IHOP — Restaurant in Lakewood

I do not normally make a habit of leaving negative reviews, but today's excursion to IHOP convinced me. First and foremost, the wait staff was beleaguered and overworked, but still managed to be friendly and prompt with their service.

After ordering our appetizer and discovering it to be delicious (mozzarella sticks), we had high hopes for the rest of the food. My two daughters were pleased with their meals (BLT and Crispy Breakfast Potatoes) although the BLT fries were unseasoned and tasteless. Still, they were the side dish and the BLT itself was fine.

My wife and I, however, had a different experience. Her Eggs Benedict was absolutely drowning in a hollandaise sauce that was thick, lumpy and tasted almost like straight butter. The eggs themselves were not runny and were gelatinous and odd-looking - like something from a Doctor Seuss book. My Chicken Fried Steak was an absolute disaster. Spongy gray meat that had the texture of an abused kitchen sponge with limp, soggy breading - and that was after swimming through over a cup of bland, semi-tasteless gravy. The scrambled eggs were rubbery and the hash browns had the distinct taste of dish soap. Thankfully the pancakes that were served with it were edible.

When we decided to pay and leave, we brought up the complaints we had to our server. While not her fault, she attempted to make it right by fetching a manager. Said manager informed us that since I had "eaten half of my steak", which was nowhere near true, he would not be willing to compensate us. He also flatly refused any kind of statement about the deplorable semen sample that he was trying to pass off as gravy, shrugging it off as saying it was "supposed to be like that". Only when confronted with the eggs benedict did he decide to take it to the kitchen and then remove that single dish from the menu.

If your food is supposed to be bland, tasteless, drowning in fatty gravy and spongy enough for me to squeeze a shot glass's worth of grease out of, then someone should reevaluate the standards. While I'm glad my daughters were able to enjoy their meals, I'm sad that despite the wait staff doing their best, the management has less backbone than a chocolate eclair and a refusal to understand that the quality of the food does in fact matter to their clients.

The only reason I'm giving this place two stars is because I am so impressed with the waitress who served us and the receptionist. Despite being short-staffed and busy, they were friendly and upbeat. We were given the option to wait for a table, which we did, and they texted us when one was available. Food was served in a prompt manner and our waitress was friendly and amicable. It's such a shame that the food served couldn't live up to the standards set by...

So I'm going to do something I've never done before, which is changing my review due to a fantastic experience.

Multiple times, I've attempted to order via Doordash, only for my order to be immediately cancelled. I downloaded the app (which gave me a coupon since I was newly registered), only to run into the same problem.

I decided today to finally go into the restaurant after the app didn't want to work, and thank goodness I did.

The servers were blown away that the app wasn't working, and were extremely kind and generous in getting my order taken care of. When I wanted to use the coupon, however, there was some reservation followed by a denial of its use, with a simple explanation of "our store can't take that coupon" despite it being from the IHOP website. So I was like "okay." and even though I wasn't unhappy, I wasn't completely satisfied with that simple answer (since I work in retail and hear managers say that line a lot just to deny customers for no reason).

However, the manager (Chelsea) was the one to bring out my order. Curious to know more, I asked if she was the manager and voiced my concerns about the coupon. I told her that I understood not accepting the coupon in normal conditions, but asking why an exception couldn't be made since it was clearly an error not on my side (which I even showed the servers). Thank goodness she was exceptionally precise and courteous as to why the store couldn't take it (because I'd still be able to use it on the app once the app worked...though I was under the impression they could use and remove it manually) as well as why the app/DD wasn't working for them (because of an update and whatnot that the store was in the process of fixing), and I was completely satisfied since her explanations made total sense.

Above all of that, she even offered me a 10% discount, which I politely refused since I was perfectly happy with what she'd told me...but she didn't back down. She offered me a free drink, which I again politely refused for the same reason above. But she eventually talked me into it, and I left the restaurant both completely satisfied with my service, and a free lemonade on top of that because of a fantastic manager. I wish more managers of both retail and restaurants were as professional and courteous as Chelsea. She definitely deserves a raise, and I'll be hoping for the best for her future. And this IHOP will definitely have a new customer for...

Everybody is "stressed" at this place and it shows. They handle everybody in the front lobby yet there is not a hostess or MANAGER to greet you. So you wait for a frowning waitress to snatch up 2 menus (like she's mad), to seat you (this took 4 min). Did I mention that the other people waiting are never greeted. So let's see (I timed it). 7min later she come back to seat the next two. Meanwhile she forgot I and another person were there to pick up an order "already made and bagged". So I get my food... heat-bulb-Cold, 17 minutes later. All she or her manager had to do was ORGANIZE, the situation. If you are there to pickup, it's a simple handoff. No brainwork needed. So ask who is here "to pickup" and once you know this, check on it please. The staff was seating and taking orders then coming back to help others. If this is your policy, ok, but what about those who called you to place an order, that you said was done and ready to pickup, only to be in line with up and coming customers...and then overlooked for 20 additional minutes (I even took off the 4 min). This store is unorganized. The staff need to learn to acknowledge their customers, not look and turn away quickly to get away (the other waitresses). It was comical to watch to say the "least". And please note that I was in the lobby "to pick up" way before the 1st and 2nd set of people were waited on. I get a store under staffed but that is not my point of this review. In fact I wouldn't write a bad review on ANY business for unintentional damage. This review is because, BASIC things should be enforced. There's no excuse to not greet all guests. The management is at fault for not having a proper hostess. So if you're not the cook, you should be the Host. The waitress and host should be ready to hand off ALL togo/delivery orders. They come from paid customers. If the waitress don't feel like she's getting tips from togo or deliveries, guess what? she don't care if they get their food. She KNEW there were two pickups for customers of Ihop. She ignored us to seat and wait on "her" customers. That's what I learned from this...