IHOP — Restaurant in Fort Oglethorpe

If I could have put 0 stars, I would have. My lady and I visited an IHOP in Daytona Beach, and loved it, excellent food and even better service, so we decided to give the local one a chance.... I quickly realized why I haven't visited this restaurant in over 6 years, and I'll never be back to this particular location. It was a Sunday night(7/29/18) and when we got there, waited probably 5 minutes to be seated. 3 tables were in use by customers, and one of the employees looked at me and said "We weren't expecting to be this busy tonight." He was being serious..... Our drink orders took another 4-5 minutes. The waiter/waitress/hostess whatever these people were, just....weird. I don't want you to stop by every 2 minutes saying you fixed a screw up with my order and that you're gonna take care of me.... Anyways, we finally got our food ordered. Time goes by.......waiter keeps annoying us with stupid small talk, apparently the manager on duty that night was also cooking in the kitchen was having a small family reunion at the table behind me and they were quite annoying as well. 20 minutes go by, and the waiter brings us.....THE CHECK....Never in my life have I been served the check before I can even smell my food. Out of nowhere the waiter brings a bowl filled with mayonnaise and told me "I hooked ya up!" Then they come tell my lady that her food is ready, and asked her if she wanted her food now while mine was still cooking (I ordered a cheeseburger and fries, pretty simple short order). She said not until mine was ready.....about 10 more minutes passed. My cheeseburger was served, but not her crepes.... About 2 minutes later come the crepes with hash browns and eggs. Her food looked like it was saturated in cooking oil, the hash browns looked like they were deep fried instead of cooked on the flat grill, the eggs were just nasty looking and the entire plate was a sea of oil. The crepes were soggy and lukewarm. My cheeseburger was served with a pound of lettuce on the bun to make the burger look bigger, but the actual piece of meat was anemic, they also did not listen to the "No tomatoes or onions." The fries were not even golden brown. They looked like they sat in a fryer basket and were recooked when I ordered my food. They were also lukewarm and dried out. With the promotion that came with my burger, they asked if I wanted a refill of fries, so against my better judgment, said yes. They brought out piping hot recooked fries. Meanwhile, our waiter kept fishing for compliments on the food, and this manager/cook came out for her family reunion party that was going on right behind us. Then out of nowhere this man came up from behind me and yelled, "That's a good dang hamburger ain't it? My daughter is the cook here and she makes the best restaurant burgers" I wanted to say "Dude, your daughter's cooking sucks" which IT DID! But I bit my tongue, and we were fed up, paid the check(That we got before our meals even came out), and got out of there. That was the weirdest, and worst dining experience in recent memory. This was over an hour of my life I'll never get back. Next time I want diner style food, I'll go to Waffle House! AVOID THIS IHOP! There is a reason you barely see any cars parked at this place, it's because it's...

Was pretty excited for Saturday morning breakfast. Knew we would be in the area and figured it's been a few years since I'd been to an IHOP, and this was exactly the experience to remind me why.

The entry: Make sure you grab the right handle, the one door is locked. Walk up and we are... I'd say greeted but there was no greeting... Questioned? About how many we had in our party. 2 please. Okay it's going to be 10-15 minutes. Half of the tables are empty and everything is clean... Interesting...

20 minutes later we get called to our table. Only table in our section? Score! Fast attentive service is in our immediate future. Now introducing Mark. Pro at taking the drink order, I asked if they had iced coffee, to which I was promptly informed No free refills and I think we're out of cold brew. Okay, cool, Pepsi it is. Now, as earlier stated it's been years since I've been to an IHOP, so the menu was all brand new to me. Mark comes back triumphant with our drinks, asks if we're ready to order, and we have to inform him we're still looking. The ambiance is splendid for the mideval theme... Oh wait.... This is a pancake place? Shouldn't we be able to actually read the menus? Mark, can we get a torch or flashlight or something?

