Applebee's (part 2)

When we arrived everything seemed alright, but it went downhill as usual. When we got there we were seated rather quickly in a booth in the back. The waitress did fine getting our drinks and taking our orders – she was very friendly. Salve ordered a Rib Eye (that she would share with Chloe) and I ordered the Southwest Jalapeno Burger.

After waiting a good while the waitress informed us that they had been slammed and were a little behind, but that our food should be coming up soon. About 20 minutes after that our food finally arrived. My burger did not have lettuce and tomato on it (which I didn’t notice until I was halfway done). The real problems began though when Salve cut into her steak. It wasn’t medium rare. It was half medium rare and half rare. We flagged down the waitress and sent it back.

Meanwhile, I had already begun to eat and decided to continue so my food would not get cold. After waiting probably another 5-10 minutes a new steak appeared. Salve cut into it and it seemed OK. I was more than halfway finished with my burger by this time. When she started to cut some off the other end to give Chloe, there it was. This steak was half medium rare and half rare just like the first one.

It took a couple minutes to flag the waitress down. Salve informed her that this steak was also undercooked. I told the waitress that she was doing nothing wrong, but that I would like to speak to the manager. She hurried off to get the person in charge. We waited another 5-10 minutes, in which time our waitress checked on us and we informed her that the manager never made it to our table. I was completely done with my meal at this point, by the way.

The manager finally arrived and exclaimed that he understood we had a problem with our meal. I showed him the piece of steak that was rare and he offered to take the meal off our ticket. He apologized and then proceeded to add that they had been busy and had received several complaints about the slowness of the service. That was an excuse and a bad one at that. I informed him that the time wasn’t what bothered me. I told him, “I worked in a steak house for 5 years and if we sent TWO steaks out like that, it would have been our ASSES.” I let him know that that was the issue. He apologized again and said, “You’re right. I’ll take care of everything.” I told him that he didn’t have to do that and I had no problem paying for the burger I ate. He told us not to worry about it, he would take care of the entire bill and that we were free to go whenever we pleased, with his apologies.

I didn’t have change for a tip – the waitress was the one thing that went well – so I asked for change from our waitress. After getting change I gave her a tip because she deserved it and let her know that the manager had told us he would take care of the bill. She apologized and thanked us.

While I got a free dinner (that was actually decent) out of the ordeal, Chloe and Salve only got more hungry. They had to go somewhere else to get dinner and eat much later than necessary. This is typical of our experience with Applebee's and it is why we will not be returning to their establishments.