Red Lobster — Restaurant in East Point

This is my first visit at this particular location and I do not believe that I will ever return. Upon walking in(about 4:15 or 20?), there was no one there to greet us. So it was about a good 2 to 3 minutes of standing around, like do we just grab a empty spot? Sign one, nobody paying attention to the front door. Eventually a lady comes and stands there. Does stuff with some papers. And then finally acknowledges us. Asks how many, and then says its going to be 15 to 20 minute wait, due to shift change. Then another young lady walks over like 2 seconds later and then tells us that she is available. Sign two, they are not on the same page. And then we are taken to a booth. We we were not asked if we wanted a booth, high top, or a table just we were given what was available at the moment. As we were walking away, I could hear the greeting lady, asking the Older Gentlemen, who was standing directly in front of the front door when we walked in. How many was in his table? He said that he was there before us. We thought he was just standing there waiting for his name to be called. But obviously he had not been addressed either. See sign one

After sitting, someone came over asked us if we needed anything, and then walked away after. I mean we just sat down. Eventually, they returned to take our drink order as well as our food. I don’t know how things are done in ATL, but in Miami every Bar I have ever worked. I need to ID EVERYONE who looks under 40. That being said, I was not ID'ed nor my partner. I can imagine teens come here often.

So anyway they came back with our drinks. We ordered the Tito's strawberry lemonade drink. It was like drinking old, heavily water down pink lemonade. And the food took forever to come, received about 4:55. And when it did finally come, it was not complete. And we couldn't start to eat since we didn't have silverware.

And my food was cold. No one wants cold, unseasoned, linguine, with a spoon full of thick cold sauce. I was informed when I ordered the lime shrimp that it would be a tequila lime sauce that came on the shrimp, nope. Just grilled shrimp with the smallest hint of lime I had to search for. I also ordered the dragon shrimp. Again I asked how it was before ordering it and would have appreciated being told it was very spicy. But that was ok since that was actually the best thing on the plate yet cold.

With the ultimate feast, my partner should have received 2 sides. They only got 1, about 75% through eating they plate, and MY FRIES, their second side finally arrives.(about 5:15) Eventually, after the waiter has been to our table twice, for honey mustard, and what I thought would be a replacement drink.

I was already done with my first selections (about 5:11) of shrimp since they came in small portions of 4 and 5. And the shrimp linguine was cold so I didn't really eat it. So it didn't get replaced. I was finally about to order my second selection of shrimp and the waiter say "yeah, I didn't see any sauce on there." Well if he didn't see it, why he brought it to our table? So I ordered the lime again and got the waltz. Felt like forever waiting for it(arrived about 5:26). I get the lime shrimp and he tells me there is no sauce. What???

I didnt even care about redeeming my dessert reward. I'm am so over this experience. We couldn't pay at the table top terminal since another waiter took it. They brought the check and a to go box, but no bag. So again waiting for a bag.

So to sum this up. The service was horrendous, we received food, with no silverware. We got cold food, watered-down drinks, sides well after the main course was delivered. We are waiting for small things that should have come with our food initially. Or we just didn't get them. I never was offered cocktail sauce for my fried shrimp. From my understanding when lobster or crab is ordered. You usually get the butter dip. That never arrived, never offered it. I told the waiter that lemonade was watered-down, I didn't like it, still was charged for it. Several things are wrong with this place....

I ordered a Chicken Alfredo pasta and a half dozen of biscuits. I had ordered my food via doordash and when the food got to me, there was no silverware or napkins in the package.

After spending 15mins going to nearby restaurants to get a fork and knife, hence defeating the point of delivery food, I finally got to the cold Chicken Alfredo and cold biscuits.

You can only imagine how delicious the pasta was cold, so I decided to call the manager at the store. (This was at 7:48pm, and the host said the manager was busy and would call back.) It's 9:32pm now, and I haven't heard back from the manager still.

Update 02-04-2021:

We ordered food for take-away from here. We got the Salmon and Lobster combo with two sides. The only reason we were eating here is because we had a gift card from the last time we ordered take-away and it was so horrible and had many things wrong with our order.

