Outback Steakhouse — Restaurant in Fort Worth

This was a special occasion; my birthday and our 34th anniversary. We have been coming to this Outback every year for 3 years, and I specifically chose this place this time, because I looked at their menu on Google Maps and it showed they had a triple layer chocolate cake for desert. I don’t eat carbs or sugar, except for a special occasion, and I didn’t want to buy an entire cake. I told our waiter this at the beginning, and I said it was my birthday and our anniversary. He said they no longer had this type of cake but apparently they don’t update their profile on Google Maps. We are living in the days of Social Media and a lot of people use this tool, so I am surprised they don’t pay attention to it. I did tell our waiter that I was very disappointed, and he told me about their other chocolate type desert. I ordered the steak / chicken combo with broccoli and a baked potato. When our food came I didn’t get a baked potato until I someone finally came over and we told them. During the meal my Coke Zero was empty, and I kept looking around for someone to come over. I must add we were always friendly and did not say anything negative. We ordered coffee to go with dessert and yep; I didn’t get a cup. And when it finally arrived, I didn’t have cream of non sugar sweetener so I had to find someone to help - again. I reluctantly ordered the chocolate type desert, and believe it or not, when it arrived the entire top portion was missing, and the server said it was all they had left. I would have gone somewhere else to eat if I had known this because I just wanted a good piece of chocolate cake. And it’s not like I didn’t make this clear up front. We are nice people, very good tippers, and enjoy good service, but honestly our service was lacking for sure. They didn’t seem to care about us at all. If our waiter would have told us up front their situation, we would have politely left and not ordered. The worst is yet to come. We still tipped well despite what happened, and we didn’t get more than a mile down the road when I became VIOLENTLY ill. My husband had to find the nearest gas station for me and thankfully I made it in time. I was sick for the next 2 days, and we will NEVER eat there again! Be warned out there! I don’t like to give bad reviews, but sadly, I can’t give them the zero they deserve - or actually less than that. We don’t know what made me ill. We were kind, polite, etc., so we don’t think they did something, and I would not ever want to accuse someone of that. Was it the chicken? The beef? The broccoli? The potato, or sour cream, or butter, or bacon? Was the Coke machine dirty and contaminated? We honestly don’t know, but I feel a responsibility to tell the public what happened, and you can make your own decision. What a nightmare of an experience. If I were the manager I would thoroughly investigate, and do a thorough cleaning of everything. There isn’t enough money in the world to bring me back after what I went through. I forgot to add they charged us for a table game we didn’t use because I apparently touched the wrong button not realizing it would cost. At least they removed the charge, but be...

I want to start by noting that our server, Brendan, was amazing! He was attentive, prompt, and genuinely interested in our experience. Kudos to him for his awesome service!

Now for the not-so-great details. My wife and I went for dinner on January 16th. We had a baby a few months ago and this was our first special date night out since then (baby included…we’re all in this together).

Appetizers: Bloomin’ Onion -Not great like I remembered it being. Over cooked and so greasy my wife only had 1 bite. I ate about 1/4 of it and it was then taken from the table.

Wife’s Meal: 6oz. sirloin & Tasmanian shrimp w/ loaded mashed potatoes. -Steak was hard and crusty on the outside…not like a good crust of flavorful spices…just a hard, tasteless crust. The steak itself had absolutely no flavor at all. My wife politely requested a new steak with more seasoning. We laughed when it was delivered because it was a really weird shape and just looked absolutely fake and inedible (it still had no flavor. Not even the flavor of salt). Her shrimp was ok, but it was essentially a blomin’ onion flavor (same dipping sauce and all). Mashed potatoes were good, but, I mean, it’s mashed potatoes.

My meal: 15oz. Rib-eye medium, loaded mashed potatoes, mac & cheese. The steak was closer to rare than medium. The fat wasn’t even rendered, and I love the fat, so that was a disappointment . Asked for it to be cooked longer and when it came back it was essentially the same. The mac & cheese was decent, but still felt lacking. The mashed potatoes were once again the shining star, which is really sad. As we were leaving I took a bite of what was left of my mashed potatoes and told my wife “I want to at least end the meal with something that tastes good”.

Here’s the deal, our meal was $86 after tip. We hardly ate the Bloomin’ Onion, literally essentially didn’t eat more than a couple bites of our steaks, and left most of the greasy shrimp. We took the steaks home hoping to season them up more since we paid so much for the meal and didn’t want to waste them (yeah that’s right, I took home a leftover steak to try to fix at home, sue me).

I could have collected a sub prime steak and some veggies from Walmart and created a far more superior meal than what we had at Outback. It’s disappointing that the meal wasn’t good, yeah, but it’s infuriating that we spent nearly $100 for something we didn’t even eat because it was so bad. Oh, and we only had 1 coke and a water to drink.

Upset I went here with my family for a special meal? Absolutely. But my biggest regret is not asking to speak to a manager and refusing to pay for...

Go to a different steakhouse or another Outback location

For the record, this only gets 2 stars because the service when I went there with my boyfriend was incredible. I believe our server was named Aaron (not sure if that's the correct spelling). He was fantastic, one of the best waiters I've had in a while. So this review has nothing to do with him.

We ate here on Saturday night for dinner, it was perfect as I said. When I woke up Sunday morning, I felt ill and threw up everything I ate the night previously at Outback. I took medicine, threw it up. Drank water, threw it up. Nasty projectile vomiting. No other symptoms except vomiting, upset stomach, and back pain, all signs of food poisoning. The only thing I ate that night that my boyfriend didn't have was the Outback Burger. I had leftovers and after I got sick I looked, and burger was pink. (I should've checked my burger before I ate it, so this is a friendly reminder to always check your meat is cooked properly when dining out). I'm not sure if it was undercooked, or cross contamination or what. I could not hold down foods or liquids for 12 hours on Sunday, not even medicine. Worst food poisoning ever. Monday morning I finally felt better and ate small meals, and by Tuesday I was fine. So my boyfriend calls and speaks to the assistant general manager, and notifies him that I seem to have food poisoning from the burger. He tells my boyfriend he will look into it right away, find out what happened, and offered to send a 50$ gift card as compensation. My boyfriend gave him both our names and numbers for him to follow up. Well, we never heard back. Even if the burger didn't cause my food poisoning (which Im highly positive it did), it's concerning that a restaurant would not find this alarming and try to resolve the issue immediately. There was no follow up call, no gift card, no anything. Don't come here because they obviously don't care about the health of their customers. I was vomiting so bad I was considering going to the er, as I was super dehydrated and weak, but luckily it only lasted for a day. Shame on this place for not taking this issue more seriously, or at the very least, giving a...