Tender Greens — Restaurant in Irvine

Wow. From the start, I got a bad feeling about this place. I used to frequent the location in Hollywood when working at CNN, so I thought it would be great to take my mom to try it. Bad idea.

My mom ordered the salad with steak so the server asked how she wanted it. My mom gave a somewhat subjective answer when she said, 'not jerky but not mooing'. We are at a chain restaurant. It's not a steakhouse so I don't assume the cooks even know the difference but the cashier gave her a sideways look. I almost told my mom when after seeing the server do that, that we should leave but I figured maybe it was just bad timing. Wrong. Ok, so then we order and asked for water with lemon. We were asked a name for the order even though usually they give a number because they bring it to your table. Wrong. We had to go get it ourselves. So now, giving a subjective answer for how the steak should be cooked at a fast food place isn't really looking like my mom was wrong about assuming the cooks are minimum wage kids that really don't know the first thing about cooking high quality steak. Right. I'm pretty sure a 15 dollar salad with steak isn't really high quality steak but whatever. We got called for our order. I went up to get it and each salad came with no dressing. I didn't notice until I sat down again. So, I had to go back and cut in line to ask for dressing. After some time waiting, I got half of a serving cup of dressing. Ugh. Is that extra?? Then, after returning again to my seat, I noticed no lemons in the water. So I went back again, cut in line and asked for lemonsfrom the cashier taking everyone's money. The girl apologized and went to a little reach in cooler and grabbed two lemons with her hands. The same hands she uses to take money. Yeah. That's nasty but I was already pretty annoyed and trying to laugh off the frustration. A kid noticed that was working there and came over to offer somewhat of an apology. He offered to give us more dressing but returned with one.

Who manages this place? A teenager? How can I expect to get high quality food when these kids don't even understand what high quality is. The prices sure know what high quality is but yeah, not the employees.

Nothing like the location in Hollywood.

I don't think I'll ever come back to this...

This could be one of my top 10 worst dining experiences of my entire life. As much as the staff tried hard to handle what was building chaos. They were WAY understaffed, mismanaged, poor preparation, and had no leadership. I'm not sure how this place has business. It felt like a everyone was so miserable. We waited in line for 25 minutes and one HOUR for our food. One of the exhausted and distraught employees tried to help "kinda" and also later suggest we get a refund from the manager because it would be 1-2 HOURS MORE until our food was ready. Somehow after requesting a refund from the manager.. 5 minutes later we were able to get the food finally as he wanted to try and fix it.. so I can respect that. Of course it was cold ..after waiting almost an hour for "fast casual dining".. with items being forgotten. The staff almost insisting we take it to go. and not taking no for an answer, because they didn't want to find table numbers to hand us??! My only conclusion is corporate has skimped so hard on paying these employees that nobody cares anymore (also taking into COVID-19 into account) not because they're lazy.. because they're not getting paid enough to deal with they mayhem and chaos that these corporations leave them in. I apologized to an employee for having such a hard time after another man yelled at him for his food being cold. I said, I can see that you're having a very hard night. The employee admitted to me that he had worked all day without eating for almost 10 hours straight. The worst restaurant I have ever been to in years. Although the food tasted okay.. the overall experience was SO HORRIFIC.. I would never return and I believe that the corporation that runs this sweatshop should...

I tried Tender Greens for the first time. The menu had soups, salads, bowls, and plates. Very healthy and simple. I went with an entrée which comes with two sides. I selected the panko crusted eggplant, arugula salad, and mashed potatoes. When the plate was served, I noticed there was no sauce for the eggplant and no gravy for the mashed potatoes. I'm a gravy and sauce kinda girl. I proceeded to eat my meal without any sauce and gravy, and it was delicious. I have no complaints. The eggplant was perfectly crusted with the panko and perfectly fried. The eggplant was perfectly sliced, not too thick, and not too thin. After that first bite, it didn't matter that I didn't have any sauce. The arugula salad was perfectly dressed with parmesan and fennel shavings. There was a piece of toasted bread drizzled with olive oil and herbs. The mashed potatoes didn't have gravy, but they tasted great. I'm not sure if the restaurant had gravy or sauces. I enjoyed how everything tasted so much that I didn't even bother to ask if they had any.

My daughter tried the Thai bowl with shrimp and coconut sushi rice. I loved it. The vegetables were fresh and crisp. It had that great Thai peanut sauce with a hint of refreshing lime.

My son had the buttermilk fried chicken entrée with fingerling potatoes and arugula salad. The chicken was moist and perfectly breaded and fried.

For drinks we had the watermelon Aguas frescas, the greens juice, and mint lemonade. Every juice was delicious...