Pizza Ranch — Restaurant in Ames

My husband and I came here yesterday to celebrate our 5th year wedding anniversary, but we should have known it was a bad restaurant, when we parked and saw the wagon in the parking lot had a broken "Happy Trailing" sign on the ground. We made the experience fun for ourselves, though we should have asked for our $56 back and gone to a different pizza ranch location instead. I was completely shocked that this location would be so horrible because it's located in Ames, which is a very high income, high society, historic, and iconic city in Iowa. Pizza ranch here sure isn't doing its city or customers proud. My husband has helped me write the review. When we came in there were no service employees at the front counter and we waited for 20 minutes, until my husband walked into the buffet area and began checking out the food to see how much there was. Then somebody came to help us. She mentioned we could pay extra for a "Go Cup" which we didn't have a clue what that was, because we are from a different state, so we both asked questions but she seemed very annoyed and bothered by them and only gave us simple answers with alot sighs and eye rolls. Thankfully, one of the cooks came out, and I asked him about the plates, and he was nice and answered me. As for the restaurant environment is was very dimly lit, vacant of any customers at 4:30pm and there were flies everywhere, and the tables were dirty and sticky and not cleared of dirty dishes until 3 hours later when there were 20 or so customers for dinner rush. I did enjoy all the old-fashioned cowboy/pioneer decorations on all the walls. That was fun, and the covered wagon and fountain outside were great photo opportunities. Unfortunately, there was a lot of absence of food. The chicken was either undercooked or overcooked. There was only half a pizza left on the entire buffet table. And no pepperoni pizza available a simple and icinic flavor. Their drink machines didn't have their flavors working. Quality was terrible. It was hard to get any clean silverware. The only thing they had extras of was a bucket of chips and salad. We're out of almost all of their sauces and condiments for the salads, and the dressings were put upside down the unsanitary ways. There weren't many options of food at all. The Mac and cheese were cold. Furthermore the foods meant to ne hot were cold, and the foods meant to be cold were hot. The salad had brown rotting chuncks of lettuce in it. On Thursday, wing night out of 4 different flavors are wings. They were supposed to have there is only one, which was barbecued chicken, and that was just barbecue sauce covered on over cooked, crispied chicken. There were no dessert pizzas either until my husband and I and another customer politely asked the cooking staff for more dessert pizza and cookie pizza. When they put out the dessert cookie dough pizza, it was raw cookie dough and mushy wet. An elderly gentleman had to get the raw pizza. A man and his child almost got some too before I warned them and asked the cook about it. He said that there were no raw ingredients in it, so it would not get anybody sick but that he'd take it back in and replace it. The ice cream was a very strange consistency of mostly ice, very thin, little cream, and melted easily. The waiter took the cups off our table, and we couldn't get extra drinks when my husband had specifically told him that we were coming back after the arcade. Restrooms were dirty, and no decorations and dimly lit. There was an overhead light in the eating area that was constantly flickering, and I got headaches from it, as there was a flickering light in the mens restroom as well, according to my husband. The games in the fun zone are all rigged as well. Requires a lot of money and low payout of tickets. Very small and cramped. It was practically a hallway with phone games to play. If I'm going to an arcade, I expect to play something, I can't play on my phone. There was no VR headset experience as seen in the...

Myself, my significant other, and both of my children went here for the buffet. We arrived about an hour and 15 minutes before close. We were told once we paid that the buffet would be shutting down soon, and that we would need to get everything we wanted to eat right away so they could close it down. Odd, but ok. Well, the young man working the front counter reminded of this about 5 times throughout our visit, which I found to be incredibly annoying. We did, however, have a very nice lady offer to cook some fresh chicken for us and she also made two fresh pizzas. The problem here is that I paid 70+ dollars to eat there and showed up over an hour before close. The guy working the front counter made me and mine feel very rushed. Also, the food that was on the buffet when we arrived seemed like it had been out there awhile. Also, multiple times throughout our 30 minutes dining experience, a different lady kept looking out of the back area and was giving us nasty looks and making annoyed sounds. Up until this point, I enjoyed pizza ranch. However, this last experience has changed my mind. The price of this place has never bothered me in the past, but I refuse to pay that much money to be rushed and treated like...

Everything looked great when we walked in. Most items were being restocked.

Appearances can be deceiving. My broasted chicken was cold and the mashed potatoes could be used as plaster. My eyes went to the fresh Mac & Cheese. I was extremely disappointed. It was ice cold. Upon letting my server know it was cold she immediately went to check it. Taste tested it, stirred it and let the management know it seemed cold. It was never removed and remained on the buffet.

So. I went to inspect the pizza options. Lots of verity to choose from, however, it apparently had been sitting on the buffet for quite some time. It was like warm at best.

Since my efforts at hot food were disappointing, I went for a salad. Again, lots of verity. The salad was good. However the veggies and fruit were WARM!!! What the heck.

Certainly would not recommend to anyone. The elderly couple at the table next to us were upset the pizza they orders was overdone and tough to eat.

The manager said he was sorry and never offered to remake it for them!!

My first, and LAST visit to this pizza ranch was extremely...