Outback Steakhouse — Restaurant in Bluffton

Nice atmosphere but the service and the food was horrible. I brought all my employees in for dinner, we ordered appetizers, which I would highly discourage anyone get the steak cheese dip. We order steak entrees medium rare. Expect for the the 22oz bone in, he wanted it medium. The appetizers came out and then right they brought the soups, and salads all in one shot. (Big No No) so here we are with all this food on the table, why we see the manager giving the group in front of mixed drinks and telling the waitress to put those drinks on him. I don't have any problems with management keeping customers happy, I'm a business owner, so I understand. In the mean time we got cheese dips, soups, and salads that we are trying to go at; then here comes the steaks. Now the table is full of a bunch of food that we can't enjoy because they didn't come out timed, like a restaurant is supposed to. My employees push the other things to the side and start on the entrees so they don't get cold. We were a little irritated but didn't say anything. We also had to wait for a while on refills. I finished my starters because I wanted to somehow try to make it a good meal and not be rushed. My employees said the steaks were overcooked but not horribly over cooked. I then cut into mine and it was super well done, beef jerky done. I just pushed it to the side and went back to my salad. The waitress didn't come back until my employees had finished their meal and then ask, "is something wrong" I said my steak is over cooked. She said would you like me to cook you another one? I said no thank you because my employees were done eating and we had to get back to the hotel. I didn't want them to have to wait on another steak to cook and then wait on me to eat it. She left and later came back and got the untouched steak. Some blond lady came out of the back and said she was a manager and my steak was in a box on it's way out. I guess thay lady was one of the many managers; the other man with the button up shirt on, with a couple of chest hairs popping out, like one of the old Italian movies was walking around slapping the one table on the backs and passing out free liquor. The lady manager acted like we were trying to pull a fast one on her, or something. I explained to her that the steak was supposed to be medium rare, not not well done, it's not like the steak was medium or anything close to medium rare. The Male manager came up and said thanks for being understanding, I hope this doesn't detour you from coming back. I didn't ask for them to take anything off the bill, I paid for everything and I left the steak on the table. The waitress said, "you forgot your steak". I explained to her that I don't eat well done steaks and I don't eat cold or microwave steaks. I said, I didn't make a big deal out of it because I didn't want to cause a scene in front of my employees, $20.00 isn't worth causing a scene over. She said that you should've told me and I would have took it off your bill. I explained to her that I told you I didn't want another steak because my employees had already finished eating and was just looking around, making small talk but they could see my irritation. My employees work hard out of town weeks at a time and I want them to enjoy themselves on a night out without any issues. I'm going back to a hotel room, how am I supposed to eat a steak, mashed potatoes and everything else with a plastic knife and fork? Really? They already knew that we are staying in a hotel because she asked us if we were down here working, so just FYI, they didn't assume we were residents of the area. I went ahead and picked up the steak and put it into a bag so the waitress would just go away because it became awkward and I didn't want her to send another manager out, seeing I never asked for one in the first place. As we were leaving, I let my employees go in front of me and as they went through the front door I sit this TO-GO steak entree on the back of the hostess desk at the door. If you wonder where that boxed up steak and mashed potatoes came...

I arrived and walked in the door, where I had to wait on a couple in front of me. There was some confusion about which table was available. The host and the server had a quick discussion, and apparently, a misunderstanding ensued. The guests ahead of me were seated but then had to move to a different table because the server was not taking tables. I don’t know what was going on. I was seated promptly—I literally only had to wait 45 seconds, if that—and was seated at a clean table.

My server came over, greeted me, gave me a menu, and took my drink order. About 12 seconds after he left the table, another gentleman walked up and addressed me as "big man." He then asked me what I'd like to drink. I told him someone had already gotten my drink order. He asked me who and then said, "Was it a big guy?" I replied, "No, it was a little guy with a brand new mustache."

Shortly thereafter, my server, the little guy, brought my drink out, along with the bread. The top of the bread was either burnt or had been left in the warmer too long; it was as hard as a rock about a quarter of an inch to a half inch into the bread. I told him that apparently, there was someone else bidding for my service. "The guy who called me "big man"." He walked over, had a few words with the other server, and he inevitably was the correct server. The little guy took good care of me and was an excellent server, checking on me regularly.

Overall, the restaurant was clean. The outside, the patio area, and the parking lot were all clean. Everything appeared to be up and up, perfect.

I ordered a steak, baked potato, and salad. The salad was good with no problems. The steak and baked potato arrived, and the baked potato looked amazing. But as soon as I stuck my fork in it, I encountered an entire onion top that had been haphazardly and barely cut, so it was an entire piece of onion top about 5 inches long. The steak was supposed to be a ribeye; I'm not sure if it was or not. It was a very tough steak but was cooked to the correct temperature and seasoned correctly. The baked potato and the salad were good.

I did call my server's attention to the enormously large onion and told him to remind the back of the house that their job performance directly affects the earnings of the front-of-the-house employees. Servers don’t get minimum wage; they work for tips. If the back of the house, who gets paid sufficiently to do their job, doesn’t do their job, then the front of the house suffers financially, and that is very unfair. So, back of the house, get your act together. The front of the house is depending on you, and so are the customers!

It was a pretty good amount of horse play going on when I got there and I could hear horseplay going on in the kitchen and a female voice telling someone to quit quit quit stop it stop it quit like they were being...

My boyfriend made a trip out to this location for Valentine’s Day, we normally have a good experience which is why we chose to go for our date night dinner. The restaurant was busy and we totally understand that it is difficult being a server on busy holidays and that servers can get overwhelmed, we are typically very patient with that king of thing. We sat down at about 8:20 and it took 10 minutes for us to be greeted after sitting down which was our first red flag. Drinks came out and our appetizer followed shortly after in a timely manner. We had finished our appetizer and were in need of refills but hadn’t seen our server for about 30 minutes. She finally came by with a water and then soon after she came to our table with our salads and admitted that she forgot to ring in our order but the kitchen had just started to work on it. We understood and just kept waiting but our server did not come back to the table at all between then and when the food came out 45 mins later (food came out at 9:53, they close at 10) My steak was rare when I had asked for medium. I asked the server if they could possibly put it on the grill just a little longer to get it to medium. She did, and when it came back to the table, one side was burnt and did not taste good. We did not see any management anywhere to discuss the situation, so we paid our bill (full price) on the app since we knew it would be faster than waiting for our server to come back. We are patient people but this really pushed our limits. We understand that mistakes happen, but we wish she hadn’t been so absent afterwards. We would rather she had come and talked to us and checked in a little...