Thornton River Grille

Great food and service and a great location. I meet people there at the start of a day trip of the area and I have eaten dinner there when I am staying some place close by. Skyline drive is just up the mountain minutes away.

This place was amazing! Everything was perfect. The food is such good quality and prepared with such skill and care. The service was exceptional and Jeremy was an amazing waiter.

Was passing through this area, unfamiliar with where to go. Took a chance and stopped here for lunch. Great find and food was awesome! Service with a smile. Most definitely must be a 'local favorite.'

Nice ambiance, risotto w beet entrée was delicious, pecan praline Bundt cake was warm and scrumptious - real flavor and not overly sugary sweet. Friendly wait staff.

Best Reuben I have ever eaten. The lemon fennel slaw was refreshing. Great staff and good prices. I will definitely be going back.

Great service. Good food. Eggs cooked perfectly. And the mimosas were perfect. Comfortable tables.

The staff is very friendly. I had a grilled salad, it was awesome. Jim had fish tacos and they were delicious.

A wonderful place to enjoy a delicious meal. Kudos to the chef and staff for making it a great dining experience.

Very good place. Food is fine, service is great. Had a lovely Christmas dinner here.

A unique experience. This restaurant surprised us with the simplicity and quality. very much recommended

My dad and I stopped here for lunch on the way back from old rag and they honestly made me the best cheeseburger with fries I’ve ever had

I ate there a few times, last Sat and today Labor Day 2016 the most recent . This small unassuming restaurant has the best burgers and fries I've ever eaten. The salads very fresh , The drinks and desserts are also superior. Service is great and the prices are affordable. This is a 5 stars American cuisine restaurant. Don't miss it if you go by Sperryville.

We had lunch here on our break from hiking in Shenandoah park. This place is great! The food is fresh and delicious, and the staff is nice and friendly. We had the fish special and a chicken club. Both were delicious. Also the soup special was red pepper soup, and it was one of the best soups I ever ate. Overall great place and I strongly recommend it!

Wonderful stop for our lunch! We visited on Friday and it was fairly busy, I would definately recommend reservations for the weekend. Our server was nice and lunch was tasty... I had the fried chicken, crispy and seasoned well, with their homemade slaw and sweet potato fries. The burgers and Rubens looked amazing!!! While there pop by the cute general store next door. Can't wait to return and try the dinner menu😋

Very casual and full of locals, this is a great find with excellent food and very friendly staff. Make sure to explore the whole grounds, not to buy something but to meet the people who work there. On the other hand, a country store with organic everything and tonics that are hard to find when crafting a gourmet bar? Go ahead and buy something! Last note: the scallops were good, but the pasta that accompanied it was fantastic.

This place is outstanding! Food is superb. Eating out on the deck is great. The staff has always been accommodating-- we have had to push our reservations back a couple of times due to getting back late from hiking. They have no problem bringing food out at the same time for a group of 11. I love their filet mignon with mashed potatoes and broccoli, but other people were impressed with the spicy gazpacho, polenta, creme brulee, and key lime pie.

This is a cute little place for brunch. The food was good and the staff was friendly.

Good food, good service, great place for a bite after hiking Old Rag.

Don't let the average decor fool you, the food is excellent and the service outstanding.

Good food here! We often come for brunch

We chose this restaurant based on these google reviews. The place was nice, cozy, and clean. For our appetizer, we ordered the special of heirloom tomatoes, basil, balsamic demi- glaze, and some kind of cheese not mozzarella (I couldn't catch the name when the server said it but I think it resembled a mild goat cheese). I was a little disappointed. I was good but the presentation was sloppy and it tasted like any other caprice salad. Our salad was just butter lettuce with apples, raw walnuts, and a quarter of a green apple sliced with an herb cream dressing. It was too warm and the dressing was too much with too little flavor. BUT THEN, I tried my entree and was blown away. I had the special of duck breast over garlic mashed potatoes. The duck was cooked perfect! It was tender, juicy, and just the right temp. The sauce that was over it was the most amazing part. I forget what the server called it again, sorry, but it tasted like the pan drippings from the duck, some kind of gravy base, and something sweet like balsamic vinegar. I basically smooshed all my food in it the rest of the meal. I told my husband I could easily eat another...not because the serving was small, it wasn't, it was perfect...but because it tasted so good I just wanted to taste it again. My husband had the steak salad and was very happy. His steak was also cooked perfect, his salad was chilled and diverse, and he liked his dressing. All in all, I'd say definitely come for the drinks and entrees. They are worth it...even if the apps aren't anything to write home about.

