Red Robin Gourmet Burgers and Brews — Restaurant in Escondido

In short, if you like burgers, easy five star. The 'Burnin' Love' is the best burger, and if they remove it from the menu again, write them dissatisfied letters. If, for some reason, you would like more information, read on.

A decade ago, my best friend and I began dating. Attending UCSD at the time, I lived a walk away from the nearby UTC mall, wherein there was a Red Robin. I typically strayed from red meats (cholesterol, etc.), but on our dates, I liked to treat myself. Red Robin quickly became a go-to date spot of ours. We tended to eat weekend nights, since she'd commute for our dates (and, carless, I'd just walk over). We had a favorite server, named Tammy, who we just happened to get most of the time we were there. We liked her, and we used to joke to each other 'you think Tammy remembers us like we remember her?'

Anyway, as it does, time moved on, and I had to move after graduation. My best friend and I married and recently returned to San Diego. We were bummed to learn the Red Robin at UTC had closed. We saw there was one in Escondido, and we had some business to tend to there, so we figured we'd stop by.

The location, honestly, didn't feel as nice. Though there was plenty of parking, and the decor was nice, something didn't feel as wonderful. Even the menu had shrunk - substantially! What used to be an encyclopedia of options had turned into a single full page. Luckily, I noticed the Burnin' Love was there (marked as 'new', so it seems Red Robin higher ups made a crucial error sometime in the past decade. Glad to see they've gotten it together).

I ordered the Burnin Love with bottomless steak fries and buzzard (now called 'buzz') sauce, as God intended. I also got a cream soda with vanilla flavoring (vanillaraspberryorange, for the record).

Our server, Angel, told us that she used to work at the UTC location, and lots of the people there moved to this location when the branch shut down. Of course, we had to inquire whether she was acquainted with Tammy, our old favorite, and she was! In fact, she was Tammy's sister. Tammy recently passed away. RIP.

Angel was wonderful, and the service was wonderful. I wish I could have given a much bigger tip, but we simply can't afford that sort of gesture right now.

Anyway, I hope someone else who reads this and sees Angel can give her an extra tip from me (we gave ~20%). Or a hug or whatever she wants. She was just too sweet.

The mud pie dessert was good too.

In case someone at Red Robin corporate sees this, let me know what I can do to get Angel a raise. I moved far away, so I'm not a regular anymore, but I'm definitely still a...

Overall disappointed, we were excited to eat at a red robbin again after the one in our neighborhood shut its doors. We had just spent the day at the safari park so we were hungry and ready to order. We were seated within a timely manner and our waiter introduced himself. After taking our drink orders and food itself, that's about where the customer service ended. From there we waited our entire stay for silverware, drink refills, and our dipping sauces we asked for when we put our order in. We never received a fry refill even though they're suppose to be bottomless. Then again we couldn't even get our servers attention though he was attending to the table next to us as well. We understand; as a couple who has also worked in the restaurant industry, things get busy, it's easy to over look a little table top for a larger one. We also understand that sometimes families with small children can be a server's worst nightmare. As we watched the large party get refills on drinks and fries, even witnessed them send food back, we waited patiently for his attention so we could at least get some waters for the table. While waiting my husband discovered something floating in his mixed drink. All of this building up to the server finally acknowledging us, we brought up the floaties in the drink to which our server said "as a bartender myself, I don't see what you guys are seeing" . He never offered to replace the drink, take it off the order, he even said "what is your goal with showing me this?" He then proceeded to bring us 2 waters for a table of 3 and flatware we no longer needed because we were done with our experience. We planned on tipping $40 since it was a busy night and since our bill was only $82 , that seemed like a decent amount. We proceeded to pay through the tablet and my husband handed the tip directly to our server explaining that it was almost a $20 dollar tip and apologized that it was mostly ones. The server decided to mention he still didn't see what we were talking about with the drink. Long story short, we will not return to the location and I understand we aren't even percentage of the clientele so it probably doesn't matter. Worst time at a...

I rarely write reviews, especially negative ones, but this location never fails to disappoint me. Today we visited for my husband's birthday to be told he could not have his free burger because it hadn't been exactly 24 hours since we registered him on their rewards site. I will accept that as I should've read the fine print. However, they advertise $2.50 Draft Beers during Happy Hour. What they fail to mention until you try to order one is that only includes two kinds of beers, and only in the smallest size. Not quite a "happy" hour if you ask me. So he orders a different beer instead. Then our drinks come to the table and the waitress tries to tell me I'm wrong about my drink having too much syrup. I've had the drink many times and never felt like I was drinking pure syrup. But instead of offering to remake it, she just insisted I was wrong and said I should get a different drink. And proceeded to bring me the wrong drink after I told her what I would substitute it with. Then our food came out. Thankfully they do "bottomless" fries, because I had about six fries total upon receiving my plate. I could see my plate through each of the fries. My burger was overall dry and lacking in other areas. My husband's was also dry and lacking in fries. Just an overall disappointing experience.

Our prior experience at this same location a few months back was not any better as we sat there for an hour, maybe hour and a half before our waitress came back and told us she never put in our order. Mind you, we had a two year old and a three/four month old who don't do well sitting that long anyhow, let alone being hungry and watching everyone around us get their food while we don't.

Needless to say, we won't be coming back. Sad considering the one free food item I used to look forward to most on my birthday used to be a Red Robin...