Applebee's Grill + Bar — Restaurant in California

While waiting to be seated, we had to wait behind many people which is not a problem. However, I noticed that there were many empty seats in which they could have already been seated in wasting not only mine but other's time. Once my family got seated, the table was sticky and oily at the same time. Wiping the table with my napkin, it had turned dark from the oil and turned gray from some residue of something else. We didn't get any utensils so we were left with 5 tiny napkins. The tortilla chips had an oil layer making it shiny but did taste good. The salsa was definitely not fresh, as though made a week ago and stored in the fridge. Once our food arrived, it was immediately almost underwhelming. The meat ratio compared to it's side was dissappointing. Out of the 5 meat dishes we had gotten, we all determined that the meat was salty and dry. The rice to my mother's chicken fajita was very strong. It was strong enough to be the only thing in her fajita and still be overwhelming. The chicken seasoning was very average and the butter on top after completely settling in made the entire breast salty. After all of that, the breast was still tasteless in the middle. My breast was inconsistently cooked. One side would be dry and as I went down the breast, it got less dry. They had also ran out of some ingredients also. Such as strawberries for the yogurt and the candy that tops off the lemonade. Substitutes were offered such as apples and a twizzler however. I found that the steak had completely dried out my mouth as soon as I chewed it. Our server had an optomistic tone in her voice but didnt look it. I had noticed that many of the workers around were not being proffessional however. They were hugging around and I saw one server wearing earphones while working. Overall experience in summary is underwhelming...

It is often packed at this location. We were seated under a huge hole in the ceiling and next to a vent. A waitress became argumentative that the air conditioner was off, when cool air was visibly blowing out of it. It wasn't until an adjacent table of fellow diners complained, they also felt cold air from both sides. The hole and the vent. Finally a different waitress confirmed the a/c was on and they turned it down. They moved us from our table because they needed to seat a larger party, by moving our table into another set of 3 tables. We were moved to a booth on the other side. It took about 20 minutes from being seated the first time, to have our order taken. And another 20 to receive any food. Then then waitress for our section changes 3 times in about 15 minutes and we never got any help. No one checked for drinks or dips, napkins, etc. Got the endless chicken, shrimp and ribs-- they basically brought ome of each out, all at once and the waitress disappeared. The shrimp was really bad, chicken tenders were mediocre, ribs were decent for a place not known for its BBQ, let alone its ribs. One of the few good things left at Applebee's is the maple blondie-- which we got after we ordered it on the self serve kiosk and some random waiter dropped it and essentially took off. Waited 10 minutes watching the ice cream melt, trying to flag a waiter(ress) down, because they didn't put the sauce or pecans on top of the blondie. We could have left without anyone noticing, but we arent those people. My 4 year old was restless and ready to go, so I took her to the car. While her dad waited at our table far too long to...

Our time here was really good. The wait time wasn't too long (maybe 10 minutes) and they were sitting families as fast as they walked in. As soon as we were seated our waitress was on it. At no time did I feel rushed to order/finish my food. I ordered the Cedar Grilled Lemon Chicken which was cooked perfectly, presented nicely, was portioned well and tasted great! Also had the Strawberry Sparkler which was really refreshing and actually paired pretty well with the Chicken & Quinoa.

With that being said, the reason I deducted a star is because we were seated next to the hostess stand where there was a lot of chatter and we could barely hear over our own conversation. Half way through our time there, the hostess started arguing with other servers and saying 'this is why I hate people, I swear'. The hostess proceeded to get upset when another server came over to talk about a section that wasn't getting seated and the hostess loudly said 'because I don't like that B**, so I'm not seating her'. Yes, it was like watching that movie 'Waiting'. With two young children (7y & 9y) hearing this drama-fest, I made eye contact with our server and we were graced with our check, paid and left.

The funny thing is that it wasn't even super busy with wait times of more than 20 minutes - people were getting seated w/in 15 minutes and things appeared to be running smoothly, so it was offsetting to see the hostess who appeared to be doing a good job, getting so irate.

I will come back, just request not to be seated next to the hostess...