I enjoyed it.Sperryville is a very small town with huge historical value. it is more like a village then a town. the old settlements.close to 200 years old. and Thornton River Grille. it's okay I found it quite pleasurable

We enjoyed our dinner, but it wasn't $$. Our total was $80 after tip. We ordered water to drink, had 1 Ceasar salad, and 2 entrees. That isn't $$ in our world.

A little on the pricey side for a small town restaurant, but worth every penny. The staff was kind in this 10-table establishment and the butternut squash risotto with the duck confit was to die for!

Great high end food, nice find for the location. Our server was very nice and attentive. I'd definitely would go here again.

Its hard not to enjoy the food during the color change. Best to stop before you head up onto sky line.

In a very old general store renovated and done nicely. Simple menu and the burgers are supreme. Fresh is the best word for the food and friendly is for the service. Moderate pricing for ample portions.Family friendly with a general store and brick oven pizza place attached. Loved it all.

Fantastic service, but pricey. The garden salad we ordered lacked 3 ingredients listed on the menu (radish slices, shallots and candied pecans) and the RPK pizza we ordered was very skimpy with the sausage.

Good food, nothing spectacular. Nice wine list. Service was acceptable, not stellar. The dinning room is small.

Food was good. Our waitress not so much. That being said don't think I'll return anytime soon. Wait staff needs to get it together.

Burgers were requested medium, they were well done. Waited long time to get check after asking, even longer for them to come get cash., friendly, but very busy?

Great menu, but the food didn't quite live up to expectation.

Great outdoor seating area, which is perfect after a hike in Shenandoah. I ordered the Burger and asked for it cooked Medium. It came out very well done. It was very thick and very dry. I don't usually send items back, but it was really dry, so I told the waiter that I had ordered it Medium and asked if I could have another. They were very polite and put in the reorder right away. About 15 minutes later they brought out another Burger. It was just as dry and over cooked as the first. Not wanting to wait another 15-20, I just ate it. Everything else about the Burger was high quality except for the beef. The staff never asked how it was or followed up at all. If you like dry burgers, this is your place! Otherwise, try ordering it rare or ordering it somewhere else.

I agree with the reviews who say they don't know how to leave pink in a burger. Anticipating them overcooking the burger, I ordered it medium rare hoping for some pink but it was cooked well done all the way through anyway. It seems impossible to get a burger cooked medium at this place even though they ask how you want it cooked. Despite this the burger was very thick and juicy so I can't complaining too much. The fries were great too. Hoping for pizza, we were seated downstairs where they don't have pizza apparently. To order pizza you need to be upstairs on the deck. It would have been nice to know this in advance since they didn't tell us about this before we waited 15 minutes for a table in the wrong section of the restaurant. We moved up to the deck and had a tasty pizza, although there were quite a few bees buzzing around our food. Even though I was unhappy with a few things about this visit, the food is good enough that I would return if I'm ever back in the area.

