Tarkblog

I’m not a fan of Applebees, or places like it. See, in my mind, these places aren’t restaurants - they’re glorified bars that also serve food. Their primary goal isn’t to serve you dinner, it’s to get you to buy higher margin drinks and appetizers. And I don’t get into the whole flair thing.

Don’t get me wrong - the food itself isn’t bad. It’s just that when I go out to eat I like eating at an establishment that caters to dining, not to pumping jalapeno shooters and Maui-Madness Vodka Cranberry Splashers.

When my folks got me a $25 gift card to Applebees for my birthday, I knew that I’d have to face my demons. Even if I don’t like the place, I’m not going to pass up a free $25.

The wife and I went on Sunday for lunch. It seemed a fitting place to go, since we couldn’t decide on anything else. We hit it at about 12:15, but it wasn’t crowded. I was happy, since I surely wasn’t going to wait 10-15 minutes for a seat.

Upon sitting, we waited a long time before we got the attention of the waitress. She was an old lady, with a heavy accent. A stark contrast to every other waitress working in that place. She came by and told us she’d be with us as soon as she could. She came back, got our drink orders (waters) and left. Another 5 minutes passes, and we get our drinks and order:

Wife: Some kind of salad
Me: Quesadilla burger. Can I substitute something else for the fries? Cole slaw? Anything else? How about rice? You dont’ think so? Ok, cole slaw will be fine.

She leaves. About 3 minutes later she comes back. They’re out of the salad the wife wants. She goes and gets a menu, then leaves. Another 3 minutes passes, the wife reorders a new salad. The lady disappears.

About 3 minutes later she comes back. She forgot to “write down what I was having”. So I had to reorder.

10 minutes passes, and our food comes out. She had placed my plate on top of the wife’s salad in order to carry both at the same time in the same hand. Her salad had guacamole, which now had somewhat ended up on the bottom of my plate.

Forgot the wife’s salad dressing. Said she would go get it. NEver came back. (Wife didn’t really care anyway, didn’t want the dressing). After 5 minutes, she came back and asked us if we “found everything okay”? I point out missing salad dressing. She vanishes, then reappears with a huge dish of dressing. Wife never touches it.

Finish the meals, and with a slightly-less-than-10% tip the bill was $18. For a simple lunch with shoddy service.

No thanks Applebees. The wife and I can dine at Fazolis for half that on a good day.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 25th, 2006 at 8:54 am and is filed under Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.