Blazing Onion Burger — Restaurant in Lynnwood

We came into the restaurant just before 5 on a Saturday. We were a party of ten, eight adults, two minors, age range 15-77. The place was empty yet we were still told we should have called ahead. We walked up to the counter and started to place our order. My 52 year-old wife ordered a glass of wine, and was asked for her ID, which she didn't have so she was refused service. I understand you are doing your job but my wife and I have not been carded at a restaurant in at least ten years, probably closer to 15. There is no way someone from the liquor control board would walk by our table, see my wife drinking a glass of wine, and ask to see her ID. Fine, whatever, you have your policies. Second, my 15 year-old son wanted fries with his salad. He was told fries don't come with the entree salads. Rather than make a fuss, he said fine and I was next up to order. I asked why he could not have fries with his salad and the response was that fries don't come with the salad. I asked why can't we have an order of fries from the appetizer menu or a side of fries and just pay extra. I was told we would have to order a basket of fries then. Fine, why were we not offered this right away? Then, my 22 year-old daughter came up to the counter to change her drink order from a diet coke to an alcoholic and beverage and she did have her ID. We were then told by the hostess that she would put in the order for the drink but warned us if she caught my wife drinking it, she would kick us out of the restaurant. What !?! We had only put in three of ten orders and the hostess was threatening to kick us out of a near empty restaurant? We were not being rude, loud, or obnoxious we just wanted a nice meeting place where a family from Bellingham and a family from Seattle can meet for a burger and some family time. So your hostess had only taken three orders and managed to insult all of us. So we bounced to Shake Shack and had some GREAT burgers, and no, my wife did not order wine there just to keep the peace. Your hostess could have saved us some time and told us to find somewhere else to eat as she was obviously trying to make ordering food as difficult as possible. Absolutely atrocious customer servive. We also got dessert in the mall so you lost about $400 to other merchants and ten customers for life. I do hope ours was an isolated experience because if it wasn't, good luck staying...

We visited this location on a Saturday when it wasn't very busy. I've been to the Tacoma Mall location before so I thought this location would be similar, sit down, order and get your food with great service. I was definitely surprised when that wasn't the case. We walked in and the server came up and told us we had to order first, strange to have two registers so close to each other especially with a couple of families trying to order at the same time. Then the server came back to seat us, she had a table for 4 with a chair on side right in a walkway. We had a party of 6 so this clearly didn't work. They had to push two tables together so we could all sit together. Then we waited. After about 10 minutes went by I had to call someone over to see if the kids meal could be rushed. They brought out the side of fruit and said the grilled cheese sandwich would be right out. Then about another 10 minutes two servers came out with our meals, the didn't speak up and just looked confused that we didn't know which order was which. They didn't know what burger was which and when the server asked me what I had and I told her a BBQ burger she guessed that the last burger she had was it, even though it had no BBQ sauce. It had mayo which wasn't listed as an ingredient included so I had to send it back to receive what I ordered. Finally the grilled cheese came out which was just two pieces of toast with cheese melted on them and cut in half... Not a sandwich. At this time we had to ask the server to bring a fork for the salad that was ordered and for napkins. Then about 5 minutes later the BBQ burger came back out and wasn't well done, it was bright pink inside with a tad if blood. This made me nauseous and I had to send it back, again. About 20 minutes later after everyone was done eating my burger came back out. Well done but with mayo. I was so tired of these teenagers not being able to get the order right that I went over to their desk and grabbed napkins to get the mayo off my food. Our whole experience was pretty bad overall and put a damper on our belated birthday/ Mother's Day lunch. Definitely don't recommend this location unless they do some retraining of...

Ordering before you're seated is something new for me. The Lake Stevens Blazing onion has none of the following gripes from me. Get rid of the servers & cashiers in my dining future, that's fine. But make the basic dining rules work first. Like, apps before entrees. Drinks before or with apps. Everyone gets food around the same time. I have no doubt this is the future of fast casual dining. BUT Blazing Onion isn't really fast casual in my mind... I'm thinking more Chiptole level, which would have been a better choice for dinner this evening. I realize this is a busy location but a few things did not work for me or our party of 3.

1. Ordering. -Our split order may have made things a bit more complicated for the kitchen. But that should be problem #2 to solve with a system like this when the party is sharing one table number. One of our party's meals came out a good 15 minutes before the rest and full 10 minutes before me or my date got our alcohol we ordered from the front desk. Along the same lines, and in my mind problem #1 to solve with a serverless system such as this, our "shareable" or appetizer came out with the late entree.

2. While I chose BO over Claim Jumper across the sidewalk tonight because I knew it was cheaper, the combination of the "automated" service & then medicore food made me wish I'd gone to Chipotle. I can get alcohol, quick service and consistent food there. All without the guesswork of using laminated pieces of paper for service.

Red Robin is a good example in my mind of the transition to this type of dining that BO seems to be...