Boyfriend took me here to celebrate on the last night of our vacation, hoping for a classy and romantic dinner. We were less than impressed. Although the ambiance--and prices--are quite upscale, the experience was sub par. Our waitress was not awful, but she pretty much set down the menu and recited the specials and left. Maybe because we were some of the youngest people in the room by about 20-30 years she expected us to not spend extravagantly (which we didn't, thank goodness). I picked the pork chop with "a duet of mango and balsamic sauce" or something like that, and was actually pretty pleased. It was tender and flavorful, with the unusual sweetness of mango. The fingerling potatoes were pretty bland, but the vegetable of the day (asparagus) was cooked to perfection. My boyfriend ordered the grilled New York strip steak, minus the mushroom sauce, and was not happy. Granted, maybe the mushroom sauce made it all work, but it came out extremely chewy and tasting like nothing but burnt meat. I had one bite and came very close to choking before I could swallow. Noticing that the plate was cleaned of everything (the dish also came with potatoes and the veggie of the day) but the steak, the waitress asked if everything was okay with it. Neither of us like causing problems at restaurants, and we said as much, but she didn't offer us a discount or refund, or even apologize. Once she took it away, she didn't appear again for maybe 15 minutes for no apparent reason. Not worth the $75 for two entrees and three beers.

Very crowded and noisy and the food managed to both try too hard and to be exceptionally overpriced. This is a two star grill fantasizing about being a five star destination and failing. The new owners have not done it any favors.

Deeply disappointing. We came in excited, having traveled in the area often for hiking and only now gotten the chance to have the full Sperryville experience for an anniversary trip. We ordered a bunch of small plates to sample. Service was great, the servers seemed busy to the point of understaffed, but were kind and fast. Nice wine selection. Of the plates we ordered, the pork belly was fine. The seasonal vegetables alternated between burnt black and underdone, and featured an 1/8th of an unhappy eggplant, some wilted peppers, and some bruschetta, but mostly crackers. This was a cracker dish. Already all that was kind of a bummer, but then the mussels arrived, and they looked, smelled, and tasted like just plain spoiled seafood sitting in a pool of filmy liquid. Also, and I'm not being cheap here, we definitely came in there expecting to spend some money, but just for reference: each one of these plates individually was over 17 dollars. If I had to editorialize, this really felt like a great operation mismanaged. The kitchen was obviously too small for the scope of the place, and the patio set up made it so that servers had to run up and down to deliver food. These are easy changes that the owner could pay a little more attention to and solve. The staff was great, and very engaged. The space was cute. But the food was just terrible.

My wife and I were staying at the Inn at Little Washington and had made 7:45 reservations on our first night in town. We drove in from Richmond and hit terrible traffic on the 95 so we arrived to this restaurant at 8:06pm where they had already locked the doors despite having at least 5 tables occupied. Someone came to the door and said “it’s after 8 I won’t let you in”. Well, go eff yourself as well, guy. It was my wife’s 30th birthday. We own a restaurant in Virginia as well, and regardless of the fact it is completely illegal to lock any exit door with customers inside, we would never treat guests in this manner. We pride ourselves in treating all guests, especially for special occasions, with the utmost respect. We made the reservation through OpenTable for 7pm initially but then moved it to 7:45 when we caught traffic; so there was no mistaking we were coming as we had just changed/confirmed the reservation a few hours prior. You would think at a minimum they would have called us....nope. As we are parking in their parking lot my phone gets an alert saying our reservation has been canceled. We will be sure to post this review all over the place to ensure it gets some warranted exposure. Just as a fun side note, we went and spent $700 for her birthday dinner just down the street once we were rejected here.

It took almost an hour to get a bowl of soup and a burger at lunch on a Thursday. The servers were apologetic, saying a larger takeout order superceded the orders of diners who were in the restaurant. Other patrons were upset as well, having to rush their meals as a result. Burger and soup were ok

We were very disappointed - we arrived at 3:03pm and were told that "we do not serve anything but pizza between 3-5pm". Meanwhile, everyone in the dining room was being delivered fresh burgers and they were still cooking some. I have traveled the world and never encountered this - when I asked if we could still get a table and burger - the hostess could have cared less. You are asking for competition wit an attitude like this. Rudeness leads to bankruptcy. Whatever happened to " the customer comes first"? I do not recommend this place at all.