Portillo's Kissimmee — Restaurant in Florida

I should have taken photos, but my mom just wanted to leave and I didn't think of it. How to explain my single, lonely star (which would have been half a star if possible)...

Let's start with the positives. Service was fast, personable, the guy calling the numbers created amusing rhymes ("83, come see me"). The place was clean. After that...

Well...

It isn't glowing. My mother ordered a beef and cheese croissant. The bread tasted microwaved, chewy, and it was flat. It had that "deflated balloon" look your kids have after a long day at Disney. The cheese was canned or bagged and tasted a bit like melted salty orange tofu. It definitely wasn't "cheese" by any extent. The meat was grey, lifeless, chewy, and resembled the meat they gave us on "Philly Cheese Steak Day" when I was in high school (Gen-X here- we got the "good" stuff back in the day.) It was also so bland that the above-mentioned tofu had more flavor. It wasn't even salted!

I ordered the Beef and Sausage bowl. Remember the Wendy's commercials where the old lady shouted "Where's the beef??" (Just me? Anyone else?) Anyway, I was asking, "Where's the sausage??" Because my bowl of sickly grey slices of rubbery paper lacked any sausage at all. I had asked for onions a peppers, though you couldn't tell the difference in taste, texture, or color from the beef. The vegetables all had that same foul grey hue the meat possessed and it was all swimming in water that tasted of the stainless steel pan the meat has been languishing in since sometime this afternoon. And, like my mom's sandwich, it had zero flavor. I must have gotten the "low sodium" bowl by mistake.

If Portillos management is reading this, please take this to heart: Beef and bell peppers should never be the same color. Onions shouldn't be cooked to the point they resemble stringy cellophane. Croissants should never be microwaved. And for $36, two people shouldn't have to go across the street to Jersey Mike's for a decent steak sandwich.

We...

I've noticed that there were cars in the drive-thru for a couple days now and I had time so I stopped in. I found out they are basically on soft open and their grand opening is Tuesday so I figured why not. The employees are all fresh but seem to be doing a good job with a fair knowledge of the food. I went with a fairly safe order for me for the first time. I ordered an Italian beef dipped as many times as they could with onion rings and a root beer. I don't typically order peppers when I'm bringing it home as I have the exact same ones in my fridge. The sandwich was well prepared and as wet as I like it. The onion rings were perfectly cooked and very crispy. It's hard to mess up soda when you're new so the root beer was just fine. Once I got home I did add some hot giardinara to my taste and it was the perfect sandwich for me. Being at this is a brand new location and they are still getting the hang of things I find it to already be better handled at the start than the Orlando location was. I'm really going to enjoy having them so close to home now but it's dangerous because it means that I'm going to want to go there every day and I just can't afford that. I will probably avoid them until the lines slow down once they are fully open but I'm really looking forward to seeing the inside. If you're familiar with Portillo's and our local you will love this and if you've never had it everyone should try at least once. Once you know that it's good food I hope you go back as...

The staff were unfriendly and not happy to help. The manager (Peter) was extremly rude and disrespectful. The girl who hands out the food was very mean specificly when i asked her to let me have my drinks for my pregnant wife, she refused and said she will give everything out at the same time and made me wait 10 minutes before i could recive anything. When brought this to the managers attention, Peter, he said she is right and we just have to wait for all of our food to be ready and can't even get our drinks before the food since that is part of their training and rules. Very unhelpfull and very unfreindly staff. People like these should not work in the service industry. The manager Peter reacted extremely offensive and while I was being frustrated he try to say I'm threatening him and acted extremely unprofessional and had a very unpleasant attitude. He could have easily given us our drinks while we were waiting for the food just to make us happy and to defuse the situation, but instead he insisted to keep us waiting and made my pregnant wife suffer from thirst. A manager should be able to make a managerial decision to keep the customers happy even if means to let people have their drinks before their food is ready. We will never visit this location again but the other location in Palm Parkway Orlando is a great place where everyone has always been very helpful and pleasant. You should definitely consider visiting the Palm Parkway location instead for a nice...