Red Lobster — Restaurant in Layton

My 4 year old wanted to try seafood for the first time so I figured I'd take him here after preschool, just the two of us. The hostess was very kind and friendly and (much to my son's delight) one of the staff even picked up a lobster from the tank for him to see. Unfortunately, once we were seated, the good experience ended.

There seemed to be some confusion with the wait staff as to who was assigned to what table. Given that there were only 3 or 4 occupied tables at the time, I'm not sure how that even happened. Our waiter was polite, but seemed frazzled, distracted and was rarely seen. I had to ask for napkins...and a water refill...and silverware (more on that later) as none of these were provided by default. We ordered the kids popcorn shrimp and the Wednesday surf n' turf special....and proceeded to wait over 30 minutes for these two entrées fo arrive. During this time, the absurd "Battle of the Wait Staff" continued to unfold. Directly behind me, an older waitress (short hair, early 60s I'd guess) began shrilly shrieking "I TOLD YOU THIS WAS MY TABLE! THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE MINE!" I couldn't hear what the other waiter replied because he had the sense to keep his voice at a normal speaking level. The hostess who was seating another party looked mortified.

I don't know whether they had forgotten about the kids meal or what, because my son's food was fresh out the fryer hot, while my food was tepid. I literally ate part of the lobster and broccoli with my hands because I didn't want to sit watching my food get even colder as I waited for our rarely seen waiter to return with silverware (which should have been on the table already). The lobster was fine, the broccoli was barely cooked, and the steak was very oily (I get it, it's a seafood restaurant, but the beef shouldn't be swimming too).

So long story short, both the food and the service were pretty lousy. On a lighter note, my son enjoyed his shrimp and said he had a great time. So at least...

The waitresses/ waiters are absolutely awesome, if I was rating this solely on them it would be 5 stars all day but I am rating this on experience and food, that being said, here we go. My husband ordered the seafarers plater which looked great on the menu, I went with the create your own option (unfortunately you definitely don't get what you pay for) my husband's meal was definitely lacking in flavor enough so that he asked for a couple extra cocktail sauces to give it flavor and the lobster tail was maybe an inch to an inch and a half long and overly done. It was very rubbery unfortunately. My options were the create your own with a steak, salmon and rice. I asked for a medium well steak and recieved something closer to a chewy leather, they were very sweet to redo the steak as she wasn't sure how to remove it from the bill (literally 1 bite out of it so either way was fine with me) The sweet waitress brought me LOTS of lemons with my order which I loved, and the salmon was amazing with the lemons, the portions were extremely small however which was disappointing to say the least. The potato was fine, it's a potato, and the dinks were very watered down lemonade. I know inflation is a thing and some portions seem to be getting smaller but wasn't expecting THIS much smaller. I would love to say that maybe it's the economy and it's possibly their food sourcing but honestly it seems like this location has just steadily gone down all around for the last couple of years. We use to love coming here but it just seems the last few times we have been here over the last couple of years it is just worse and worse. For 2 meals, 2 drinks (lemonade) and 1 appetizer (stuffed mushrooms) it was over $120 not including tip and we didn't order even remotely close to the most...

Tonight’s Valentine’s Day (celebrated the day after) dinner was a COMPLETE mess! Red Lobster had the worst display of customer service that I have seen in 40 years! It started out with being put in the far back corner of the restaurant…. And left there forgotten for what seemed like forever. When our waiter finally did show up to take our order, he was less than interested in being at all helpful. Anytime we asked him for anything, he said things like, “that’s not my part of the job” or “I don’t know”. Over an hour after ordering, we finally got our food…Cold lobster, colder potatoes, and crab that was straight out of the ice box. Our waiter was nowhere to be found. We finally hunted down another waiter (who was FANTASTIC and the only reason I can even give this review 1 star) to help with getting new food; which was, sadly, still half frozen. We never received the napkins or drink refills we requested. But the worst part of the whole night was the way he treated the older couple just behind us. When she first sat down, she asked for a seat that was not directly in front of the outside door because she was very cold. The waiter responded with, “That sucks.” He then proceeded to ignore or belittle them the entire night. After they asked for the salads that he had forgotten to bring with their meal, he walked away SWEARING at them, and returned only to LITERALLY THROW the salads at them. The other waiter stepped in and arranged for them (and us) to speak to a manager, who apologized and comped both meals. While I appreciate not having to pay for terrible food and even worse service, I will most definitely NOT BE RETURNING! There are plenty of other seafood...