Applebee's Grill + Bar — Restaurant in Lodi

You know you're in for a great time when your server does not even bother to write your order down, because he's "that good". We place our order and I like my burgers plain. I know he got my order right because he was so confident that he need not repeat our order back.

Well I'll be a son of a gun, my burger came to me with lettuce and tomato popping out all over the place. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that there's no written evidence of my order. So i explain to the server (again) that I don't want vegetables on my burger. So he rushes my plate away to have the unwanted foliage removed.

Minutes later, my food was dropped back off at my table and, who later turned out to be the manager, rushes off without any follow up questions about my food. Such as if it was how i ordered it.

So i open my burger to find.... that's right, I bet you were able to guess.... tomatoes and lettuce still on my burger. So i push my plate far away from me in disgust. Almost 10 minutes and around 3 passes by my table before I'm asked if there was anything wrong. By this point i just wanted to pay for my wife's meal and leave. I have lost my appetite. The manager then shows up. The same one who dropped off my food and ran off. She tells me that's not how theytreaty their customers and i had to remind her that she was the one who dropped the ball on my order for the second time personally. Then she asks if there was anything they could do to earn a second chance to win me as a customer. Me sending the burger back was the...

I used to work for the restaurant as a hostess and the managers treated all the hostesses like trash and didnt care if we were sick. The managers would give us tasks that we didnt know how to do before hand then get mad at us for not doing them correctly. Food was alright usually until the last few weeks i worked there like the food and drinks started getting either cold or tasted bland and had no flavor. The managers are pushy and would push their employees around like nothing and start to complain about us standing up front to get ready to sit people for like 5 minutes and act like there are things to do in the restaurant when the restaurant had no one or barely anyone there. I got in trouble multiple times for calling out sick or for certain important family events. And they would try to tell me to find someone else for my shift, like isnt that your job as manager. The waiters were always super nice and helpful and the same goes for the other hostesses but sadly we had bad management so obviously we werent wanting to work at our full potential. Pay was also mediocre and not enough for the work we would have to do. And on multiple occasions i would have to stay late even though i had told the managers on duty ahead of time that i would not be able to stay late due to me either having very important doctors appointments in the mornings or having to walk home late at night which is super dangerous. Wouldnt recommend working or...

The server was friendly and on the ball, however, the food was completely awful. We only ordered the Nachos and Quesadilla. The nachos arrived cold, ever eat cold queso..yuck, the grated cheese was still in grated form as it never got warm enough to melt. The quesadillas were barely warm, but at least we could eat those. The Pepsi we ordered had no taste and was flat, I sent it back and ordered a Root Beer which was only slightly better. We had to unfortunately return the nachos to the kitchen and the server was extremely apologetic and took the nachos off the bill, we assured her that it wasn't her fault and that we had no problem with the service, only the food. We were never visited by the manager to find out what the problem was. How do you screw up nachos? well go to this Applebees and find out. We won't be going back. The inside of the restaurant was so generic and lacking in any personality. I guess it has been some time since we've been to an Applebees, but this one was completely charmless and just a plain old bad experience.

EDIT: I was contacted by a manager via this review and received an apology and an offer of a gift certificate or add'l credit on my credit card for this bad meal. I rejected both, but thanked the manager for reaching out. I do appreciate the follow through, although would have preferred it to have been in the restaurant at the time...