Tony Roma's — Restaurant in Dubuque

We have been to this Tony Roma's a few times and had good experiences in the past. Last night was the pits. We won't be back.

To start, we were not greeted by the person at the front desk thing when we came in. She was on the phone and turned her back to us. I know it was business related, but she could have taken two seconds to say, "Just a moment" or something. When she was done with the phone call she gave us a few options of where to sit -- outside or inside, close to the music or far from it. We chose inside and far from the music. She got the inside part correct, but put us about as close to the music as she could. We didn't realize her blunder because the music had not started yet. Oh, and my wife has a difficult time walking and due to some recent issues is nearly blind right now. So, we were taking it slow and easy getting through the restaurant and the person at the desk took off at a fast pace. About halfway through the restaurant we realized we had no idea where she went. At that point I was ready to leave, but we found her (with no help from her at all -- she was just standing near a table, barely acknowledging us). Then she threw the menus down and sprinted off without a word.

There was kind of a comical show with the door to the patio area being locked and people kept coming up and shaking it and pounding on it and so on. I guess either there's no way to unlock it or no one knows how that works.

Anyway. Our server was pleasant, but maybe needs more training or something. I asked for the St. Louis ribs with bourbon barbecue sauce. There was some kind of confusion over that that I didn't really understand. Apparently they have these tablets they carry around to put the orders into and she wasn't sure how it worked or the sauce I asked for wasn't an option on the tablet... something like that. She said she had to go check on it with the kitchen and see if the could do the bourbon barbecue or not. She said she'd be back to let me know. She was gone for quite a while and when she came back she had our food.

So, I'm not sure if I got the sauce I wanted or not. What I did get wasn't very flavorful. Kinda bland, like a cheap brand you might find in a grocery store. The ribs were okay, but kind of tough. The fries were all right, but really salty. The slaw? There was barely any and it was kind of like cabbage with a dab of sugar water on it. Sort of like you might find in a cheap diner.

My wife had a salad and barely ate any. She said it tasted funny. When we tried to talk to the server about it, she didn't believe us. She said, "Well, it has goat cheese on it and they make the dressing in house." Um... and? And that's why it all tasted weird? Is she saying they make the house dressing taste weird on purpose? Is she saying they purposely find goat cheese that tastes off and is inedible? On purpose? A good server would check with the kitchen, offer a substitute, offer a discount, something. I felt like she was putting the blame on us, trying to suggest we know nothing about goat cheese or salad dressing.

The music was okay, I guess. As we were leaving I commented to my wife that there were plenty of open seats away from the music and wondered why we couldn't have had any of those. The person that had seated us was staring at me at the moment and I stared back, hoping for some kind of answer.

Nope.

Sad. Like I said we'd been there a few times on previous visits to Dubuque. We won't be back. Unprofessional...

My wife and I took our 3 grandkids for a 2 night stay at the Grand Harbor Resort in Dubuque. We were both looking forward to eating at Tony Roma’s as it would be our first time there. The reviews were mixed, but I’m pretty easy when it come to eating out. Serve me food that is worth the price I’m paying and I’ll be happy. If I’m paying $10, I want my money’s worth, if I’m paying $100, I want my money’s worth, pretty simple. Service is a far second on my list I stopped by the restaurant at 6:00 Pm to make 7:00 reservations. I was a little worried because the hostess was telling another group they only had 3 servers on duty, the wait was going to be long. They were OK with it. When I asked for a 7pm reservation, she said no need, by 7 seats would be available throughout, wouldn’t hear of taking a reservation. No problem, see you in an hour. Fast forward 1 hour, no seats, 5 groups in front of us, going to be a long wait. The hostess did get quite excited when I mentioned to my wife that maybe we should eat somewhere else. It was like Christmas morning to her, the hostess started talking about all the great places to eat in the area and where we should go to eat, anywhere but here folks. My wife was adamant about Tony’s, we would wait with a pager, back to the room we go. Soon enough we were paged and all was going good. We didn’t care about the wait, even though it was handled unprofessionally. We ordered and about 20 minutes later our food arrived, not a bad wait.

My dinner included a salad that had not yet been served, yet the main course was here. I inquired to the waiter about my salad, he looked like a deer in the headlight of a car. I’ve seen a deer in the headlight of a car. This guy really did look the same. Anyway, he never said a word, just took off like he had a purpose, turns out it wasn’t my salad as I was never served one. Drinks came half way through the meal. My baked potato had cheese and sour cream on it. I don’t eat potatoes that way, they didn’t mention they were going to put said items on my potato. Potato wasn’t really hot, good and warm is more like it. No butter or steak sauce on the table, non offered. Here’s the biggie; My medium rare steak was well done. The flavor of the steak was good, and it was even kind of juicy, but it was well done. No pink, no “kind of pink”, brown all the way thru. Late now, 3 tired little kids, no time to fix mistakes. I know they were short handed, but they were only serving what the servers could handle, (hence the long wait on a fairly slow night) so actually they were not short handed, though they told several groups they were. I heard it said myself at least 5 times by the staff. Anyway, it takes a lot to get me upset but bad service and bad food and bad excuses and bad management on top of a $90.00 meal is just too much. I blame the management , not the servers or even the hostess. The owner/manager needs to be held accountable for the workers not being trained professionally or properly. That will be our last visit to the Dubuque...

I’ve heard of many less-than-favorable experiences that people have had at Tony Roma’s, yet I decided to give the establishment another chance yesterday. I regret this decision.

Yesterday morning my coworker and I decided we would take a late lunch and go to Tony Roma’s to enjoy one of their lunch specials. Unsure of what time they’d stop serving those lunch specials, I called around noon to inquire. My first phone call rang all the way through and eventually stopped when no one answered. The second time, a very mumbling host answered. I inquired what time they serve their lunch menu until, to which he responded, “What do you mean?” I replied, “The lunch specials that you have on weekdays - when do you stop serving those?” He then says, “Oh like our $8 lunches? Yeah, we’re open till 10 so our kitchen stops serving around 9:45.” I respond, “So your kitchen will serve lunch specials till nearly 10pm?” He says, “Oh, lunch. I mean, that’s on our menu so I think it’s served all day.” Alright, fabulous. I thank him and hang up. My coworker and I arrive at 2:40pm and are seated by the same host that I had talked to on the phone just a few hours before. He seats us with the regular “Your server will be right with you” greeting. My coworker and I find the lunch specials section of the menu, where it clearly says “Lunch specials served 11:00am-3:00pm.” With it being so close to 3pm, I was really hoping they’d still let us order the lunch specials since that’s what we had come for and were told they’d be served all day. Unfortunately we never had the chance to find out... At 2:57pm, we still had not been recognized by a single employee. We saw a few people come in for their 3pm shift, along with a few very young employees goofing off as they were sweeping floors and clearing tables. Yet not a single server came by our section of tables, which were inhabited by us as well as a few other small parties, during the 18 mins since we had been seated. Being on our 1-hour lunch break, my coworker and I realized that even if we did order in the next few mins, we would be very pushed to make it back to work on time after we’d also need to wait for our drinks and then our food. So I grabbed the menus we had been given 20 minutes earlier, took them back up to the host and said, “We are on a tight schedule and were never served or acknowledged in the 20 minutes since you seated us. We need to leave.” He looked at me with a confused look, says “Sorry” and we walked out.

I am unbelievably disappointed and will be sure to share this story with any person who talks about going to Tony Roma’s in the near future. It is highly unlikely that I will ever give this establishment...