Ruby Tuesday — Restaurant in Branson

We have loved Ruby Tuesday’s for years. The Branson location is one of our favorites. (We are originally from Iowa). To get to Branson’s location we drive a little over 1 1/2 hours from our home to get there. We purposely go there when they offer the “Buy 1 entree, get the 2nd for $3 more”. We almost always order the full rack ribs, for both our meal to eat there & a take home order. We came to the Branson location on 2/20/25. We had the full rack of ribs w/onion rings & one w/a baked potato Their ribs were “OVER-THE-TOP” delicious! Tender, fall off the bone w/o having to cut them. The flavor is perfect, with & w/o & their famous Hickory Bourbon BBQ sauce. I add just a little, my husband adds a lot. Yummy! The sides are great, onion rings are cooked just right, crunchy & tender, very good flavor. Baked potatoes done. All good!

Well, we were there today 2/23/25. We ordered our usual, only my eat-in order was the “Half rack ribs, chicken strips, shrimp & fries”. My take home order was the “Full rack ribs & I got onion rings for my side. Almost everything was as good as usual. However, the ribs were not the same as when we got them on 2/20. They weren’t as tender & not quite as flavorful. We mentioned this to our server &!he explained that the corporate office made a change on how the ribs are cooked now. In my opinion, I have to ask WHY? Why change something that is so good & make it taste not as good as before. You’ve heard the expression, “If it’s not broken, why fix it”. In this case it WAS delicious, why change them?

Our server, Kendall, was excellent. He was friendly, made us feel welcome & he was happy to serve us. He confirmed our orders, filled our drinks w/o having to ask. Checking on us often to see if everything was okay, or if we needed anything else. He answered our questions honestly about the ribs. He is an excellent server. We hope to have him wait on us, the next time we go there.

The mgr, Brandon, came out & was walking around to see how everyone’s service & food were. We told him about the ribs & he explained a little more detail, than our server did. He...

Came here not knowing what else to eat. I went in with my family and was met with the salad bar and the lady attending us to our tables. The place was somewhat clean but definitely not perfect with a few occasional flies. We sat down and ordered our food.

Two of my relatives got a New Orleans Seafood platter. My mother got a sirloin steak with salad. My cousin had a marinara pasta, my other cousin had a bourbon salmon platter and I had a shrimp pasta. My two brothers had a slider platter and the other a salad. (I'm not sure the salad bar was clean or not, I didn't go to that area.)

Before I get to the food let me talk about the service. The waitress was very attentive and was actually really nice to everyone. Even had a conversation mid lunch and enjoyed her.

Now the food.

The New Orleans seafood platter was subpar with the tilapia tasting very earthy and a bit 'too' fresh. And it wasn't really a New Orleans platter to begin with since most of the items being very bland. The side of mac n' cheese was probably the best part of the dish even though it was not too great either. Would not recommend this dish.

The sirloin was actually pretty decent with it being cooked almost perfectly with a nice meaty taste.

The marinara pasta was good BUT they didn't add enough sauce. Which resulted in the pasta having to be stirred a good bit.

The bourbon salmon was decently seasoned and the bourbon sauce was nice. To add on, the salmon was cooked pretty okay and didn't have an earthy taste unlike the New Orleans seafood platter and had a rich texture.

The chicken sliders were good and the fries were okay.

The salad was delicious and was very enjoyable. Was ate down to the bottom of the plate.

My shrimp pasta was a nice moderately sized bowl with a bunch of shrimp. It was nicely seasoned for the most part and the pasta wasn't too bad either being cooked correctly. I ate everything in the bowl and was full. Also, their lemonade is good I recommend it.

Overall. They have consistency with some foods but what really bumped them up was the service. The service there...

Where do I begin? We walked in the door and there were three staff members talking and looking at a phone. It took a couple minutes for the hostess to stop talking and finally come over to us. She just looked at us and I assumed she was the hostess so I said we had 4 to eat. She barely acknowledged us. She sat us, it took FOREVER before the waiter came to take our drink order. When he finally came back with our drinks we ordered food. My husband and I went to get salad and they were completely out of bacon, boiled eggs, and ham on the salad bar. Those items were listed on the list of salad bar items so we asked about more and they said they had none. The ranch dressing was watery, but tasted ok. I ordered the new pot roast. When it came out I had a bite of mashed potatoes and they were hot and tasted good. I cut into the pot roast and took a big bite only to find that the roast was ice cold. Probably not safe to eat at all at that temperature. The pot roast was advertised as having fried onions on it, but it had none and instead had peas and corn on it. I ended up not eating anything besides the salad. The waiter did offer to bring something different, but I just wasn't hungry or trusting of the food at that point Then, my husband ordered a Philly and instead of it coming with the sliced beef it had chopped up hamburger meat. Not at all as advertised either. We sat forever waiting on our check to come after we were finished eating. Our waiter was nowhere to be found. They were not very busy. There were maybe 5 other tables being served. I watched another employee standing behind a wall playing on her phone instead of working. My husband finally had to ask for our ticket after the waiter finally came out to tell another table they were out of baked potatoes (as he was serving their food). Never saw a manager once. They didn't appear to be short handed given the number of customers in the store as well. Thankfully they took the pot roast off the ticket for us. That was the only positive to the dinner. So...