Steak 'n Shake — Restaurant in Elkhart

Keep driving, weary traveler.

We make it a point to stop at a Steak n' Shake at least once per road trip as a family tradition. It's cheap, decent food and we usually have "ok" service. Please understand that we know what a Steak n' Shake atmosphere is. Not expecting a "fine dining" experience, and expectations were appropriate for the style of restaurant we were were stopping in to.

However, we should have kept driving to the next location instead of stopping at this one. We waited 5 minutes before anyone in the restaurant even acknowledged our existence. Now we have had a similar experience in a Steak n' Shake before... but that's because it was really busy. At THIS location... there were only 3 tables with customers when we walked in, and I think they all already had their food. I thought we had lucked out to catch them at a slow time! How wrong I was. We were eventually sat, but we really should have taken a hint and just left.

Everything was dirty. The bathrooms were a horror show, worse than a "port-o-potty". Smelly, dirty, unsanitary in both the Men's and Women's. This continued out into the restaurant. There was garbage on the floor, including what appeared to have been wet paper towel at one time, but had now dried into a caked-on paper-mache-like creation next to our table. Several tables sat with garbage and dirty plates. They were never bussed the whole time we were there.

Service was slow. When we did get our food, two out of the four orders that came were wrong, and one meal just didn't come at all. We had to ask 3 times for the final meal, and we eventually just took it to go. No refills for drinks were ever offered. The hot food (when arrived) was fine. Fries were lukewarm to cold. The shakes were below average.

Again, if it were busy... I could understand. But it wasn't. The restaurant only had a couple tables with customers at them. Out of the 20 tables or whatever a typical Sn'S has.

It was well over an hour for our whole experience, and it was not a good one. We could have and should have stopped at another location, or another restaurant entirely. I'm not happy to lose over an hour of drive time for such a crappy place.

If this were my first experience at a Stake n' Shake, I would never ever come back. This...

I usually enjoy their double steakburger with cheese that I get but the last couple of times I've ordered food it was extremely overly salted. I personally don't like a lot of salt but my bf does and he said his steakburger was overly salted as well as everyone else that I ordered for. The first time I assumed was probably an accident but about a month after that visit we'd figure we'd try again since the location is convenient and as far as fast food that has any quality that isn't too far away and isn't always overly crowded via drive-thru around here we figured we'd try again. Couldn't believe it. The same double steak burgers with cheese we had ordered before that were overly salted we got once again! We were very disappointed and unfortunately this has caused us to not want to go back.

I wondered if anyone else has experienced the same issue at this location or if it's a new standard to overly salt the food so it's inedible or cause customers to have high blood pressure(JK but sometimes I wonder)

I swear since the pandemic, quality seems like a thing of the past. I was also reading other comments and think they need to bring back 24hr drive thru for people like truckers for example, there is no longer anywhere they can go get a quick bite it seems. I miss pre pandemic times. Quality, politeness, cleanliness and quantity also went out the window and let's not forget the higher prices for crappies services. This is not just a steak n shake issue. It's everything.

If anyone that works at Steak n Shake reads my review, if they haven't already could they please at least go a bit more easy on the salt. This is a polite request for all customers. I'm sure if anyone wants a lot of salt they'll ask or add it themselves. I'm not over exaggerating, our food was practically inedible the last 2 visits. One was later in the evening like 8pm and the last visit was approximately 6pm.

Thank you for reading my review. I'll change it if the...

We placed an online order because it was available at this location. We were told "11" minutes until it was ready. When we arrived we joined a long line of cars in the drive thru lane. After waiting about 10 minutes I called the store and asked whether I should be in the drive through line since I had placed an online order and the manager said "Yes, stay in line. We're getting through everyone as fast as we can."

When we got to the ordering microphone I said that I had ordered online and the speaker instructed me to pull forward to the window to pick it up. So I got out of line to do just that but there were other cars in front of me and I couldn't budge the line. Thankfully there was still a space open so when I drove back in line I had only lost one place.

When we got to the order window at 8:54 it had been 36 minutes since our expected pickup time that we spent in the drive through lane. The employee at the window was friendly and cordial so that was positive. But the food was cold and the milkshake was warm, of course, since we were only getting to it more than 30 minutes after it had been assembled. Additionally, our jalapeno burger was soggy, since it had been sitting, and our Royale steakburger was just a regular steakburger which was a loss of $2.50 on a $18 order, a 14% overcharge.

There are "Car Hop" spaces and there are "Curbside" spaces in the parking lot. When I called and asked what to do, why was I not offered the option to park in one of these spaces so that my meal, which was, apparently, already assembled, could be brought out? I could have forgiven this a year ago when all this drive through only pandemic stuff was new but we're over 13 months into it so I would have expected it to be no big deal.

This would have been a 1-star review except that, after microwaving, the food tasted good and the meal was overall inexpensive. I plan to avoid going to this location again...