Red Robin Gourmet Burgers and Brews — Restaurant in Independence

We entered & was told a 20 min wait for 2 people. The place was not too busy. Went to bathroom noticed lots of empty tables. Told my wife & the 2 girls doing checkin gave us a dirty look. My wife commented there shouldn’t be a wait time right? We get seated 20 min later….Our waitress stopped by to explain to us she will be back in a few minutes to get our drink order. And kept talking. She could have just taken the drink order. Then she came by 3 more times saying she needed a few more minutes to wait on other customers. We ordered our food with drink order at same time at this point. I wanted the bacon fondue. Waitress ( Mariah ) specifically asked if I wanted that with our fries or our meal. I said before with our fries. We asked about the fondue again and she said they were making it, but we had already ate half the fries before our meal and told to forget the fondue at this point. Then she brought it out anyway with our food!! Why ask??? When she brought out our drinks my wife wanted a glass of ice water with her soda, Mariah brought a glass of ice no water. ( we had both been outside all day my wife thought we might want it, she is kind like this) Had to ask Mariah for water after she came back 15 min later for the ice. She actually said “oh you didn’t want ice?” Smh. Then she told us there was no silverware because they were washing it. That one she can’t control. Noticed 2 tables wo silverware. All of the fries were barely warm. Same with burger and fries with food- barely warm. My wife’s burger had 1 & 1/2 pieces if bacon. I had waitress fetch her the rest of it. She said she would get the manager, one never came. What good would that do anyway? Waitress came back 5 min later w bacon. Food now almost cold. While we were eating a girl was sweeping but she was really beating that broom against the dust pan while she was talking to some guy. He wasn’t a customer, they were talking for about 15-20 minutes while she banged away HARD with that broom. In the same area about 2’x3’ in front the guy she was chatting it up with. To the point my wife got annoyed and told our waitress “ you need to make wack-a-mole girl over there knock that banging off.” Waitress Mariah “ we have to make sure it’s clean.” My wife , god bless her replied,” She has been in the same spot beating that thing really hard while she visits for 20 minutes. Pretty sure it is clean.” Waitress makes her stop it. Our waitress had a horrible attitude, not friendly the entire time. The couple sitting near to us seemed to be getting the same crap service. They left during the whack-a- mole marathon. Not happy looking. The check. Went onto the kiosk at our table to pay and the kiosk turned off. Waited another 10 minutes for waitress. Asked a busboy to tell her but she saw I guess and came over. She said she couldn’t do anything about the kiosk and we would have to let her run the card. I watched her , she went to the check out station. Then she ran off with my card out of sight completely for a while 5 minutes or more??? No clue where she went with my cc. Paid over $20 each here for a burger. A burger. With this kind of service and atmosphere. Wtf. Save yourself the headache ( literally ) go get a steak dinner. For those of you who read to the end of my diatribe, sorry it was so long. Just wanted to give the full picture. It wasn’t one thing that made the service awful but a bunch of things that just kept piling on. Took an 1.5 hours to eat...

This was an absolute let down and disappointment for me. The service from Alex, our service was great. He did his best to anticipate our needs and bring what we requested in a timely manner. He was informative and very friendly. The kitchen failed him tonight.

The fries, albeit bottomless were terrible in taste and quality to the point that we didn't finish the first offering and opted out of receiving more as that would have been a form of punishment. The food looked sad and unappetizing as if the kitchen staff were just back there phoning it in and not caring about the level of quality, happiness of the guests, or the fact that someone was PAYING for it and that's exactly what was felt. The appetizer felt thrown together and mediocre at best. We order the "Limited Time" offer of the baked potato fries. The time for this product should be limited based on how it was presented to our table. It looked like slop. There is no way that that was how it was intended to be received. The cinnamon sugar donuts were unappealing as they had a strange aftertaste and the "fudge" looked as if it was squeezed from a tube and not heated. The smoke and pepper burgers and fish and chips meals were C+/B-. The sweet potato fries were under seasoned. The BLTA was over salted and it did not taste right compared to the last time I ordered it earlier this year. The Avo-Cobb-O salad looked amazing. The taste is unknown as it was ordered to go. The chocolate cake was also ordered to go but it was not packaged properly for a to go dish. The kitchen staff thought it would be ideal to take a warm chocolate cake that was ordered to go and top it with ice cream. The ice cream was melting into the cake. It is a goal of bakers to have a moist cake but this one was just wet. When I asked for the cake to be properly packaged to go with the ice cream on the side, I was informed that the kitchen was closed. Maybe it should remain closed! It's not like they are back there making food from scratch! They aren't! With how the economy is now our dollars don't stretch as far as they used to and treating the family to restaurant dinner is much more treasured now than it used to be. For this to be our experience is heartbreaking and disappointing. What a complete let down. We would have been better off putting that $100+ toward groceries. Never once did a manager come over to hear this so I am leaving it here. The General Manager did bring us a booster seat... but that was only after we went looking for it because no one offered it when they saw that our tiniest party member was forced to sit on her knees in order to be tall enough to eat at the table. Way to drop the ball Red Robin Independence! If that was the goal, you more...

Things did not start well. When we walked in and were asked how many were in the party, my husband pointed to us (clearly 4 adults and 2 small children). He laughed and said we had 2 adults and 4 kids. When the Hostess didn't laugh or even look up at us, he knew he had messed up and she didn't get his joke (that he makes at all restaurants and never has an issue, because they take the time to look at us for even 1 second). They did indeed give us 2 adult menus and 4 kids menus as they sat us and AGAIN didn't even look at us as we sat. We were also never asked a single time if we could use a booster or high chair for the toddler, so thankfully we had a booth he could sit at with me.

When it came to drinks, my husband was the only one the waitress ever gave a refill to, and she gave him another refill before he had even started in on the 2nd glass. Meanwhile, my 7 year old had finished her drink and was never even offered a refill. Two of us ordered the same burger, one with tomato and one without. When they came, the waitress specifically said "This one has no tomato." Once the 2 from our party started eating, they realized that she had told them wrong and now that they were actively eating they didn't want to switch and just dealt with it. My son ran out of his oranges (endless, supposedly), but I had to ask her to please get him more because she continued to not offer my kids refills on anything.

When everyone's food was first brought out, my daughter's "side salad" was just lettuce and ranch. No croutons, tomatoes, nothing. Just bits of lettuce. And the ranch was warm. I had ordered a full size salad and wasn't given a fork at all. My husband had to go get one from a different waitress after the rest of our party was already eating. Then we were never given a single napkin. I had to ask yet another waiter for some. Finally, when we were just about done, I was eating some of my toddler's mac and cheese that he didnt touch (had moved it in front of me and was clearly eating it). The absentee waitress finally came back, stood for a minute while I ate, then said, "Looks like you need a box for the Mac and cheese, want one?" Umm no, you watched me as I was eating it. But i was over it so I just stacked up everything and told her we were done.

I don't like not leaving a tip, but that was a horrible dining experience...