Outback Steakhouse — Restaurant in Buena Park

I've lived in the area for about 10 years and we used to come here a lot and forgot why we had stopped until this last visit. The service just sucks. We had a group of 4 adults, two children. We were told it would be a 15-20 minutes. The restaurant was half empty when we walked in. A lot of people were sat before us, they had not wait whatsoever. After the 20 minutes of waiting were up I pointed it out to the pair of hosts hoping to hear that a table would be ready soon, sorry for the wait, blah blah blah. Instead no new ETA, no explanation beyond the vague server shortage that has plagued us all since 2020. I didn't take a head count of how many people were seated after we came in but it was a lot. We were actually the only people ever left waiting for any amount of time at all. Lots of pairs of people and more than one group of 4 who all came in after us were seated right away. I'm pretty sure that the hosts just didn't want to stop standing behind their desk and push a couple of tables together for us. Two tables in the restaurant were already pushed together for another group of 6 and I assume rather than putting together other tables to get us seated sooner they would rather seat many easy groups into booths and wait for that group to leave and the table to be bussed for us to take it over. If that was the case I would have told us to wait more like an hour since that group didn't look ready to leave. Anywho, there's a Black Angus just a hop skip further up Beach BLVD. We were sat right away, the service was excellent and the food was good too.

Oh, almost forgot, when we told them we were going to go somewhere else they said that the only reason that the other people were all seated before us was because they had made reservations. I call BS because we only heard people telling the hosts numbers (as in the number of people in their group) before...

Disappointing Visit! My son and I stopped in for last day of vacation as we wanted someplace fairly close to Anaheim before an early morning flight the next day. Overheard our waiter Jonathan saying to the table next to us that the restaurant was emphasizing a desire to get to 5 stars on their Google rating and they were at 4.5 now so I see a lot of ratings here that are probably much higher than deserved, but kudos to them for their campaign to increase their rating. My 9 oz filet was cooked medium and about 3/4 inch thick. It was cooked properly, decent meal. My son’s 9oz filet was almost 1.5” thick and the entire middle was Rare, clearly not cooked. He had asked for medium. Outside edge was Med Rare but center was Rare. The waiter recognized he did not eat it and did well to have the Manager stop over and the manager said he would remove it from the bill, which was not requested but appreciated. I still tipped 18% on original total as I understand that tips are important part of the servers income. I was a little surprised when the waiter said “I would say I am sorry, but I didn’t cook it…”. Really strange thing to say and not really team oriented but his statement wasn’t wrong, I suppose. There was no mention to me about the desire to improve their rating on Google which honestly is why I am leaving one. The ratings should include all experiences not just the good ones. I would recommend you check Yelp for this location for a fair representation of the restaurant. I would say it was Average management, Below Average service, Below Average Food. Atmosphere was poor outside the restaurant was a complete mess. With dead palm branches strewn around building and in their barely lit parking lot. Appreciated the manager removing it from the bill but it didn’t change the...

This location was wonderful for our family get together (20 people including 8 children). They kindly took our reservation over the phone the night before and were ready for us willingly switching out seats for high chairs wherever we wanted them set up. We had one server and a team of people that helped her out. Our server was amazing and took very good care of our large party. Nothing was missed, and we didn't have to constantly wait around for her to appear to ask for things. She was on top of anticipating our needs and taking care of us. The only "problems" we had that we didn't bring up was that the steaks were not cooked to the right temperature. My husband's medium steak was medium rare, and my cousin's medium rare meat was medium to medium well. They had different cuts (sirloin and prime rib), so the kitchen didn't mix up the meats on their plate. It was still tasty so no one said anything and only discussed it when they were packing up their leftovers and comparing their meats. Our server actually heard us talking since she was clearing dishes and looked concerned and asked us about it, but we assured her we were fine and didn't want to raise any issue. We were never rushed and our kids took over the outdoor patio area since no one was around and were never admonished or asked to leave. Employees even came out to check on me outside long after we left our table since I was sitting out there by myself while my husband and stepson were using the bathroom after everyone else in our party had left. This was a very welcoming place and we...