Outback Steakhouse — Restaurant in Burlington

I really hate leaving this kind of review, but it has to be done. I ate here with my family about 6 months ago and it was really good, but omg has it plummeted. We got there around 4:30 pm on a Friday night. There were maybe 7 tables of people eating at the time and we were asked to wait about 15 minutes for a table to open(?). We figured it was a staffing issue, didn't really care. Got seated and our waitress was quite lovely and attentive... at first. Took almost 15 minutes to get drinks even though the dinner rush hadn't even started yet. We were there almost a half hour before any food came out. The blooming onion was delicious, but at around 45 minutes was when we got our food. Three ordered baked potatoes. All of our dinners came out before the waitress ever told us they were out of baked potatoes. One person got rice to substitute. It was super bland. The others got fries. Fries are always good. Myself and my partner ordered the steak and Alice springs chicken combos, medium rare, sides of mashed potatoes and veggies. Half the plate was nothing but veggies, they tasted horrible. No seasoning or anything, just blah. The mashed potatoes tasted good, but easily could have been boxed powdered potatoes and had a strange texture with hard crunchy pieces in it. The chicken was the size of a bojangles chicken tender. Tasted good, but very tiny. The steak was flavorful, but it was by far NOT a good cut of meat. Both of our steaks were filled with tendons and ligaments, very hard to cut and chew, and mine had a massive vein sticking out right in the center of it. I regret getting medium rare as now we are both having stomach issues and that's the only thing we did differently from everyone else's steaks. For the amount of money paid for this meal for five people, approximately $125, the food was incredibly lacking. At one point, we were getting up to leave before ever realizing that a desert, which had been ordered almost 30 minutes beforehand, still had not come out. So we had to sit back down and wait. We were there almost two hours, mostly just waiting for food. Sub-par food at that. Do...

I would give the service a better rating because I have had good experiences lately while sitting at the bar. The issue is every other time I've been over the last 10 years. While sitting at the normal tables it's been awful. From drugged out servers that after 45 minutes, we found that they forgot to put our orders in, to the sassy/rude waitresses that were too busy sitting at the booth full of their friends to wait on us and then spoke to us like dogs for trying to get a cup of ketchup. The current staff seems to be very doing well from what I have seen and I feel it has been absolutely 5 stars but going to take a while for me to see that things have actually changed. The food is decent. The taste changes at each visit. The sirloin I got on the previous visit was way better tasting than the filet that cost twice as much on this visit. The lobster tail was okay. Sort of rubbery and bland compared to other steak places in a 3 mile radius. Had the grilled shrimp twice before and will avoid it from here out. While the steak had very little seasoning the shrimp was caked in chili powder making it inedible, both times. I believe there was a higher up person there tonight because they were overly attentive to thee point of asking if I wanted more bread as I made my first cut into the bread I just received. Hopefully the good service trend continues and the food taste levels out. I love Outback every other area I've eaten at. Just this one has had a very bad history but I do hope the positive trends stay in place and more good ones come in as well. Thanks for the meal tonight and please do not reflect this rating as just from tonight it is an over all of all experience from the last...

I realize they're a busy restaurant, but it never seems to fail, every time we go either my food isn't right or my husband's isn't. Or the blooming onion is extremely overcooked and sitting in a sea of grease. Outback has always been my favorite restaurant, but even last night (Father's Day 2021), I booked a time online so we wouldn't have to wait forever and we still had to wait. We ordered cheese fries as an appetizer. Then we ordered. One of My husband's sides was Soup. They brought it out with the appetizer. I didn't say anything, I didn't wanna embarrass my family. So his soup is cold by the time he gets to it. I always order the 6oz sirloin cooked well. And I always go ahead and cut it up when I get it (I guess it's the mom in me at this point lol), so its ready and I don't have to stop every few seconds and cut again. Well, I can do medium well but I've learned just to order well done from previous experience. Every piece I cut was dark pink/red and there was blood all over my plate. I got the waitresses attention and she offered to put my cut up pieces back on the grill. I said sure. She got a smaller plate for me to scoop the steak onto. She kept apologizing. And I told her it wasn't her fault, she didn't cook it and I understand when its as busy as they were it's not easy to inspect every plate. I work in customer service and I can't stand to see someone being blamed for something they're not responsible for. But honestly, it's every single time we go. And the last two times they didn't put my rewards info in, so where I'm supposed to have 50% off my next...