Applebee's Grill + Bar — Restaurant in Lyons Township

Friday night Dinner. The thought of buffalo bone-less wings drove us to try the All you can eat special currently @ Applebees. The price is fair @ $14.99. First plate arrives with approx 10 wings amd a small batch of french fries with cole slaw and ranch dressing. We were hungry and had purposely limited our food intake throughout the day in preparation for a nice meal out. Me personally, i had just flown back in from a long work trip, so i was somewhat tired and definitely very hungry. I gobbled up my plate pretty quickly. Here is where the issues begin. OUR SERVER IS NOWHERE TO BE FOUND. I made that all caps because that is the problem at this restaurant. Most of the servers here, simply dont care. 3 out of 4 us that had this special of boneless wings were sitting there with empty plates in front of us. We sat there with empty soda cups also. There was no checking on us to see if we were ready for Round 2 or if we needed a re-fill mid plate. After sitting there for 30 minutes with empty plates in front of us, we finally saw our waitress appear from the back area. But she did not re-appear to check on her tables. She re-appeared to chit-chat with a fellow coworker. We were able to flag her down and were FINALLY able to reorder another batch of food. Before we could get another word out, she was already trying to leave. We stopped her and asked to re-fill our drinks also as she had no intention of asking. So finally come our 2nd plate of wings. As you can see in the image, it is considerably smaller. Which is fine, comes with 5 small wings amd smaller batch of fries. Thats understandable. THE PROBLEM IS THE SERVICE. A good server will check up on their tables and ask if they need anything else. This is commonplace amongst the server/waiter industry. There is a reason the place was more than half empty on a Friday night. You can guess the reason. Its not the Food. Its the Horrendous service. For the first time in our lives we were tempted with leaving Zero tip. What was supposed to be a happy nice dinner, ended up with disappointment. We wished we had gone a few blocks down to Texas Roadhouse. Where they dont serve the unlimited bone-less wings we were craving but the service we knew would have been a lot better. By the way, this Applebees is located in Countryside, Hodgkins Illinois. And we wanted to see the waitress name but she conveniently did not have her name tag. If i was her i would not want anyone to know my name either. But she is a slim african american girl with bushy white hair at the top. Edit: on the receipt it says her name is Marilyn. If you sit down at this restaurant and you see her come take your order. Do yourself a favor and ask for another server or leave. Save yourself the aggravations. Its not worth it. Life is too short. We should be able to go to any large chain resataurant and be able to enjoy a nice dinner. I dont think thats too much to...

UPDATE: This situation was reviewed with management of the Hodgkins location and resolved to my satisfaction.

In response to the promotion below, I decided to stop at this location 9380 Joliet Rd, Hodgkins, IL 60525 After our party was seated, we placed our drink and food order. The order was for the special. We were told by the server Sophie that the restaurant had run out of shrimp. I mentioned that we did come specifically to have the special and were quite disappointed. We did have the chicken strip and the riblets, along with fries and coleslaw. After a few refills of the two options, I asked Sophie if there would be any credit or desert offered due to the shrimp not being available, she directed the concern to the on-duty manager. The manager named Matt came to our table, I explained that since the shrimp was not available, I would expect a credit or a desert comp for our inconvenience. Matt mentioned that the all you can eat advertisement mentioned that the qualities are limited and no credit would be provided. I advised Matt that this was not acceptable and that the tip to the server would be impacted. Matt didn't appear concerned and left the table. Sophie returned and was advised of the managers decision. Sophie expressed her disappointment and indicated that the advertisement mentions "endless" not limited quantities. Since the shrimp is the most expensive protein of the three selections, I explained why her tip would be impacted.

This was a very disappointing experience. Also noted, this location is in need of a remodel as the wear and tear is clearly obvious.

After my discussion with the manager, the hostess began to tell new customers that they were out of shrimp prior to being seated. It would have been good for my party to know that prior to waiting to be seated, only to find out when we ordered. I was also advised that this restaurant gets its food supply on Monday. Perhaps larger quantities need to be ordered to prevent this from happening to other guests as well.

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All You Can Eat is Back with endless Chicken Tenders, Riblets, and Double Crunch Shrimp for $15.99 Don’t play with your food, play with your options. All You Can Eat is back, now featuring endless Chicken Tenders, Riblets, and Double Crunch Shrimp for only $15.99! Plus, our signature coleslaw and endless classic fries....

Window seat had nasty food smeared on the windows. Tables was nasty sticky. Service was extremely slow to non-existent. Brought 4 tiny boxes for our leftovers, a full slab of ribs with fries, 2 full orders of chicken alfredo barely eaten, a steak with mashed potatoes barely eaten, and 6 appetizers barely eaten and expected to just figure it out. YES, Barely ate anything because it was horrible. I had to split my ribs into 3 separate boxes. How ridiculous. Ordered a martini not knowing it was shareable, my daughter ordered the same one, and the server should have said something, at least a good server would have but instead of doing her job, she was by the bathrooms chatting it up with other employees during our entire meal. My ribs had a choice of 2 sauces and she didn't give me a choice, just put some sauce on it that she chose which was disgusting. Never checked back on us after delivering the food, and couldn't bother to take the million empty plates off the table. I would have typically complained but there wasn't an employee in site throughout our ENTIRE meal till after everyone was done eating. Obviously, no one cared and just wanted to rob you of every penny they could. Hopefully, this will be one of the locations shutting down. I've run restaurants for years, I couldn't imagine letting my staff act like this. I know it is just another food chain but I spent very good money here and at the very least, a server with common sense shouldn't be too much to ask. But what am I saying, it's hard to find good help these days. All this generation cares about is their feelings anyway. Way...