LongHorn Steakhouse — Restaurant in Gulfport

We arrived today at 3:20 and there were a few parties ahead of us waiting. We were told 25-30 minutes.  It was a little longer than that. I noticed that some of the wait staff seemed confused. One came to ask the host if she had been expected to be taking care of a table but she hadn't been.  A while later one said she guessed she'd go bus a table that was dirty. I noticed empty tables,  maybe reservations, but also that it was taking them awhile to bus/clean tables when people left. Nobody seemed to have any urgency to get things done, even though they had a steady stream of customers waiting. The man who got called to be seated before us was taken to his table. For whatever reason, he refused that table and got seated elsewhere. We were then given that table. We had a few minutes to look over the menu. The waitress eventually came to get drink orders. We ordered drinks & she asked "Do you know what you want to eat yet? " We hadn't quite decided, so she went to get drinks. She came back with drinks in 5 to 10 minutes, & my husband received sweet tea instead of unsweet. He decided to let that slide and just drank it. The bread came a few minutes after that. We realized at this point we had never been given silverware, but didn't see the waitress for awhile after that, so we just pulled the bread apart and dipped it into the cold butter as best we could. Another table hadn't been given silverware either and she figured out we didn't have any when they let her know about theirs. We ordered spinach dip for an appetizer and for entrees we ordered the ribeye and the burger. She asked if we wanted to wait a few minutes in between putting in for app and mains, but we said same time is fine since everything was taking so long. She offered drink refills and my husband let her know then to bring unsweetened this time since he received sweet the first time. We waited awhile for the app and another lady dropped it off. The flatbread chips that come with the dip were saturated with oil and soggy like the fryer hadn't been hot enough or they got redropped. We realize they had been struggling today apparently, so we just ate them. Not that anybody stopped to see how things were going anyway. The salads came out after awhile and they were fine. We got through the salads and had more time to wait before mains arrived. Other guests were asking to get their food switched to to-go because they couldn't wait any longer. Our mains eventually arrived, again dropped by someone other than our waitress who just dropped them and left. My husband received the wrong type of steak. Nobody came to check for maybe another 10 minutes, and he had just been sitting and waiting so they could swap it with what he actually ordered. The waitress checked her notepad and seemed like she realized she had put in the wrong thing. He got to keep his Brussels sprouts while waiting for the right steak. They were greasy and not very good, so he didn't finish them. Meanwhile, the burger I received that was supposed to be medium-well was so far past well that it might as well have been "congratulations." I managed to choke down half of it, and it was like eating a hockey puck. Super dry, and with the flavor of a charcoal briquet. I had decided since so many other things had gone wrong, I wasn't going to even bother trying to get that fixed as well. So after waiting what felt like forever for my husband to get his steak, we got a box for it so we could get out of there. It was after 5 pm by this time. It just seemed across the board nobody either knew what they were doing, or were messing everything up. I can understand having a rough day, but even restaurants we've been to that haven't been that great had some kind of redeeming quality, or something that went right. The salads were edible. That's the highest mark I can give from this experience. The only reason we came in today was because we had a couple gift cards. We used one and I'll be giving the other one to someone who doesn't live anywhere near here so they can't make the mistake of coming to...

So i want to preface this review by saying that i am a career restaurant worker. I've worked every front of the house position from hostess all the way to manager for 25 years. I have never left a bad review bc i understand that allot of variables go into your experience. You never know what could be going on internally at a restaurant.

However, today was different. Today, 6/1/25, My mom, my toddler son and I drove 45 minutes to try Longhorn for the first time. We were the 2nd group in the door right at open. The hostesses were smiling and friendly and sat us promptly. The server, Aubrey, came quickly and got our drink orders. Very unwelcoming and unfriendly. And really just looked like she didn't want to be there at all. She returned quickly with our drinks and asked if we were ready. We had just opened our menus and told her we were not. She came back a couple minutes later and asked again. This was our first visit so we were not at all familiar with the menu. Again, we told her no we needed a bit more time. This time, she did not come back for 10-15 minutes. No apology for the delay, no bread brought out. She took our order and before she left the table i asked about the bread she said "yes ma'am". Well about another 10-15 minutes pass and still no bread. My toddler at this point is starting to get hangry and i had to go ask another server to please bring us bread, as our server was nowhere to be found for that entire 10-15 minutes. She comes with the bread. Toddler crisis averted.

Our food comes out, and my plate (parmesan crusted chicken) is barely lukewarm. My mom's (chop steak) had COLD mashed potatoes. My mom did like her chop steak pretty well and my son's Mac and cheese was very delicious. I didn't care for mine, but i think that other than it not being hot, that's more of a personal taste issue. If our server has come back to do a 2 minute/2 bite check, we could have gotten our food warmed but she didn't. We ate, We got the bill, paid (and yes i still tipped over 20% bc i can't, in good conscience, do otherwise. But.... i can probably safely assume that anyone that does not work in restaurants, would not have done so).

So we leave.... both my mom and myself had instant stomach aches and had to cut our shopping portion off the trip short bc we had to keep running to the bathroom.

If we weren't the 2nd table of the day and had come in at high volume, I could probably excuse half of this, but that was not the case.

And had we not have gotten upset stomachs, i probably would have tried a different location one day, but it is what it is and me and mine will NOT be returning to Longhorn...

I had a terrible experience. Firstly, I ordered steak at about 9:30 p.m. . It was supposed to be cooked well done. I did not realize until after the store had closed and I made it home that my steak looked like this. Completely red on the inside to the point where even a worker said that it looked like the cow was "mooing"! The worst part is the way the manager, Chase, handled it. So, I went in the following day to notify management that I had to continue to cook my steak after spending more than half $100 the previous night. Jen took my information and told me she would notify Chase. The following day, Chase insinuated that I must have been lying when I tried to call and follow up after not hearing back from him. According to him, Jen had not left any information. He was completely dismissive of my issue and decided to focus on irrelevant matters during my phone call. I felt the need to follow up in person and went into the store. When I got there as I was explaining to him my issue, another customer, by the name of Teka, literally interrupted, out of frustration, complaining that she had just sent her steak back 3 times , and it was still undercooked. Well, I feel like there was a bit of racism here as Teka, being a middle-aged white woman, had her issue handled immediately in person. However, Chase had just told me that he would send my information in to corporate and have them fix it and send me a gift card Saturday or Sunday , as this was Friday. It seemed a little bit inaccurate for corporate to work on Saturday or Sunday to handle matters like this, especially given the fact that it was the weekend before memorial day. However, I had nothing to go off except the manager's word. When the other guests, Teka, heard the disposition of my issue, she questioned as to whether I had to wait for my issue to be resolved. When I asked, chase told me that it was because my issue had previously happened and was not the same day that it was a matter of politics. Needless to say, I did not receive a gift card. I waited saturday, I waited sunday, and I waited Monday. I went back in Tuesday only to find out that he had blatantly lied and that he never intended to give me the gift card from the start. It was confirmed by another manager that this was not policy at all. It was further confirmed by other workers who heard him promise me this as well as management that this was not the first time that he has done something of the sort. He really needs to lose his job for treating customers this way....