Outback Steakhouse — Restaurant in Lakeland

Everytime I go here I remember why I never eat here. My husband and I got an Outback gift card for Christmas so we decided to have a date night. I’m not usually one to complain especially when it comes to restaurants because I have worked in restaurants and I’ve currently been a server for 3 years so I’m always trying to give the benefit of the doubt and not only that but my husband and I are both very chill and go with the flow so it takes a lot for us to even say anything, but this experience was too bad to not say anything. We got sat everything started out great, our server was nice. But then we would get our food that the food runners would run and we didn’t have any silverware so for quite a while we are sitting there with our food in front of us our server no where to be found so I had to walk up to the host and ask for some silverware. Here’s the thing I was thinking oh maybe the server was busy. But then I realized she only had one other table besides ours and it was relatively slow. We then are able to eat our salads then our entrees come out by another food runner, my steak was super chewy and not a good cut of meat considering I got the 10 or 11 ounce ribeye so that was sucky especially since it was over a 35 dollar meal but I didn’t say anything because my husband ordered his steak medium and it came out completely rare. So we were yet again just sitting there for a good while because yet again our server is no where to be found so we can’t even ask them to cook it up. Finally after a while of just sitting there we have to wave her over and get her attention we tell her about the problem. So because his side has been well cold by this time she said she can grab him a new side when his steak comes out. Well the steak finally comes out from a different person and no side. So now we are waiting on the side. No server still in sight and the steak still rare at this point though we aren’t going to send it back again. We just cut our loses with the steak… finally the server comes around and we told her we never got our side. And she grabs that for us. Keep in mind my husband also didn't have a drink majority of this time because she didn’t grab a refill till right before we left. If the server had done regular table touches at least each time we got our food a lot of the waiting and searching for our server would have been avoided. I get servers when they are busy, but I can also tell when a server doesn’t care about their tables and giving good service so At this point we didn’t even finish our food and packed it everything up and left. Terrible food, and definitely wished our server gave good service. Just go to...

I almost forgot what it was like to go out on a Friday night but boy this restaurant was packed for two people. It was a 25 minute wait I will say they’re texting system is amazing because it truly just took 25 minutes and we sat down. It was perfect, because we were even more hungry than before we were greeted by Cass. He took our orders, got our drinks out right away and bread because he could tell that people have been waiting and I must say hands-down. We have eaten out with our kids without our kids mini places we have never met a server who was so attentive down to drink bread, can I get you anything? Food will be right out but someone that actually cared even though he had quite a bit of tables, he stayed on making sure everyone was good multitasking quickly getting everything we requested out. It was amazing. We’ve eaten here before and I forget the young lady who helped our family when we had all of our noisy loud kids but they’ve always been great but today made us really enjoy going out for once, as just parents with one kid and it was just hands-down one of the best service we’ve ever gotten in a very long time anywhere again his name was Cass. I think the manager said that’s what he goes by but his name is David. He was amazing and thank you again we really enjoyed ourselves and can’t wait to come back . Just had to edit my review from four months ago. We went a few days ago and we thought it was weird because the parking lot looked empty and we got scared, but there was a note on the door about AC issues, but when we walked in, it was freezing and I was like damn I love when the place is hot. But it looks like they had AC issues it was fixed so not a lot of people were there but boy I was so excited because we were limited on time so me and my husband did a date night and we ended up eating at the bar booth and CJ was our server. She was phenomenal and amazing(extremely attentive- we never had to ask for a refill or anything. She was on everything from our drinks to our food. They weren’t crazy busy, but the bar area was full, and we were not her only table). So glad we came and if you stop by get that new pasta, the shrimp and scallops I forgot to take pictures but we were fighting over leftovers. And also she came up with the best recommendation for a drink, and I asked her for it and it included an extra shot for a dollar more. I only needed one and was loving life and a quick escape from our...

We arrived at 5:00 and was seated right away, there was only a couple tables that were taken it was very slow. The place was freezing cold and our waitress which was an older lady with a ponytail came to take out drink order and then came back to take her it food order about 5 minutes later. By 6 pm we still did not have our food, the waitress said it would be out soon about 3 times. The waitress then grinds over another waitress and says this will be our new server as the previous server had been cut since it was so slow. A manager with glasses brings out or food at 6:05 and I told him it had been almost an hour.. he says (very rudely) the ticket says the food was entered in 15 minutes ago! WHAT!? My mom and I both chuckled and said it’s been almost an hour. He doesn’t care at all. The new server comes over and says I saw you guys when I got here at 5 pm.. yeah that’s right. She brings over another manager. This manager was older black woman who apologizes and says she will give us a discount as we all believe the first server ( older lady with ponytail) forgot to enter in our food. My daughter’s steak was so tough it could not be cut. My moms steak was so bloody (well done) it was disgusting. I got chicken on the Barbie with a loaded sweet potato and broccoli. The sweet potato was not loaded and the manager brought out extra toppings as she said again there was miscommunication. The chicken looked funny and I took a out 2 bites we informed the manager again the older woman. She asked if we wanted fresh food brought out. NO it’s been an hour and a half we are ready to leave! She gives us a 5.00 discount (absolute disgrace for what we went through and how we were treated) no one was wearing name tags or said their names which was very unprofessional. The establishment in a whole was horrific. To top it all off I have spent the last 12 hours with food poison now. Thanks to their disgusting chicken. I will be calling corporate about this...