Red Lobster — Restaurant in Burlington

The fact that it was empty when we arrived at dinner is telling of the downhill trajectory this restaurant has been on for a while. Once or twice a year in the 2010's I came here, and oh lord it was godly. The biscuits! However, I came once during 2022 and then came again yesterday. The 2022 visit was mediocre at best, but I chalked it up to pandemic woes or whatever the businesses cried at the time (because there is ALWAYS something, thats business as usual).

The visit last night cinched it. I'm not returning, do not want any offer of a discount or private talks (please don't ask me to talk to you on facebook, I do not want to), and will be encouraging those who wish to go to do their due diligence.

To start it off, our waiter was excessively flirty. I didn't notice at first (my fiancé mentioned it to me early into the dinner, wondering if we should switch waiters), but when he rested his arm around my mother's chair/back near the end both her, my brother, myself, and my fiancé were all very very uncomfortable and immediately saw a lot of the 'charisma' (like joking about how he'd pay our bill) to be in a very different light.

The two of us ordered escargot, white wine mussels, and the ultimate feast with snow crab, lobster tail, linguini, and walt's favourite shrimp. The mussels were lukewarm-cool, about 1/4 were closed, and were very overly salty (forgivable, they are very very delicious still - these as well as the hostess, and that my mother's fettucini and scallops were warm-hot are why this is a 2 star rather than 1). The escargot was overly salty as well, and arrived so full of floating oils (certainly not real butter, it tasted like actual oil) that the cheese wasn't even on the escargot and instead was cold and seized and threatened to float off the edge, plus arrived way too hot to eat until well after the entrees arrived. That turned out to be welcome, as the rest showed up cold somehow? The linguini was soupy (shrimp were alright, rubbery but tasted garlicky and I like garlic), the lobster tail was undercooked which was confusing as the shell was bright red, he snow crab had mostly very tiny legs, and the ones large enough to actually pull out legs were ice cold...

...Which made me wonder how much of this is frozen. Upon googling just now, the answer is pretty much all of it, with the excuse being that the restaurants aren't costal. Please give those lobsters to somewhere that will give them a good saltwater home, as you don't cook them and they're dying in the freshwater packed in like that. It's unsightly, saddening, and false advertising because you don't even serve fresh! Even if you did serve them, they're evidently sick. Why am I paying obscene amounts for seafood that is frozen and then not even prepared correctly? It's like they cooked for fresh timings??? I'm just so dumbfounded that these practices pass as something near acceptable to the owner/company.

Googling the company now.... they own a bunch of restaurants notorious for this. And they microwave literally everything except the biscuits and some fish?!?!??!?!?! This has just gotten worse the more I look into it. Sadly, I'm completely giving up on this chain.

This thread sums up how I feel

tinyurl (dotcom)...

Dissatisfied and disappointed and shocked at Bill!

We had not visited Red Lobster for several years, but my wife thought sea food would be nice for a change. She ordered a cup of chowder, I ordered a bowl. It arrived quite quickly but it wasn't hot, like soup should be. And then we waited and waited and waited for our main courses. We were looking for our waiter, to tell him that we were leaving--but he he wasn't to be found. Just then kitchen staff showed up with our meals (which must have been ready for a while -- like the chowder, the mains were not hot. My wife's Admiral's platter was an assortment of sea food. Shrimp, scallops and salmon..,. but all fried and greassy. My burger bun was dry: my patties were bland; my fries cold.

By now the evening was far gone so the serving staff began to prepare for the next day. Noisily! Cutlery clattered; glassware rang out; and our waiter brought out a carpet sweeper; vroom! vroom! up the aisle and under the tables around us. We felt we were out-staying our welcome.

When we were seated, we were asked if we were celebrating anything special. I mentioned my birthday. At other restaurants you usually get a complimentary dessert for your day. I don't know if our waiter forgot or if this restaurant doesn't give free desserts.

When we got our bill I was surprised at the $135 total. And then when I was handed the credit/debit card machine, I was shocked at the suggested tips. Choices were 18%, 20 % or 25%. I gave $10; about 7%; "Generous," I thought. Our waiter didn't think so, and asked if everything was ok. We mentioned that we had to wait so long, His excuse was that it was so busy, as he waved his arm at the by-now nearly empty restaurant. He suggested that we should have said something sooner so he could have done something about it. I didn't have the heart to tell him he had been MIA!

It been a few weeks now, but I thought a thorough review would be helpful. I'm not used to writing bad reviews but Red Lobster should know that we likely won't be back for...

Wanted to treat mom to a delayed Mother’s Day dinner, made a reservation online for 5 people. We get to the restaurant and they are scrambling trying to find a table for us. They then tell us a table is in fact ready and clean, they also tell us that it’s shocking that the table is actually clean (I thought this was a strange thing to share with a guest but, ok) we were then seated at a booth for 4 and a chair at the end of the table. After sitting for 2 minutes we realized that this was going to be quite tight and uncomfortable to enjoy our meal. We asked to be moved and they told us they didn’t have a table to fit us because they had other reservations. I reminded them that I also had a reservation and that, that isn’t acceptable. The manager then asks if we booked a reservation online, yes I did, which shouldn’t matter if it’s available to use…she then said the online reservation doesn’t know how many tables they have… so doesn’t this completely contradict what the website is supposed to be doing?… fine. Uncomfortably, we order our dinner, my mom ordered lobster and shrimp linguini and I ordered surf and turf. My moms dinner came without lobster and my steak smelled like poison (gas of some sort) I took 1 bite of the steak and after chewing for what felt like a lifetime, I spit it out and put the steak on a side plate. We called the server over to tell her they were missing my moms lobster and that my steak tasted like poison… she was happy to take it back and get me something else but at this point I was so disappointed with the entire evening that I just wanted to go home. I asked for my meal to be removed from the bill and that wasn’t a problem, they also did bring my mom lobster to add to her pasta. Our server was quite apologetic but these were all issues out of her hands, and because of her, I gave a generous review. Save your money and your time. If you want lobster, you’re better...