Applebee's Grill + Bar — Restaurant in Lexington

Let me start off by saying that our experience at Applebee's was extremely unpleasant, and we will not be back. If I could give it 0 stars I would. We were trying to have a nice Father's Day dinner, but instead, we got awful service. When we first walked in, there were few customers seated and many employees walking around with nothing to do. There were at least five employees in the back staring at us, not knowing what to do. Two employees walked in the restaurant behind us and did not even bother to say anything. When at last we thought we would be seated, a guy walks up and says, "I'm sorry, someone will be here to seat you," because apparently he doesn't know what he is doing and he can't seat us himself. Finally, another guy walks up and seats us. Under our table, there is an entire salad on the floor, and that kiosk thing that you pay from on the table hadn't been cleaned in years. For what seemed like an eternity, we sat there at our booth without being served at all. After at least 10 minutes a waitress comes to our table to ask us what we want to drink. She walks off and we sit there for another 10 minutes. Meanwhile, another chick walks passed us, points at us, and says "Y'all have already been greeted." As if our horrible experience wasn't enough, now we weren't worthy enough to have two greetings. The least you could do is say "Welcome to Applebee's, your drinks will be here in a minute," but apparently that's too much to ask. Our drinks finally arrived and the lady took our order. When she asked my dad what he wanted for his sides, he asked for fries and a baked potato. She told him that they didn't have baked potatoes, but they did have garlic mash. He told her that he just wanted double fries. It took an additional 30 minutes for our food to come back to us. When they finally brought it to us, they gave my dad garlic mash. When he told the lady that that was not what he had ordered, she said, "I thought you said you wanted garlic mash." No, he told her that he wanted fries about 3 times, at no point in their conversation did he even suggest that he wanted garlic mash. She went to get him some fries and it took less than 30 seconds for her to get them. My guess is that she probably found a plate of fries on another table that hadn't been cleaned yet and gave them to him because they were cold. Furthermore, I ordered a 6-ounce sirloin and he ordered an 8-ounce sirloin. When we compared our steaks, there was absolutely NO difference in the sizes, but yet they charged us full price. The food was decent, other than the fries were cold and the steaks were a bit dry. When we left, my dad informed the guy at the door about our nasty table, and he still didn't know what to do. I would not recommend this restaurant to anyone wanting to have a pleasant evening. The best part of our visit was leaving!! Applebees needs to get some training from the Chick-fil-a next door where it's their pleasure...

Update. So they were short staffed tonight and said there would be a wait. A wait turned into an hour. We finally walked back inside to see if we were even close to being seated when the hostess finally came up a crowd had formed in the entrance of people trying to come and eat. Most of which ended up leaving early because the hostess informed them that there was a wait and that she was holding 4 tables for individuals that had came in and left their names to be seated however since we had been waiting outside there hadnt been anyone that came back that had been waiting. She informed the other customers that she couldn't skip them but didn't know if they were coming back so she couldn't seat anyone in their place for another 25 mins to give them a chance to come back which we had already been waiting an hour and sitting right there waiting. She finally said since you've been waiting too for an hour and the others haven't came back yet I'll go ahead and seat you guys and then the rest will have to wait. So we get a table. A few hiccups with the food. They put shrimp on my steak because I asked them to add it to my man's steak for him and they put it on both like they were doing us a favor and giving us something free when I'm allergic to shellfish.. so they take the steaks back and the other table that was seated long after we came in their steaks. Then the broccoli I said we wanted with our steak went to their table first before getting corrected and brought to ours. My man's steak came out a while before mine did and then when mine came out it had the broccoli I asked to have added but now was missing the mashed potatoes... and me and my bf got the same steak supposedly but mine had a butter garlic topping with serious garlic when my man's didn't have that on his... all in all I'm really under impressed and disappointed that the experience was so different than the last...

We are very disappointed in our visit today. Not a bad wait only 15-20min we were seated and ordered our food and drinks right away. 30min went by with no sign of our appetizer. People that ordered after us actually received their entire meal and we still were waiting on our appetizer. We finally received it and by then we all had empty drinks for about another 30min . Our food now an hour after we ordered finally arrived and we asked the person that brought our food if we could please have some refills since there was no sign of our waitress . We were starving and took a bite of our food that was room temperature and cold. Our toddlers food was an ok temperature but we could definitely tell it had sat for a very long time. I stuck my finger in my mashed potatoes and they were ice cold. When our waitress finally came over to ask how our food was we let her know we were disappointed and that it was cold amd room temperature. She asked if we wanted our food remade but we had already waited so long we said no thanks we can't wait any longer. She then sent over the manager who then said she would take it off our bill . We were very greatful that she did that for us . And to our surprise she actually took everything off our bill . I rated it 3 stars because if the food was hot it would have been good but that's alot of money to drop for cold /room temperature food. We also understand everyone's understaffed but that shouldn't effect the quality of your food. We had also noticed that because they were taking so long people were getting up and asking for to go boxes at the front or even going to the kitchen to find their waitress . We saw about 3 waitresses working and it wasn't really busy so being understaffed can't be an excuse for checking on literally everyone else's...