IHOP — Restaurant in Allentown

IHOP: Poor Food, Rude Staff

Review by: UnhappyCustomer23

Date of Visit: July 2023

I recently visited IHOP on a Saturday morning with high hopes of enjoying a pleasant breakfast experience. Unfortunately, what I encountered left me deeply unsatisfied and disheartened. The visit was marred by both the poor quality of food and the shockingly rude behavior of the restaurant's employees.

First and foremost, the food was nothing short of disappointing. I ordered the classic pancake stack, and it arrived lukewarm and undercooked. The pancakes were pale and doughy in the center, ruining the otherwise delightful flavor that I expect from a reputable pancake chain like IHOP. Even the accompanying syrup seemed stale and lacked the rich sweetness I remembered from previous visits.

Regrettably, the subpar food was not the only issue I faced during my time at IHOP. The behavior of the employees was truly unacceptable. From the moment I walked in, the atmosphere felt tense and unwelcoming. The hostess was unsmiling and barely acknowledged my presence, making me wonder if I was an inconvenience to her. As I was seated, I noticed several empty tables, but it still took a considerable amount of time before anyone came to take my order.

To make matters worse, my server seemed disinterested and impatient when I asked about the menu. It was evident that she was in a rush to take my order, and when I pointed out the undercooked pancakes, she dismissively shrugged it off, claiming it was how they were prepared. I tried to express my dissatisfaction politely, but her response was outright rude and unprofessional.

Unfortunately, the issues didn't end there. The restaurant appeared to be understaffed, leading to long wait times for everything, from getting a glass of water to receiving the bill. I observed other patrons also expressing their frustration over the slow service, indicating that my experience was not isolated.

Overall, my visit to IHOP was a thoroughly unpleasant one. The combination of unsatisfactory food and the shocking behavior of the employees left me feeling disheartened and disrespected as a customer. I had hoped for a warm and friendly dining experience, but instead, I left feeling disappointed and vowing not to return. I strongly advise others to consider alternative dining options until IHOP addresses these glaring issues with their food quality and...

First, the lady waitress is a complete waste of payroll. She sat us and barely did anything else. Our waiter was a young man, Matt. This kid is far too good for this place. All we saw was him running food, taking orders, attending to customers, and cleaning up. Meanwhile the female waitress was barely taking care of the one table she had. We sat down, our waiter was polite, attentive, gave great recommendations. Because he was running around so much it took him 10 minutes before he could tae our drink orders, and 20 minutes after bringing our drinks to take our food order. We order the quesadilla appetizer, and the 4 people in this group all ordered simple breakfasts. By the way, prices are a bit unreasonable for add-ons. The full breakfast platters that were offered years ago are gone. Now they charge for everything. Best value are the omelettes with pancakes. Seems like a descent amount of food for he cost. But we never got to see it. Unfortunately after waiting 25 minutes for our food, our waiter returned to tell us they didn't have the tortillas for the quesadilla. This means it's been 25 minutes and they haven't even started our orders, since the appetizer was supposed to come out first. So at the prospect of waiting over an hour and 15 minutes for food, we decided to leave. There were only 4 total tables with customers, 2 were already eating, 1 person came halfway during our wait to order food to go. How does this kitchen explain this, what are they doing back there. Meanwhile we overheard the female waitress' table complain they are waiting forever for their coffee and the one order of pancakes was wrong. This place needs to fire everyone, make Matt a manager and find a whole new staff. Never returning to this dumpster fire...

I have no idea what happened to this place in the last couple of years but they've really went down hill in quality. We were seated promptly from arrival but then were immediately forgotten about, a table that arrived after us got their drinks before we even ordered ours.

The buser was the one who noticed our frustration and got us drinks and someone to finally take our order. Then afterwards it was another excruciating wait in which the same buser had to find ANOTHER server for us! Even though we are pretty sure the first server was the manager, we believe this, because every single staff member except for three were In very public meeting that we were able too not only overhear but see as well and he was the main voice within that meeting. [Which should be handled privately] then once we finally got our food, my sisters salmon was bland, her mashpotatos cold from sitting out. My mother only wanted plain banana pancakes no fruit, syrup, or Whipped cream. They gave her pancakes with everything but the syrup. She asked for wheat toast buttered, they gave her white toasted unbuttered and cut in a way that made the toast look like it was wearing a hat. As for me they took away my strawberry jam syrup on my pancakes, and since they only had that one server running between multiple tables I just used regular syrup. Finally we asked for our check were told to wait, waited 20 minutes, gave up then walked to the register where another woman was clearly as equally frustrated with the wait time as us. Not worth the 60$ our Mom paid for the three of us. Shoutout to the buser and that one server who was doing the job of four...