We placed the order at 8:31 and were quoted 20mins for pickup. I arrived at the restaurant at 9:06 and the take-away door was locked so I went to the main door and was knocking on the door. The hostess (who is lucky that I didnt catch her name) starred at me and looked me in the eye and then ducked down and started to clean up the host stand.

As I waited for other customers to leave and made my entrance, the second girl (who looked like a waitress) who was chatting with the host walked away as I was approaching. Then when I asked the host about the To-Go order she pointed me in the direction of the To-Go station and asked the other waitress to check on my order. The host had the most horrible attitude and a complete "I'm over it!" attitude.

I get to the To-Go station and the manger Tamika is collecting what seems like cashouts for the servers, and pays no attention to the guest standing right there. After listening to Toot (one of the servers) complain about how she is "So ready to get out of here..." the To-Go server turns the corner and helps me.

I give Courtney (the To-Go server) my name and ask her for my order. She is the most friendly person and has the biggest smile, but this is probably only because she is training; the rest of the staff give no eff's and I'm confident she will follow the examples set by management.

I get back to my hotel and here is this ice-cold potato with barely warm lobster and shrimp. The butter is so hard that it is not going to melt on the potato, plus the potato is baked from atleast 4 hours ago. (I'm a chef, I know when a potato is baked.) If this wasn't bad enough, we didn't even get our green beans that we ordered and paid for.

I tried to call the restaurant at 9:38 when I got back to my hotel and after 16 mins on hold, the host picks up in a very non-interested voice and then when I ask for the manager she asked me what it was about to which I told her the truth. Then she put me on hold for another couple mins before she came back and said that she wants to take my information down because the manager is too busy right now with the servers.

Thats two out of two for bad reviews for THIS Red Lobster for me, sucks that you guys suck so much; what can I say!

When I expressed my concern to the host about no silverware, I wasn't even offered any kind of reimbursement or sending out the order again or anything. It's a pity because the cold pasta still had flavor, I just couldn't enjoy it cold.

All in all, I will not be ordering from this red lobster branch again, it's a pity that they couldn't put silverware in a Togo bag, I own multiple restaurants and we train our staff to do this with every bag, it's just...

I wanted to give five stars but couldn't. Things wind up working out eventually; however, it our initial encounter started off rocky.

First thing this Red Lobster need to fix is the lack of answering theor phone. It's impossible to make reservations because no o e answers.

In view of bullet one above, we decided to just go without reservations. Of course it was super packed. My sister asked to speak to the manager about the inability to make reservations over the ph and asked if there could some accommodation regarding the wait. Ok, so they were able to reduce the amount of time we were going to wait. So instead of an hour and 1/2... we waited an hour.

After everyone placed their placed their orders, the three people that ordered Salmon were informed (by someone who was not our waiter) about an hour into our wait for our food, that they were out of Wild Caught Salmon and only had farm raised. I was the only one who didn't want the farm raised. The person never asked what I wanted inplace of that he just left. When our waiter returned, I mentioned that I wasn't asked what I wanted in place of the wild caught Salmon that they didn't have. He said he wasn't aware that they were out of wild caught Salmon. Long story short, it took even longer for my food to come out because the kitchen didn't communicate with our waiter. Not the waiter fault. However, we weren't offered the cheddar biscuits, we had to ask. It was at that time that we learned they had run out, but was dropping more. And we still had to ask again to finally get them.

The kids food came out last and they were the simolest orders. That's horrible!

We ordered sunset passion Pina Coladas, they literally had no rum in it. We had to ask for shots of rum to put in our coladas, which cost an extra 10 dollars. The whole reason they don't add it where you can taste it in the first place. They skimp because they want the extra money. I wasn't looking for it to be as strong as when I go to the club, but darn it atleast let the rum be where you can taste it.

Our waiter would dissappear for a long time. My son had to go find hum several times. I believe he was overloaded with tables, and we were the least important.

Despite the unfavorable experience ce above he did try take it up to us.

I dropped o e of my coconut shrimp, he surprised with a replacement without my request. I was thankful.

At the end if the night, he gave us a boatload of cheddar biscuits to go.

He apologized for the mishaps.

So because of that, I gave a decent tip. And will give that location...