Me and a colleague stopped here on our way back from Chicago and since Ponderosa wasn't open yet we thought we'd give this place a try. According to the online reviews and pictures, I thought this would be a good place to eat. Boy, was i wrong. The restaurant was nice and inviting when we first walked in, very spacious and clean with a nice outdoor seating area. We were sat relatively fast and looked at the menu, which had a good mix of items that looked appetizing. We ordered the corn dog shrimp for an appetizer, because it looked interesting. And we both ended up ordering the steak sandwich one mid rare and the other medium, mine with onion rings and my colleague's with fries and an added side salad. We also ordered a iced tea and a fountain drink. The server that we had, took our order after delivering our drinks and we proceeded the long wait for our food. This is where everything went down hill. The server came by with two side salads one with ranch and the other with French dressing and asked which one my colleague had. The server never asked for dressing choice initially and my colleague chose the ranch dressing one which the server set down the one with French and stated that he'll have to go get the ranch and took off the French then delivered the other salad to a different table. The dressing was brought out a few minutes later. We proceeded to wait for our appetizer thinking it would be out soon. Nope, we were wrong. Our steak sandwiches came out first instead. I asked the server where the appetizer was, which he said "i forgot, ill put it in now". So, we start digging into our sandwiches and my mid rare steak sandwich was 85% mid well and my colleague's medium steak sandwich was 75% well done. My onion rings were cold and hard making me think that they had been sitting for a while before I even ordered my food. My colleague never received his fries with his sandwich either. There was minimal sauce and toppings in our sandwiches as well and you could barely taste or see the sauce that was supposed to be on it. We did recieve our appetizer later, which was pretty much a tiny bit of shrimp wrapped in way too much batter, not good. At this point we just ate our food because we were in a hurry to finish our trip and we only saw our server once after we recieved our sandwiches and that was too give us our bill, which he got wrong as well. We never got asked how everything was, never got refills of our drinks, and no offer of a comp for messing up and missing items in our meals (it would have been nice to be offered at least). Most of the time our server was neglecting his tables because he was too busy talking and flirting with an off-the-clock female worker at the host stand. Very poor service, poor food quality, but good atmosphere. I'd also like to add that another one of his tables were complaining about the food and service as we were leaving to a manager. Very disappointing. I will not be recommending this...
Read moreZero stars if I could. So many better places to dine in the area. Wish I wasn't lured by my children's lust for the shakes. They do a great job advertising. The food is garbage unfortunately. We went for happy hour as they advertise 50% some food items and 20% all drinks. Per the menu. So we basically tried everything on the happy hour menu, I mean why not? It's half off and we've never been there. Fries were mushy. Odd taste of the mushrooms and onions on the burger. So much ranch on the chicken ranch Mac. Cheese curds were decent and the pretzel was actually good...but can you really mess that up? My biggest complaint is the lackluster shakes. We got 3. All Shakes arrived not looking like the amazing photos used for advertising. So Meh. Very disappointed. At the end of the meal, our bill arrives and Shakes are not included in the "all drinks 20% off" so I questioned it. Waitress brought over some kid who didn't introduce himself and informed me that the Shakes are considered dessert. Not drinks. Oh OK. Doesn't state that on the menu. Fine. I ask for mgr. Because no clue who that kid was. Manager Derrick saunters over. Shrugs his shoulders and says shakes are considered dessert despite what menu says... Then he gets a phone and walks away. Comes back as we are leaving and says the owner agreed with him that shakes are not included in discount despite advertising. Oh OK. It's whatever. We already paid. I wouldn't recommend this place. I would not go back. Food was disappointing, especially when so many other good places to dine in the Dells. I would like to point out, we had fantastic service from our waitress. Very attentive...
Read moreVery busy night so no fault to our server, table we were seated at was dirty, had to be wiped down while we were standing there, had dirty silverware and had to get new before we could eat, fabric napkins were covered in lint when brought to us, was told the iced tea was sweetened when we asked and it was not, order was taken when we got our drinks, waiting 45 minutes for our appetizer, and additional 30 minutes to get our meals, very loud inside, kids running around all over(no fault of the establishment, just a very busy night), after finishing our food, waited 20 minutes for our server to be free to bring us a box and our bill before grabbing the box ourselves from the wait station and another 10+ minutes for our poor server who was running like crazy due to being assigned to different tables all over the restaurant instead of a specific section. I hope this was a one-off as the reviews prior to our visit were great. We made sure to tip our server well and I wish I had gotten his name, he had told us and we could...
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