While vacationing in the Lake Norman area, we decided to eat at the Rusty Rudder in Cornelius NC. I write this review in the hopes of preventing someone else from making the same mistake. Now I'm no Gordon Ramsay, but I feel that I have a pretty good grasp on what good food taste like. My parents owned a successful restaurant growing up and I've eaten at great restaurants across the United States and abroad, including eating food from street vendors while serving in Afghanistan. Afghanistan may have been the safer choice. Clearly there is no chef working here. The food consists of frozen fries, tator tots and Kraft Mac and Cheese. We ordered the Lump Crab meat dip which tasted like a lump of cream cheese with the occasional crab particle being thoroughly overwhelmed by its under seasoned surroundings. I ordered the lobster roll which tasted like celery. Now to be fair, it did say it was served with mayo and diced celery, but I might as well have had just a stick of celery, since the poor lobster was overwhelmed by that flavor and sadly died for nothing. Do not visit the online menu lest you be fooled by trick photography since the food looks nothing like it.
On a positive note, the view is beautiful but you don't need to eat anything to appreciate it. In fact, if you bulldozed the whole restaurant into the lake, the view would be just as nice and you would save yourself a $100 mistake for a family of five.