So mark checks back with us once more about 2 minutes later, and then the fun starts. We decide what we want, and Mark has decided it's his turn to shoot his shot with the girl at the front podium, who, in the time we have been sitting there has sent every customer to the older gentleman taking care of a whole third of the establishment himself. None of the other customers joined team Mark. The very loud and unprofessional cackling from the kitchen for "Ashley!" Every 30 seconds was a little jarring.

So, after 10 minutes of waiting for Mark to remember that this is a restaurant and not tinder, we finally place our orders. Now let me tell you, if you didn't bring an appetite, that's fine, because you're going to wait 35 minutes for an overcooked chicken sandwich made in grease belonging to a museum, missing the avocado,with a fist of cold shredded cheese on top, expertly covered in a wilted sheet of lettuce; and an omelet filled with cool shredded beef, and smacked with another fist full of cold cheese. We would have sent it back, but the woman bellowing from the kitchen, coupled with the fact I still had plans this evening and couldn't dedicate another half hour to corrections meant we ate in silence, scarfing down our food as fast as possible to hopefully see the light of day again. Would've been easier if we got more than one refill when we had food, but thankfully our check was accompanied by another refill.

Time to pay, we were told take our time, but if I gave them the luxury I would have been there for dinner. Now, cue the best payment experience ever. Mark takes my card, taps it, then proceeds to seductively stare at the side of my head while I decide to give him a $5 tip. I'm not a monster, but I feel like $5 for a total of 10 minutes of his time is a pretty sweet deal, that would average to $30 an hour if they put more people in Marks section.

So on the way out the door, the hostess with the mostest stared blankly into her cellphone, and back out into the blindingly overcast...

So, I haven't been to an IHOP in YEARS despite having one right down the road from me. Why? Because my last experience was terrible. Well, I decided to take my son there for breakfast as he's never been and I figured I'd give them another shot. We go in, and the only "greeting" we got was, "I'll be with you in a minute" which was said with her back turned to us. Already not a great start but I figure its just the hostess so...whatever. Turns out, its our waitress. Lovely. She gets our drink order, brings those out and then takes our order. She comes back a few mins later to tell me they are out of breakfast potatoes bc her other table got the last ones. A little annoying but still not a deal breaker. My son had ordered the chocolate chip pancakes which he was excited about. Unfortunately, we noticed there were no chocolate chips. After several minutes of waiting, the waitress comes back to her tables where she asks her other table if everything is good and then just bypasses us completely so I had to stop her and tell her about the chocolate chip issue. Her reply: "Well, they might be out of chocolate chips so they just made the pancakes without them." Then she just gives me a blank stare like she could care less. So I asked her to go check (Why I had to ask her to take the initiative to check is beyond me). She comes back and confirms they are out but she says it while she is walking past me! Doesn't stop to tell me...she WALKED AWAY and couldn't be bothered to even look at me. No apology, no offer to replace them with something else. She comes back and says it again so I ask my son if he wants something else (since she didn't ask). He decides on the cupcake pancake. She drops that off at the table and walks off without a word so I had to grab her attention again to ask for cream and splenda. Now. About this pancake....There was not a nice dollop of whipped cream as pictured....there was a freaking mountain of whipped cream to the point that you couldn't even see the pancake and it was piled high (I wish I had taken a picture)! The pancake was also so thin that it had practically disintegrated under all that crap. She brings the check and only THEN does she ask how the food was and when I told her about the cupcake pancake she just said that's how its supposed to be. Um, no...its not. I get the check, she overcharged for my son's hot chocolate but at that point I was just ready to get out of there. I understand running out of things but to just make something and send it out without telling a customer its not gonna be what they ordered is unprofessional. Fast food restaurants don't even do that. So in conclusion, if you do decide to be brave and go in to this low end establishment, make sure you don't get Gretchen as a server. You'll leave angry and be typing up a similar review. My lesson? I'll listen to my 7 yo son and go to...