Skip to content Skip to sidebar Skip to footer

Tupelo Honey Is Serving Up Made-From-Scratch Southern Food

There are a lot of yummy places you can go around Columbus when you’re craving Southern comfort food. A brand new restaurant has joined that line-up with the opening of Tupelo Honey in Upper Arlington.

Although Tupelo Honey is technically a chain, with 20 restaurants across the country, this isn’t your parents’ chain restaurant.

Tupelo Honey feels perfectly curated. From the subtle floral wallpaper to the catchy neon sign that reads “Kiss My Grits”, this restaurant is full of modern southern charm.

You can definitely tell that the menu at Tupelo Honey was born in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina.

We visited right when the restaurant opened for lunch, and it filled up quickly. Reservations are available, so if you plan on visiting and you don’t want to go right when they open, you might want to make one.

We started things off with the most obvious choice of appetizer: the biscuits. Labeled on the menu as “Biscuits for a Cause,” these buttermilk biscuits are huge and they really are for a good cause.

Served with blueberry jam and whipped butter, all the proceeds from the biscuits go to the Tupelo Honey Relief & Development Fund. The fund aids Tupelo employees in need and they’ve awarded $525,000 to date.

After thoroughly enjoying the biscuits, we moved on to our main dishes, which came out extremely quickly. I decided that we couldn’t visit Tupelo Honey and not try their famous classic chicken and waffles.

The fried chicken had a distinctly Appalachian flavor, by which I mean they were very generous with the pepper, which I personally loved. In my opinion, it’s the perfect compliment to the sweetness of the waffles.

In addition to the chicken and waffles, I also tried the Asheville hot chicken sandwich. It wasn’t too spicy at all and came smothered in ranch with some yummy house-made pickles. It was served on Texas Toast and it was delightful.

The sandwich came with a choice of sides and after seeing several Instagram posts about how amazing the fries were, I just couldn’t resist.

They lived up to the hype. The fries were perfectly crisp on the outside, and fluffy on the inside, and my only regret was that there weren’t more of them.

Since it was a weekday and I had a meeting after lunch, I had to forgo the many Bloody Mary and Mimosa options available, but since I know for a fact I’ll be back soon, I’m not too sad about it.

Tupelo Honey is located at 1678 W Lane Ave Columbus, OH 43221. For more info, or to make a reservation, you can visit tupelohoneycafe.com.