on these cool metal stands which was helpful to keep the tacos upright and keep the contents from spilling all over the plate. I had the cuban and skirt steak tacos which were both bigger than I expected (they should be for $5 a pop!) and smelled great.  I downed the cuban before starting the spicier, skirt steak — it really had a kick!  I liked the different flavors in the cuban, but the skirt steak was my favorite, I mean it had bacon in it too…  My side of bok choy was okay, but nothing crazy.

Overall, we thought that the food was pretty good, but not outstanding. Brittney’s quinoa was overly vinegar-y, Erin’s salad was a little bland, and I wish my skirt steak was cooked a little more.

At this point we had been at Scratch for an hour and a half, Hunter’s to-go taco had been delivered and asked the waitress for checks.  This is when things really went down hill….  The waitress came back and had us give our order again, 7 items total, because she couldn’t find her notes or find it in the computer?  It’s probably been a busy night for her, so not a problem.. 15 minutes later she drops the checks off and we immediately put cards on each receipt and finished our waters.  She grabs it and we wait some more.  After another 15 minutes, she drops off two checks (with the wrong things charged to each card), but couldn’t run my card because it was run at the bar beforehand… although Erin’s was too.  Another 5 minutes and I got my check and was finally able to get Hunter’s (cold) taco to him.

Verdict: The food was pretty good, our waitress was inexperienced and a little slow, but I’m hoping that was just first week jitters, so I’ll be back to try the margaritas!

Update: Scratch has closed.  This is not surprising considering the service  never got better, and it seems the food went downhill..