Lone Star Texas Grill — Restaurant in Ottawa

We just got home from dinner at this location. Got there around 6:15 pm. There were a couple families ahead of us waiting to be greeted and seated. We were attended to and seated within 5 or so minutes. I hadn't been to any Lone Star for over 5 years and I decided that I'd celebrate my birthday with steak fajitas. We were served by Twilight, a very nice and friendly young lady who was attentive but not overbearing. Complimentary chips and salsa started off the evening with a couple of soft drinks.

We had an appetizer of fried mozzarella with three sauces on the side; Nashville, Buffalo and Ranch. Glad we got the sauces on the side. Buffalo was a bit spicy. The Boss said the Ranch was good. Nashville was quite a spicy surprise, spicier than I thought it would be. It left me with a runny nose and a real after kick.

Dinner consisted of the beef and chicken fajita combo. The fresh flour tortillas were fantastic being warm and soft. We were each given an individual small amount of pico, cheese, lettuce and sour cream. Seasoned rice was also provided. The meat, peppers and onions were nicely cooked and quite hot when delivered to the table.

I built my first fajita and took a bite. Although everything was hot, nice and fresh, I was slightly underwhelmed. Portion sizes were much smaller than I remember. The steak was quite moist and properly cooked but the meat, onions and peppers were somewhat bland and the rice was less than stellar. The chicken was okay and a bit dry. I guess we've kind of spoiled ourselves with the fajitas we make ourselves at home. Having said all this, we ate almost everything. It was tasty but just not what I remembered from all those years ago. I can't comment on dessert or alcoholic drinks as we didn't partake.

The bill was about $120, including gratuity. In my opinion, the meal was overpriced. I know the price of food and labour has increased but I'm not really sure about value for money spent for our visit. As I stated earlier, I can't complain, in any way, about the service from Twilight and the rest of the staff or the cleanliness of the restaurant. We ate in the dining room as it was too warm and humid (for us) to eat outside.

Although I rated the food with three stars, three and a half stars would be my preferred rating.

Did I enjoy my birthday dinner? Yes I did but I'm on the fence on deciding if I'll return...

First time (and last time) at this location. I enjoy the Ottawa St.Laurent location, but here at the Innes Road restaurant we were given dirty menus (I looked past that) but there were no ‘non-alcoholic’ drink options listed. Our server rhymed off the drink options ‘Coke, Diet Coke, etc. so we ordered a Diet Coke and two lemonades. The server suggested we try a Watermelon Lemonade (listed at $4.95 on a table display) so one person did. The other stuck with lemonade. A few minutes later a different server appeared with a Diet Coke and literally slammed it on the table. I assume it was an accident, but she said ‘here’s the Diet Coke. The other drinks have to come from the bar’. Weird, but okay. Then our regular server returns and tells us the bar ran out of watermelon so it would just be a regular lemonade. Fine. The remaining two drinks come. We order dinner, including fajitas for two. When the fajitas arrive, the tortillas were stale and unappealing. We let our server know, and she said ‘oh yeah, well unfortunately our tortilla machine is broken so those are store-bought flatbreads.’ That would have been something nice to know prior to ordering. Same as being out of wedge fries to go with my steak. Same as apparently charging $4.99 for a non-refillable lemonade and not telling us it isn’t on the soft drink menu. What soft drink menu? There isn’t one. So despite letting our server know we were disappointed in the stale store-bought bread, over-charged for lemonade that wasn’t re-fillable, nothing was done to fix the problem. Including when I asked that one of the lemonades be removed from the bill since I switched to iced tea (which would have been a refillable drink if our server returned). Lots of basic mistakes that management should have taken care of, either in a ‘before-shift briefing’ or in staff training. And no, I won’t be reaching out to anyone else about my experience. I tried to get the problem resolved at the time of the visit, so like I said I...

Absolutely terrible. I am in disgust and disbelief. Me and my fiancé come here ofter for our date nights. Last night was absolutely unacceptable. We got endless fajitas, usually amazing.. but last night on our second round, we only got two fajitas in our dishes. So we asked for more after finishing- we did not end up getting them. We asked for more cheese and lettuce- it took 35 minutes to get it to us, after multiple times asking. There were maybe 5 tables. Our waiter only came to us twice in our whole experience. He went on break in the middle of us eating; thats fine. But when we asked for a top up of anything he would just stand behind the bar and expect other to do it? When you could clearly see we were very dissatisfied. He went over to the table with his friends about 6x before his break. When we clearly were trying to get his attention. To add; when we were waiting for our cheese+lettuce there were about 4 waitresses sitting at one table folding napkins. The people in the booth in front of us were also very disappointed. When we were trying to get our bill, it took about 30 minutes of trying before I went to get someone. I asked for my bill because I wanted to leave. She went to our original waiters table with his friends and rang them out first and checked in on another table. We just wanted to leave, we felt very uncomfortable with the atmosphere last night. We wont be going back to this location.. we left still hungry- which is absurd because we got the endless fajitas!! But we couldn’t get them because the waiter/waitresses would not bring them or anything to us. We are usually really good tippers but.. definitely not tonight. Such a waste of 100+ dollars. We could have made them at home, had more and felt comfortable. But we wanted to treat ourselves. We got there in an amazing mood and left in a VERY upset one. I never write reviews but something needs to change because you WILL lose business....