Applebee's Grill + Bar — Restaurant in Ashland

This experience has haunted me for the past 4 years. I have reserved myself from speaking on this but I can no longer hold my tongue as this was the worst experience I have ever had in any establishment, food related or other.

First we go in and get our drinks, I ask for an exclusive Mtn Dew flavor - "We're out of Mtn Dew" OK I will go with the raspberry sweet tea, a perfectly fine drink - "We dont have raspberry" OK I can't win, I mentally accept this defeat and ask "Well, do you have Sierra Mist?" The waitress crosses my gaze with an intense disgust as if I had not been begging for a drink during our interaction. "Well yeah we have it."

I order the Sierra Mist

We order our appetizers and they were delivered after a slightly long wait. No big deal, we get the sampler and mozzarella sticks...wait...the menu said 6 mozzarella sticks. There were only three. We address our concern.

"They're on their way"

OK, understandable

The next plate they deliver is two additional cold mozzarella sticks. AppleBees is still indebted to us for one mozzarella stick and these are cold but any mozzarella stick is better than none.

We are delivered a single additional mozzarella stick on a plate. I believe this was representative of the staffing of the kitchen. One alone, in a vast wasteland of orders on white paper.

As we are waiting on our order we are sipping on our drinks, that I will reiterate is not what I initially wanted. One of my dear friends says, "Hey this Dr. Pepper tastes weird."

It did in fact, taste awful. I dont know how you mess up a fully automated soda fountain but it is passable...ive installed a BiB or two in my day.

We get our food after an hour wait, we are hungry, desperate for anything to satiate our hunger.

We are served a steak that is well done, leather-like in taste and texture and as cold as my broken heart after being denied my exclusive Mtn Dew flavor.

Ribs that are rubber, stuck to the bone as if it is clawing on to the last bit of life that exists inside that Applebee's.

And some chicken Alfredo that is actually pretty good.

We are hungry and desperate, we eat what we can and are left with a void in both our stomachs and hearts.

As I am handing my payment over I offer advice and constructive criticism to the subpar wait staff.

"Hey, I'm sorry and I know its not your fault but this experience was not preferable, I think your hiring manager needs to hire more kitchen staff so that you can get the food out faster. This was not very tasty and very cold when we had received our food. Again, I apologize but I know its not your fault and we are still tipping and we're not asking for any sort of compensation or refund but it was a very subpar experience."

What this waitress said next replays in my memory everytime I ask a question in a restaurant. "Well you ate it, if you didnt like it you should've said something earlier."

I thought there may have been a misunderstanding...

"No we're not asking for anything, we just wanted to provide this information so that this establishment may prosper in the future."

"Well we can't do anything."

OK.

We leave and will never return, at this Applebee's or any other Applebee's location.

"He who will not listen, can not improve." -Confucius or something...

We ordered the chips and queso. The chips were 💯 crushed and also stale. Nothing usable to even scoop any queso. Brought it to our waitresses attention. She seemed surprised even though she brought it out but did bring us some usable chips. We ordered another queso and chips. And again.. just a pile of crushed chips. My husband always gets the quesadilla burger so he knows what it is. And we had one there 3 days before. The one they brought out was more like a regular burger in a tortilla shell with large strips of bacon on it. Definitely not their quesadilla burger. It has never had full strips of bacon on it before. He orders it medium with some pink and he got a scorched puck. So again we brought it to the waitresses attention. She brought over the menu and pointed to the menu stating there is bacon on it and saying she just wanted to make sure we knew it had bacon on it Yes, but not full strips of bacon where when you bite it just pulls out everything on it. Manager came over after the waitress talked to her and asked us if we had a problem. We pointed out our concerns on the meal and she said she was having someone else make the meal but at that point of being in there for an hour already we just were done and decided to leave. We felt like we were being accused. I had asked if as a server they would not have thought it was even an issue to have a pile of crushed chips no larger than a dime to try to eat queso with? The only way to eat it was to stir it into the cheese and eat it...

Friend and I arrived over an hour before our movie was to start down the street so we decided to grab lunch here because we haven’t eaten there for a while. Upon arrival, the host greeted us and another couple and stated he’d be right with us. He then grabbed a bucket and proceeded to clean tables (there were tables clean throughout the restaurant). We (us and the other couple) waited approximately 10 to 15 minutes while we watched him go throughout the restaurant continuing to clean tables. After about 15 minutes, we were finally seated. After being seated, it took approximately 10 to 15 minutes for the waitress to take our drink order so my friend and I decided that we better order our food too because we might not get our food in time. FINALLY, 15 minutes BEFORE our movie was to start we got our food and at that time I asked for our check because we definitely wasn’t going to be on time for our movie. The waitress checked on us 1 time between our drink arrival and the delivery of our food and at that time told us our food was coming right out (20 minutes later). The best thing about our visit was the food. Mine (chicken fajita wrap) was nice and hot and my friends (chicken salad) was good. The only bad part was we had to literally “inhale” our food so we couldn’t really enjoy our food. Very disappointing...